By Hippocratic AI, the brainchild of Munjal Shah, has marked a significant milestone in its journey. The healthcare AI startup, founded in 2023, has successfully concluded a $53 million Series A funding round. This achievement not only boosts the company’s total funding to an impressive $120 million but also catapults its valuation to a staggering $500 million. The round was spearheaded by Premji Invest and General Catalyst, with notable participation from SV Angel, Memorial Hermann Health System, and existing investors such as Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) Bio + Health, Cincinnati Children’s, WellSpan Health, and Universal Health Services.
At the heart of Hippocratic AI’s vision, Munjal Shah envisions a unique approach to healthcare. The startup aims to develop artificial intelligence agents that can handle low-risk, nondiagnostic, patient-facing tasks. This innovative strategy involves creating a ‘constellation’ of large language models (LLMs) that leverage generative AI. These models will provide services such as patient navigation, chronic care nursing, and dietitian advice. By addressing the global shortage of healthcare professionals, Munjal Shah’s vision is to make medical care more accessible to a larger number of patients than would be possible with human workers alone.
The foundation of Hippocratic AI’s technology is its Polaris architecture, a multiagent LLM constellation optimized for real-time healthcare conversation. This system combines a primary generative AI conversational agent with numerous specialist support agents; each fine-tuned for specific medical tasks. The AI agents undergo extensive training using evidence-based research, simulated conversations, and input from U.S.-licensed nurses and patient actors. This results in empathetic and knowledgeable AI that can engage in natural and supportive dialogue with patients.
Munjal Shah’s commitment to safety is a cornerstone of Hippocratic AI’s operations. This dedication is evident in the company’s name, derived from the physicians’ Hippocratic oath and its tagline, ‘Do No Harm.’ To ensure the safety of its AI agents, the company has implemented a rigorous, multiphase safety testing protocol. This protocol involves engaging with a broad network of healthcare systems and professionals to validate its AI agents. For Phase 3 of testing, the company’s stringent criteria stipulate that 5,000 licensed nurses, 500 licensed physicians, and the enterprise’s health system collaborators must fulfill the testing requirements.
Hippocratic AI’s internal research has demonstrated the potential of its AI agents to outperform human medical professionals and other LLMs in several nondiagnostic tasks. The company’s AI delivered correct medical advice 96.79% of the time, compared to 81.16% for human nurses alone. Moreover, Hippocratic AI’s constellation significantly outperformed Google’s Llama 2 70B Chat and OpenAI’s GPT-4 in recognizing the impact of medications on lab tests, identifying condition-specific disallowed over-the-counter drugs, and detecting toxic OTC dosages.
Munjal Shah’s startup has also made progress in developing AI with a robust bedside manner. When human nurses were asked to compare the LLM’s performance to that of other human nurses, patients reported feeling nearly equally comfortable confiding in the LLMs and human nurses. The AI excelled at getting to know patients individually and creating opportunities to educate them about their conditions.
As Munjal Shah and Hippocratic AI continue to push the boundaries of healthcare AI, the company’s focus on safety, strategic partnerships, and precise applications of generative AI in healthcare positions it to play a significant role in shaping the future of medical innovation. With the latest funding round valuing the company at $500 million, Munjal Shah’s Hippocratic AI is well-positioned to transform healthcare by leveraging the power of LLMs to support healthcare professionals and enhance patient care.
