Pharos, a Y Combinator-supported startup, has recently received $5 million in seed funding from Felicis Ventures, General Catalyst, and Moxxie Ventures. With this funding, Pharos will move quickly on its goal of automating the often-stressful process of reporting hospital quality to doctors through AI. Pharos’ technology helps save time and resources by eliminating mandatory quality reports from clinical registries for healthcare personnel.
Addressing an Under-Recognized Challenge in Healthcare
Quality reporting also helps hospitals adhere to clinical registries such as those operated by the Centers for Medicare & amp; Medicaid Services (CMS) and the American College of Surgeons. These reports enable us to assess the outcome of patients and determine where healthcare delivery needs to be improved, particularly in regards to infection control and post-operative care. But the reporting is extremely time-consuming: nurses and administrators manually pull data from each patient’s EMR. Sometimes it takes hours to get one report done.
Identifying this pain point, Pharos is stepping up to streamline the reporting process. Its AI-powered platform parses pertinent information from structured EMR data and generates the requisite registration forms by default. This technology also cuts the time required for administrative tasks, and enables clinical staff to spend more time with patients, thereby improving the efficiency of hospitals.
A Founding Team with Deep Healthcare Insight
Pharos is led by Felix Brann and Matthew Jones, two healthcare technology veterans who started their careers at Vital, an emergency room software developer. As they saw the possibilities for AI to improve medical records, they collaborated with Alex Clarke, a physician and artificial intelligence PhD student at Imperial College London. Clarke’s background lends the company a clinical dimension, and allows them to craft a solution that addresses the needs of clinicians.
The Investment and Future Growth
Pharos’ $5 million seed round represents a tremendous endorsement from investors who recognize the startup’s vision of applying targeted AI to a needy area of healthcare. Ryan Isono, a partner at Felicis Ventures, said that Pharos’ solution solves an important, time-consuming task that has not yet been innovated. The investment will enable Pharos to scale its team, grow its platform, and partner with hospitals to make its solution more widely available.
According to Brann, Pharos’ co-founder, its “quality reporting” approach and the fact that the team has expertise in healthcare and AI is what differentiates the company from others. “We have five years of selling and deploying into hospitals and the best AI talent,” he said, adding that Pharos’ strategy could help make it a leader in this niche area of medical technology.
A New Era for Hospital Quality Reporting
When Pharos is implemented in large enough quantities, it could revolutionize the way hospitals approach quality reporting. By automating this time-consuming process, Pharos could make it significantly easier for healthcare professionals to distribute resources. In an industry where time is almost always tied to patient outcomes, Pharos’ solution will have an enormous impact on the quality and efficiency of healthcare.
This disruptive application of AI is part of the broader movement in healthcare to streamline and enhance administrative efficiency. Pharos is on the rise and it’s already leading the way in using AI to address a neglected but critical aspect of healthcare.
