Health Tech Firm Infermedica Nets $10.25M In Funding, Seeks ‘Virtual’ MD

Healthcare company Infermedica has raised $10.25 million in a venture funding round involving two new investors, EBRD and Heal Capital, along with existing investors Karma Ventures, Inovo Venture Partners and DreamIT Ventures.

“The new funds will help us grow into the next stage of our evolution, focused on developing robust, AI-based, clinical decision-support solutions for both patients and doctors,” said CEO Piotr Orzechowski in a company blog.

The goal is to work toward having a “virtual GP,” or general practitioner, he said.

Infermedica’s website says the company “makes it easier [for healthcare providers] to pre-diagnose, triage and direct [their] patients to appropriate medical services.”

“The healthcare industry has never been so advanced, and yet there are still so many patients who don’t receive the right care at the right time,” commented Orzechowski on the website. “Infermedica thrives in the face of this global challenge by focusing on leading-edge technology.”

The company has “a team of over 100 people — medical doctors, software engineers, and data scientists — who are passionate about the potential of artificial intelligence in preliminary medical diagnosis,” he said in the release.

He added that the company’s “solutions have been used over six million times in 17 language versions.” He credited “world-class organizations such as Allianz Partners, Microsoft, Sana Kliniken and Medis” as being key to Infermedica’s growth.

Orzechowski argued that in five to 10 years, “an FDA-approved chatbot combined with medical devices will be used to treat common health problems, significantly improving primary care physicians’ everyday work. Our ultimate goal is to make primary care more accessible, accurate and comfortable for everyone.”

Infermedica is benefiting from the COVID-19-inspired tilt toward telehealth in the U.S. JD Power research showed that only 10 percent of consumers used telemedicine in 2019, but that’s changed with the pandemic.

“This situation has really laid bare a lot of the issues that have been within the system for this whole time,” said Murray Brozinsky, CEO of virtual care platform Conversa Health, in a recent conversation with PYMNTS. “What telehealth likely required was a catalyst, [and] COVID-19 has now been that catalyst.”