AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--ClosedLoop.ai., healthcare’s data science platform, today announced a $34 million Series B financing. The investment round, led by Telstra Ventures with participation from Breyer Capital, Greycroft Ventures, .406 Ventures, and Healthfirst, positions ClosedLoop to extend its lead in delivering artificial intelligence (AI) solutions that tackle some of healthcare’s biggest challenges. Notable angel investors Adam Boehler (former director of CMMI & CEO of Rubicon Founders) and Sam Palmisano (former CEO of IBM) also participated in the round.
“As growth investors, we’re always on the lookout for world-class entrepreneurs with the vision and expertise to build and scale great products that disrupt massive markets. In healthcare, where service demands and costs are ever increasing, ClosedLoop is clearly something special," said Marcus Bartram, a founder and general partner at Telstra Ventures. "Andrew, Dave, and the great team they’ve assembled have demonstrated that AI and ML can deliver substantial improvements in all areas of healthcare, from patient care to operational decisions, while saving on costs, and we’re excited to help them scale.”
Powering AI-Enabled Healthcare
Artificial intelligence has hundreds of applications in healthcare and AI-enabled healthcare organizations are fast becoming the foundation of the health system. AI is being harnessed across a growing range of uses, including to prioritize population health outreach, improve clinical documentation and coding, optimize operations and prior authorizations, and improve retention. "The future of healthcare is going to require AI-based tools. ClosedLoop has a powerful platform for building AI-based healthcare solutions and I believe is positioned to be a leading player in creating AI-enabled healthcare,” said Jim Breyer, founder and CEO of Breyer Capital.
ClosedLoop data science platform is purpose-built specifically for healthcare. It combines an intuitive end-to-end machine learning platform with a comprehensive library of healthcare-specific ML features and model templates. The platform integrates several data science workflows (data onboarding and normalization, automated feature engineering, autoML, and MLOps) and includes capabilities that facilitate experimentation, collaboration, oversight, and management.
The platform’s flexibility allows customers to harness AI-based solutions regardless of their in-house data science and machine learning capabilities. It also provides the industry’s largest catalog of healthcare machine learning model templates and prebuilt clinical features. The “Healthcare ML Content Catalog” allows organizations, including those without a data science team, to create and deploy highly customized and explainable AI-based solutions quickly and easily.
Building Physician Trust Through Explainable AI
ClosedLoop’s AI-based solutions - showcased in its recent win of the historic $1.6M CMS AI Health Outcomes Challenge - predict and explain an incredibly wide range of outcomes and avoidable adverse events, are trusted by physicians, and are increasingly used when making decisions about patient care. ClosedLoop’s explainable AI reimagines the concept of patient risk profiling by shifting away from legacy risk “scores” to comprehensive, personalized forecasts delivered directly into clinical workflows. Each forecast harnesses patient-specific data and surfaces key variables that explain precisely what risks a patient faces and why. It integrates relevant clinical details and links to specific interventions that clinical teams use to prevent adverse events, improve outcomes, and reduce unnecessary costs.
“AI’s success in healthcare has taken longer than other industries because the complexity of healthcare’s issues outweigh those of other applications,” said Sam Palmisano, former CEO of IBM and ClosedLoop investor. “In healthcare, accuracy isn’t enough. Predictions must also show they are unbiased, fair, and explainable.” To be valuable, predictions need to be acted on. ClosedLoop integrates its results into clinical workflows as part of a comprehensive patient health forecast, where they become powerful tools for decision making and patient-physician communication.
Targeting a National Imperative
Unnecessary healthcare spending is squarely in ClosedLoop’s crosshairs. Today, U.S. healthcare commands a level of spending that is unsustainable at $4 trillion1, with a staggering 25%2 of it wasted. “Addressing this is a national imperative; it’s becoming a crisis of access, affordability, and equity" said Adam Boehler, former Director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation and CEO of Rubicon Founders, "When the right incentives are paired with AI solutions to predict adverse health events, there is the potential to greatly improve the lives of Americans everywhere.”
