Today Phare Health, a London-based startup that is building fintech tools for hospitals in the UK and Europe £2.5 million Seed led by General Catalyst.
The company develops AI products to help hospitals better understand the state of their finances and have better intelligence on costs and cash flow.
Its initial product leverages large language models to help hospitals capture high-quality data about the care they deliver, help hospitals better manage resources and recover their costs efficiently, and ensure that NHS Trusts are reimbursed accurately for their work.
The AI system reviews all patient notes written by clinicians. It transforms them into structured, usable data for admin, operational and financial teams, helping to bridge the gap between clinicians and how the hospital operates to boost visibility and transparency for hospital leaders.
As a result, managers can allocate resources across healthcare systems more efficiently, enabling a more accurate understanding of patient treatment to drive better standards of care.
Besides General Catalyst, KHP Ventures, and Bertelsmann Investments also invested in this funding round, helping Phare Health to expand its team, recruiting AI and healthcare expertise in key markets.
Phare Health co-founders and co-CEOs Dr Martin Seneviratne and Lee Kupferman were part of the DeepMind Health and Google Health teams working with the NHS on projects including breast cancer AI screening and MedPalm, a medical AI assistant, while co-founder and CTO Tymor Hamamsy has been at the cutting edge of AI science at Stanford and NYU. Before joining DeepMind Health, Seneviratne worked as a doctor in Australia.
Dr Martin Seneviratne, co-founder and co-CEO of Phare Health, said: “
As a young doctor working in hospitals in Sydney and London, the most frustrating thing was spending time on admin, at the expense of patient care.
While there is much discussion of the potential use of AI for clinicians, there is a much more urgent need for AI in the back office - doing low-risk, manual, administrative tasks that will free clinicians up to spend more time caring for patients.
AI in healthcare should be invisible - it should help behind the scenes to make healthcare more efficient and safe without getting in the way of doctors and nurses.”
Chris Bischoff, Managing Director of General Catalyst, said:
"We believe Phare is pioneering an entirely new category of financial resilience products for health systems. By partnering with industry stakeholders from the outset, they have demonstrated the ability to collaborate with those who share their commitment to modernising the financial stack of the health system, with sustainability, patient care, and workforce wellbeing in mind.
These values align with our Health Assurance thesis, and we are excited to participate in their positive impact."
Lead image: Phare founding team. Photo: Uncredited.
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