Curai Health, a virtual care company using AI to make high-touch, lower-cost primary care available to everyone, today announced $27.5 million in Series B funding led by Morningside Ventures. The round, which was joined by existing investors General Catalyst and Khosla Ventures, brings its total funding to approximately $57 million.
Curai Health provides chat-based primary care that centers around patients, is built for clinicians and can slash the costs of care. Blending the best in high-touch clinical care, sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI) and the most robust clinical data sources, Curai Health is a learning healthcare system that creates a sustainable and scalable primary care model that can meet the demands of an exploding global population.
Previously available only direct-to-consumer, Curai Health also announced today that it will now support enterprise partnerships, including payers, employers and public-sector organizations. Curai Health aims to partner with enterprises that want an affordable primary care option for everyone in their organization, especially those with people who sometimes struggle with the cost of care, like hourly employees, gig workers and those with high-deductible health plans.
Curai Health is led by some of the best minds in healthcare, AI, customer experience and product development. The team has collectively published or submitted more than 10 research papers about using advanced technology to support and amplify physicians with AI, including Covid-19 differential diagnosis via online assessments. To date, more than 350,000 patient visits have occurred on the Curai Health platform, with its AI achieving nearly a 90-percent diagnoses accuracy rate.
"Primary care should be just that -- primary -- to every single person, but without drastic innovation, the current system will only create more scarcity, higher costs and a sicker population," said Neal Khosla, co-founder and CEO of Curai Health. "AI has the power to scale the care provided by a finite number of physicians so that it can meet the demands of a global population. We've dedicated countless hours to in-depth clinical and technical R&D to ensure our system gets smarter, more efficient and increasingly cost-effective after every patient encounter. We aren't interested in the 10- to 20-percent cost savings that most virtual care platforms aspire to deliver. We're working toward 10 and, eventually 100x, care-delivery cost reductions."
Even though primary care is considered critical to maintaining a healthy population and controlling costs, access remains a huge issue. In the U.S. alone, there will be a shortage of nearly 122,000 physicians by 2032, and the cost per visit has steadily risen. Avoidable emergency visits account for almost $8.3 billion annually, and a backward focus on treating, versus preventing, chronic conditions results in approximately 90 percent of the U.S.' annual $3.5 trillion health expenditures going to chronic condition management. The Covid-19 pandemic has only exacerbated primary care challenges by creating an expected $15 billion shortfall for primary care practices.
"Curai Health's technological prowess, bold vision and incredible leadership are what make for a good investment. This is an investment with potential for global impact, giving access to potentially life-saving care," said Gerald Chan, Co-Founder of Morningside Group. "As an investor, I can't think of a better proposition: make everyone, everywhere healthier."
Where available, Curai Health is accessible to patients 24/7, supporting them with as many questions and follow ups as needed. Patient care teams are led by U.S. licensed physicians and medically trained Clinical Associates, who are both supported by the AI.
The AI works as part of the care team, sitting alongside providers, making suggestions and automating more low-value tasks. It also will listen and learn from each patient encounter, ensuring it gains a greater understanding of medical language, symptomatology and condition diagnosis - while also delivering increasingly high-quality patient care.
Currently available in California, Curai Health will use the funding to continue innovating its technology and expand its services and footprint more broadly. As part of today's deal, Stephen Bruso from Morningside Ventures will join its board.
ABOUT CURAI HEALTH
Curai Health is a virtual primary care provider on a mission to make the most-affordable, highest-quality primary care accessible to everyone on the planet, whenever they want it. Founded by Neal Khosla and Xavier Amatriain in 2017, Curai Health offers chat-based primary care that combines clinicians with the industry's most advanced AI to create a learning healthcare system that increasingly slashes the cost of delivering high-quality care. Headquartered in Palo Alto, Curai Health is available directly to consumers or through enterprise partnerships. For more information, visit www.curaihealth.com.
