Israeli AI-based clinical assistant Kahun has completed an $8 million seed financing round led by LocalGlobe with the participation of European Innovation Council (EIC) Fund as part of the EIC Accelerator program and The Founders Kitchen (TFK). This brings to $13 million the total amount raised by the company to date.
Current AI tools for healthcare providers have failed to address current challenges and gain trust in the medical community. They use a combination of big-data engines built on patient records and experts’ knowledge, not on evidence-based medical literature like Kahun's tool.
The company was founded by a team that mostly comes from the technological world. CEO Eitan Ron and CTO Tal Goldberg founded Human Click, which was acquired by LivePerson (Nasdaq: LPSN; TASE: LPSN) for $9 million, which then represented 15% of LivePerson, which today has a market cap of about $700 million. Ron and Goldberg became executives at Liveperson, and Goldberg even went on to various positions at Waze, now part of Google. But a few years ago the two decided to open their own company again together with chief medical officer Michal Tzuchman Katz.
30 million connections that model the medical data available in literature
In contrast to some of the other companies in the field whose algorithm is built by scanning huge databases of medical records, Kahun's algorithm is based on the professional literature in the medical sector. Based on a review of medical articles, the company has built a map containing 30 million connections that, it believes, represent the medical knowledge available in the literature, and its algorithm runs on this map.
Ron said, "This is a significant distinguishing element of our company's technology. When we propose a diagnosis or treatment method, we can immediately refer to the source in the literature where this idea appears, and the doctor can examine the quality of the literature that offers the same solution.
"This, compared with a system that runs on medical records and derives insights from them, but it acts as a 'black box', and we humans do not know how to criticize its recommendations or neutralize its biases."
What deficiency is this system designed to fill? Lack of medical personnel? Or providing medicine in a place where there are no doctors?
"No, we don't replace a doctor, but help them. In the first step, we help doctors think. Even today, they use a computer to think, but they conduct a search that only bears fruit if they already have some kind of hypothesis about what is going on."
A mass application was not profitable
The company first followed the accepted business models of the content application field. The product was released to the market in early 2021 and was initially offered free, to encourage use. The app reached about 7,000 users, but it was not sufficient to support such a business model. "We recognized relatively quickly that most doctors think they know what they are doing. The increase in the use of the application was not fast enough to support the model of distributing the application for free and then transferring some of the users to premium use for a fee. The frequency of use was also not high."
At this point, the company decided to slightly change its approach, and position the application as a questioning tool for the patient, so that when they come to the doctor, the doctor will already have before him the list of symptoms that the patient described, as well as some insights that the system offers. From the doctor's point of view, the early questioning saves time and ensures that there will be no mistakes, and they receive immediate value from this. Hopefully, they will also benefit from the insights without having to immediately admit to themselves that they are looking for them.
Starting from telemedicine
"Another change was in the choice of a certain target audience of doctors - the world of telemedicine. This world is developing a lot in the US and is producing a significant change in the medical profession. Telemedicine doctors must act even faster than a doctor in a physical meeting. The saving in questioning time that the application offers is essential for them. In general, telemedicine doctors are less experienced, and have less of a medical ego."
The company has yet to record significant revenue. It is currently working with two telemedicine companies in the US. In addition, the company's products are already embedded in the Israeli medical content site Infomed, which offers medical content to users based on their symptoms. An agreement has also been signed with the medical journal New England Journal of Medicine. As part of this agreement, Kahun's system will become part of a training program for doctors marketed by the journal.
What is the origin of the name Kahun?
"When we began to model medical knowledge, we asked ourselves what was the first medical article that was written. We found it, 2000 years BC on papyrus in the field of gynecology. I would not suggest to anyone to try what was offered there. Kahun is the name of the papyrus, after the village next to where it was found. And what has happened since then? The world has moved on and doctors still read and remember written texts."
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on October 2, 2022.
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