Diagnostic Robotics, founded by artificial intelligence (AI) expert Dr. Kira Radinsky, robotics expert Prof. Moshe Shoham, and CEO Jonathan Amir, has raised $24 million. Investors in the round include prominent digital health and medical device sector investors: the venture capital fund of the Accelmed group, Mivtach Shamir, Dr. Judith Richter and Dr. Kobi Richter, David and Daniel Arison, Maverick Ventures Israel, Alpha Capital, and Mark Siegel, an executive at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and XPRIZE Foundation.
Diagnostics Robotics deals with load management at hospitals and aims to shorten waiting times. The company's aim is to predict the load in advance using information gathered continuously from every action taking place in the system, and to prepare the hospital in advance in order to ease or manage the load. In the first stage, the system is installed in emergency rooms, and its main function is to support doctors in assigning priorities to patients and deciding about the possible medical diagnosis. The system is planned to expand later to management of the entire hospital and beyond it, including preventing patients from coming to the hospital if it is not really necessary, while channeling them to other solutions.
Diagnostic Robotics chairwoman Radinsky is a known specialist in algorithmics who possesses predictive capabilities. She became eBay Israel chief scientist after selling her Salespredict startup to eBay. She is also a partner in founding the research institute for medical information at Maccabi Health Services, financing by Morris Kahn.
Shoham is the founder of Mazor Robotics, sold to Medtronic for $1.64 billion, and has founded a number of other robotics companies, in addition to his position as a scholar at Technion - Israel Institute of Technology. The company name contains the word "robotics," even though its technology does not include any robotics hardware, or any hardware whatsoever, for that matter, because the algorithms needed for prediction are similar to AI algorithms on which robotics technology is based.
Amir, the youngest partner in the company, is a professional Taekwondo athlete and has an MA in economics from Technion. He became familiar with emergency rooms after being hospitalized following an injury.
"The need to manage the loads in emergency rooms is clear, and we, three academics who met at Technion, decided to jointly take on this challenge," Radinsky says.
Diagnostic Robotics was officially founded only in late 2017, and cooperated with the Rambam Medical Center in both access to information and testing the product's performance in the course of the company's development. The company's technology is already installed at Leumit Health Services and Meuhedet Health Services, and at the Soroka and Rambam Medical Centers. The company's cooperative ventures with these hospitals is supported by the Israel Innovation Authority and the government's Digital Health as a Growth Engine Plan, which have allocated resources to support hospitals agreeing to try out new digital health technologies. According to Amir, Diagnostics Robotics is one of the most successful companies in this program. Amir also revealed that the company has already installed its system in the US.
Are there already measurements of the system's performance?
Radinsky: "In support for diagnostic decisions, we have an 86% AUC, which is satisfactory accuracy. We are currently conducting clinical trials in order to support this result."
Founded: 2017
Field of business: Prediction of loads at hospitals
Founders: Dr. Kira Radinsky, Prof. Moshe Shoham, and Jonathan Amir
CEO: Jonathan Amir
Capital raised to date: $24 million
Investors: Accelmed Partners, Alpha Capital, Maverick Ventures Israel, Mivtach Shamir, Dr. Judith Richter and Dr. Kobi Richter, David and Daniel Arison, and Mark Siegel, an executive at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and XPRIZE Foundation.
Employees: 60 in Israel and New York
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on November 13, 2019
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