Ada Health Raises $47M to Develop an AI-Powered Chatbot
German digital health startup Ada Health has now raised $47 million in the latest funding round led by Access Industries, Len Blavatnik’s Global Investment Group; William Tunstall-Pedoe, the AI entrepreneur who develops Evi app, the predecessor of Amazon Alexa, also joins the round.
The Berlin-based AI-powered health app maker had officially launched its app back in April after a soft launch in late 2016 and six years of research and development. It’s one of a handful of companies using artificial intelligence and natural language processing. It asks relevant, personalized questions and suggests possible causes for users’ symptoms.
Chatbots are such cost savers because they are able to not only give patients information that can save them a costly trip to the doctor, while also saving the provider time and money by asking preliminary questions that allow them to get to the heart of the problem quicker.
“We’ve really taken a somewhat unusual approach. We have a team of now roughly 100 people, we’ve been working on the technology, on the medical knowledge base, on the reasoning engine, the AI, for a long time because, while I’m a big believer in general in minimum viable product and iterating, I think in healthcare it’s different,
” Daniel Nathrath, CEO, and co-founder of Ada Health, explained to me.After having first been available for specialists, and then general practitioners, Ada finally feels like the product is good enough to be available for patients.
“Around nine out of 10 people Google themselves before themselves, they go to the doctor. I think that pretty clearly shows a certain need. Often the first question they would ask a doctor is if they need a doctor. We are at the start of the patient’s journey through the healthcare system and we can help people find out what’s wrong with them and we can help them understand and manage their health better,” said Nathrath.
Using Ada, he tells, “is like a WhatsApp chat with a trusted doctor,” as it is able to have a conversation with a patient about their symptoms and potential treatments. Ada uses AI to calculate questions based all of the bits of information it receives.
At the end of the chat, when Ada has sufficient information, it will then give the user suggestions on what might be causing their health problems, showing them, based on probability, the most likely options of what it might be, along with more explanation on which symptoms indicate which problem they may have. The app will also make suggestions on what steps to take next, whether that be to buy over the counter medicine, go see a doctor or go to the emergency room, all depending on the severity of the problem.
“Ada does two things: it triages you, which means it gives you a good idea of what to do next, but it also gives you diagnostic suggestions. We don’t call it a diagnosis because, legally, only a licensed doctor is allowed to make a diagnosis, but it’s diagnostic suggestions,” Nathrath explained.
“We assume the outcomes with a very high probability. If it’s just a common cold, Ada then logically wouldn’t suggest you go to the emergency room. It would say that if things get worse to consult a doctor, but, based on the information you provided, nine out of 10 people who reported the same symptoms actually just have a common cold and here are some options for what you could be doing.”
Ada has already begun partnering with providers in the United Kingdom so that it can help patients go even further on their healthcare journey, consulting with their doctor, whether that means setting up a telemedicine session or a house call.
Ada plans to offer something similar in the United States in the next few months and, to make that happen, it is spending part of this new funding on opening its first office in the United States.
Guillaume d’Hauteville, Vice Chairman, Access Industries said: “They’ve developed a unique and highly effective health management solution driven by a team with deep medical and AI expertise and years of technology development.”
