When the first wave of coronavirus cases began to surge more than a year ago, healthcare systems around the world had to scramble to cope with the onslaught of new patients. Among other things, this meant canceling non-emergency and elective surgeries to free up personnel and resources.
Now, as we see signs of hope that the pandemic could be tailing off in the U.S., hospitals are having to work through a massive backlog of these delayed surgeries, posing a pretty substantial problem for hospitals.
“Hospitals have been especially hard hit by the pandemic. From March to July of 2020 alone, hospitals lost over $200 billion, and it’s estimated that it could take years to work through the surgical backlog,” Boston entrepreneur Dennis Kogan told Built In via email. “Operating rooms always need to perform as effectively and efficiently as possible, but this is especially true now to make up for the surgical backlog caused by COVID-19 and this resulting delays in elective surgery, and hospitals are beginning to realize this.”
Kogan’s startup Caresyntax is trying to bring some efficiency to this process. The company announced Wednesday it closed on a $100 million Series C round, capping off a year of significant growth.
Founded in 2016, Caresyntax uses its proprietary software and AI to continuously analyze large volumes of real-world data (video, audio, images, clinical), providing actionable insights surgeons can use to improve their care and better train the next generation of doctors. These insights also help hospital administrators manage resources more efficiently, medical device companies advance their products, and insurance companies devise more tailored policies.
In a nutshell, says Kogan, it makes surgery “smarter and safer.”
“While data analytics has consumed nearly every aspect of our lives, from business to social media to sports, the operating room stands as one of the lone places with troves of data yet to be discovered,” Kogan said. “It’s become abundantly clear that data collection and analytics are paramount to success in the OR. However, data and technology alone do not make surgery smarter and safer, but having surgeons who understand and know how to effectively use it certainly does. Caresyntax makes this possible.”
This data-first approach has helped hospitals efficiently work through their surgical backlogs by giving them a granular understanding of their activities week by week, which helps them better tailor their efforts. As a result, Caresyntax says it saw 250 percent growth in new contract value in 2020, as more hospitals around the world adopted its technology.
To keep up the momentum, the company says it plans to use this fresh funding to accelerate its expansion in key markets, further its research and development efforts in AI analytics, and expand its employee base. The round was led by PFM Health Sciences, with participation from Optum Ventures, Intel Capital and others.
