Carenostics raises $5 million in seed funding

Carenostics, a pioneering healthcare AI startup tackling undiagnosed and undertreated chronic disease, has successfully closed a $5 million seed funding round led by M13. Other participants in the round include Greatpoint Ventures, Gaingels, and Kurt Hilzinger, Chairman of Humana, who also joined Carenostics’ advisory board.

The US healthcare system is plagued by chronic disease, which is the leading cause of death and disability in the US and drains a staggering 90% of the roughly $4.1 trillion in annual healthcare spend. A significant portion of these outcomes and expenses are driven by undiagnosed chronic disease patients being treated too late – with certain conditions, like chronic kidney disease (CKD), estimated to be 80% undiagnosed.

A contributing factor to late diagnosis and treatment is overburdened physicians; a recent study from the Journal of General Internal Medicine showed that it would take 27 hours each day for a doctor to follow all acute, chronic and preventive guidelines.

These gaps in healthcare became deeply personal for Kanishka Rao, Carenostics’ Co-founder and COO, when his grandfather succumbed to previously undiagnosed CKD. Carenostics was founded in response to this tragedy.

Carenostics has developed a revolutionary AI platform that identifies undiagnosed and undertreated chronic disease patients and prompts clinicians within their current workflows to intervene earlier. The platform uniquely tailors AI models to each health system using existing, local electronic health record (EHR) data, and supports physicians across multiple diseases. The platform prioritizes patient data privacy, ensuring no information ever leaves the hospital system.

Carenostics has been deployed at leading health systems including Hackensack Meridian Health, the largest hospital system in the state of New Jersey with 18 hospitals and 6 million patient records, to support physicians across an array of chronic conditions.

At Hackensack, Carenostics’ platform has identified up to 3x more chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients and up to 20x more severe and uncontrolled asthma (SUA) patients, while maintaining a 5x lower false positive rate than current care practices. Carenostics has integrated AI insights into existing clinical workflows, demonstrating clinician activation rates up to 5x higher than industry benchmarks.

In addition to Hackensack, Carenostics’ partnerships include AstraZeneca, the VA, and a partnership and investment from Bayer G4A (Bayer’s only early-stage investment of 2022).

Kanishka and his father Dr Bharat Rao, Co-Founder and CEO of Carenostics, form the core of Carenostics’ veteran leadership team. The team includes more than five AI PhDs; leaders from Siemens, McKinsey, ConcertAI, Cerner, and Amazon; and the team that previously developed the world’s first AI and natural language processing (NLP) solution deployed within EHRs at 300+ health systems.

“Bharat and Kanishka have assembled a world-class leadership team of AI pioneers that were the first to deploy AI at scale on EHR data,” stated Latif Peracha, General Partner at M13. “The future of healthcare is proactive, not reactive, and Carenostics’s use of clinical AI holds the transformative power to overhaul our industry by tackling the costly and life-threatening delays in diagnosis and treatment.”

Dr Rao said, “We are setting the stage for a data-driven healthcare revolution, where every diagnostic and treatment decision is personalized using patient data and AI.” He holds a PhD in AI, and previously led Healthcare AI for Siemens and KPMG’s US Healthcare & Life Sciences AI & Analytics practice. Notable achievements include the deployment of 20+ FDA- and EU-approved healthcare AI products in 1,000+ global health systems, 150+ peer-reviewed publications, and 60+ AI patents.

Carenostics is also announcing the formation of its advisory board of industry leaders including Kurt Hilzinger, the Chairman of Humana; Dr John Glaser, former CEO of Siemens Health Services & CIO of Partners Healthcare; Aneesh Chopra, the former Chief Technology Officer of the United States; and Professor Srini Devadas, former associate department chair of Computer Science at MIT.

Carenostics will use its funding to accelerate expansion to many more health systems and chronic conditions.

“Our goal is to stop the story of my grandfather from repeating itself, ultimately improving healthcare outcomes and reducing costs,” said Kanishka Rao. Prior to Carenostics, Rao was a healthtech strategist and led McKinsey’s US Healthcare Startups practice.
MB Bureau