The push toward value based care is significant. In 2018, 36% of spending was via alternative payment models3 and by 2025, CMS has targeted 100% of Medicare and 50% of Commercial and Medicaid spending.4 AI will help providers succeed under these models because it gives them the ability to predict patient-specific outcomes so they can adjust patient care, improve outcomes, and reduce costs. Several of today’s value-based leaders, including Palm Beach ACO, Medical Home Network, and Southwestern Health Resources, chose ClosedLoop because of their ability to help achieve better outcomes for their patients.
Momentum Continues to Build
Since its Series A funding less than two years ago, ClosedLoop has continued to accelerate its lead in delivering AI-based solutions for healthcare organizations:
- Won the historic healthcare AI contest: $1.6M CMS AI Health Outcomes Challenge;
- Named top performer in KLAS Healthcare AI 2020 report;
- Helped HCOs impact 10M+ lives with its open source COVID-19 index, published in Journal of Medical AI;
- Saw the impact and scope of work with Oak Street Health published in NEJM Catalyst;
- Quintupled its revenue, adding several national healthcare leaders and partners, including Palm Beach ACO and Booz Allen Hamilton.
ClosedLoop’s Mission
ClosedLoop is on a mission to make every decision about the ‘best next action’ for a patient be data-driven and AI-enabled. “We need healthcare to be as good at using data to improve patient outcomes as the social networks are at getting us to click ads,” said ClosedLoop Co-founder and CEO Andrew Eye. “We’re not going to stop until AI improves every decision, every day, for every patient.”
About ClosedLoop
ClosedLoop.ai is healthcare’s data science platform. We make it easy for healthcare organizations to use AI to improve outcomes and reduce costs. Purpose-built and dedicated to healthcare, ClosedLoop combines an intuitive end-to-end machine learning platform with a comprehensive library of healthcare-specific features and model templates. Customers use ClosedLoop’s Explainable AI to drive clinical excellence, operational efficiency, value-based contracts, and enhanced revenue. Winner of the CMS AI Health Outcomes Challenge and named KLAS Healthcare AI Top Performer for 2020, ClosedLoop is headquartered in Austin, Texas. For more information, visit https://closedloop.ai/.
About Telstra Ventures
Telstra Ventures identifies what’s next, right now. Telstra Ventures serves extraordinary leaders and helps them achieve their dreams. In our first nine years, 70+ investments have generated 30 liquidity events including Auth0, BigCommerce, Box, Cloopen, CrowdStrike, DocuSign, Rancher, Skillz, Snap, and Whispir. To date, our Revenue Bearing RelationshipsTM have driven >US$350 million in revenue, extending the reach of our portfolio companies across Australia and Asia. In 2018, Telstra Ventures became an independent firm backed by LPs including HarbourVest, the ~US$70B AUM private equity investment platform and Telstra, the ~US$30B market capitalization communications services company, headquartered in Australia. To see our full portfolio and learn more, visit telstraventures.com.
References
1 CMS. “NHE Fact Sheet | CMS.” Cms.gov, 2019, www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/NationalHealthExpendData/NHE-Fact-Sheet. Accessed 10 Aug. 2021.
2 Shrank, William H., et al. “Waste in the US Health Care System.” JAMA, vol. 322, no. 15, 15 Oct. 2019, p. 1501, jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2752664, 10.1001/jama.2019.13978.
3 HCP-LAN. Roadmap for Driving High Performance in Alternative Payment Models - Health Care Payment Learning & Action Network. https://hcp-lan.org/apm-roadmap/. Published December 18, 2019.
4 Muhlestein D, Bleser W, Saunders R, Richards R, Singletary E, McClellan M. Spread of ACOs and Value-Based Payment Models in 2019: Gauging the Impact of Pathways to Success | Health Affairs. Healthaffairs.org. October 2019.
5 Shrank, William H, et al. “Health Costs and Financing: Challenges and Strategies for a New Administration.” Health Affairs, vol. 40, no. 2, 2021, pp. 235–242, doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2020.01560, 10.1377/hlthaff.2020.01560.
