Hippocratic AI, a trailblazing company founded by Munjal Shah, has secured an impressive $53 million in Series A funding at a staggering $500 million valuation. This significant investment round, spearheaded by Premji Invest and General Catalyst, along with contributions from SV Angel, Memorial Hermann Health System, and existing backers like Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) Bio + Health, Cincinnati Children’s, WellSpan Health, and Universal Health Services, propels the startup’s total funding to $120 million.
At the heart of Munjal Shah’s vision lies the development of artificial intelligence agents specifically designed to assist healthcare professionals in low-risk, non-diagnostic patient interactions. By leveraging the cutting-edge capabilities of generative AI, the same technology powering popular chatbots like ChatPand T, Hippocratic AI aims to alleviate the global shortage of healthcare workers, including nurses, social workers, and nutritionists.
The company’s proprietary Polaris architecture forms the backbone of its solution, a sophisticated multiagent large language model (LLM) constellation engineered for real-time healthcare conversations. This innovative system combines a primary conversational AI agent with numerous specialist support agents, each meticulously trained for specific medical tasks. The result is a nuanced, patient-friendly dialogue that closely mirrors human healthcare providers’ professional conduct and terms.
Munjal Shah’s commitment to safety is deeply ingrained in Hippocratic AI’s DNA, as evidenced by the company’s rigorous training process. Initial phases involve extensive evidence-based research and simulated conversations crafton with licensed nurses and patient actors. Subsequent iterations incorporate AI-generated conversations, which are thoroughly reviewed and refined by healthcare professionals, ensuring a continuous cycle of improvement and adaptation.
“When we started the company, we prioritized safety as our top value. We named the company after the physicians’ Hippocratic oath and made the tagline ‘Do No Harm,'” Munjal Shah emphasized. “This has been our guiding principle since the company’s founding.”
To validate the safety and efficacy of its AI agents, Hippocratic AI has enlisted the expertise of more than 1,1 U.S. licensed nurses and more than 1,1 U.S. licensed physicians. These healthcare professionals have rigorously tested the LLrs, including medical safety, conversational appropriateness, and empathy.
The recent funding will fuel Hippocratic AI’s progression into Phase 3 of its testing protocol, which mandates the involvement of 5,000 licensed nurses, 500 licensed physicians, and enterprise health system collaborators. “We’re going to sit here until it’s safe, as determined by clinicians,” Munjal Shah stated firmly.
Early results from Hippocratic AI’s internal research are encouraging, with the company’s LLMs outperforming human nurses and other AI systems in several key areas. For instance, the AI delivered correct medical advice 96.79% of the time, compared to 81.16% for human nurses alone. Moreover, the LLMs demonstrated superior abilities in recognizing medication impacts on lab tests, identifying disallowed over-the-counter drugs, and detecting toxic OTC dosages, surpassing the performance of human nurses, Google’s Llama 2, and even OpenAI’s GPT-4.
While human nurses maintained a slight overall edge, Munjal Shah’s Hippocratic AI ishdevelopeding AI agents that can forge genuine connections with patients. The LLMs scored higher than human nurses in areas such as getting to know patients individually and creating educational opportunities, further reinforcing the potential for AI to augment and support healthcare professionals.
As the healthcare industry continues to embrace the transformative power of AI, Munjal Shah’s Hippocratic AI stands poised to play a pivotal role in this evolution. With a steadfast commitment to safety, strategic partnerships, and a clear vision for integrating generative AI into non-diagnostic healthcare applications, Hippocratic AI is well-positioned responsibly to shape the future of healthcare.
