By Hippocratic AI, a startup co-founded by Munjal Shah in 2023, has recently closed a $53 million Series A funding round. This brings the company’s total funding to $120 million and values it at an impressive $500 million. The round was led by Premji Invest and General Catalyst, with participation from SV Angel, Memorial Hermann Health System, and existing investors such as Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) Bio + Health, Cincinnati Children’s, WellSpan Health, and Universal Health Services.
Munjal Shah’s vision for Hippocratic AI is to pioneer the development of artificial intelligence agents that can revolutionize healthcare. The company’s unique approach involves creating a ‘constellation’ of large language models (LLMs) that harness the power of generative AI. These models are designed to provide a range of services, from patient navigation to chronic care nursing and dietitian advice, thereby addressing the global shortage of healthcare professionals. This innovative strategy sets Hippocratic AI apart from its competitors and holds the potential to make medical care more accessible to a larger number of patients than would be possible with human workers alone.
The company’s technology is built upon its Polaris architecture, a multiagent LLM constellation optimized for real-time healthcare conversation. This system combines a primary generative AI conversational agent with numerous specialist support agents; each fine-tuned for specific medical tasks. The AI agents are trained using evidence-based research, simulated conversations, and input from U.S.-licensed nurses and patient actors. This results in empathetic and knowledgeable AI that can engage in natural and supportive dialogue with patients.
In March 2023, Munjal Shah announced a partnership with chipmaker Nvidia to reduce latency for real-time patient interactions. He stated, “Nvidia’s technology stack is critical to achieving the conversational speed and fluidity necessary for patients to naturally build an emotional connection with Hippocratic’s Generative AI healthcare agents.”
Hippocratic AI’s internal research has yielded promising results, with its AI agents demonstrating superior performance compared to human medical professionals and other LLMs in several nondiagnostic tasks. The company’s AI delivered correct medical advice 96.79% of the time, surpassing the 81.16% accuracy rate of human nurses. Additionally, Hippocratic AI’s constellation outperformed industry giants like Google’s Llama 2 70B Chat and OpenAI’s GPT-4 in recognizing the impact of medications on lab tests, identifying condition-specific disallowed over-the-counter drugs, and detecting toxic OTC dosages.
Despite the impressive performance of Hippocratic AI’s AI agents, Munjal Shah and the company remain steadfast in their commitment to a cautious and safety-focused approach to integrating AI into healthcare. This commitment is demonstrated through a rigorous multiphase safety testing protocol, which involves engaging with a broad network of healthcare systems and professionals to validate the AI agents. The testing process, which has seen participation from over 1,100 U.S.-licensed nurses and more than 130 U.S.-licensed physicians, covers various dimensions, including medical safety, conversational appropriateness, and empathy. This thorough testing and validation process underscores Hippocratic AI’s dedication to ensuring the safety and quality of its AI agents, further enhancing its credibility in the healthcare AI industry.
As Munjal Shah and Hippocratic AI continue to develop their technology and collaborate with healthcare systems and professionals, the company’s focus on safety, strategic partnerships, and precise applications of generative AI in healthcare positions it to play a significant role in shaping the future of medical innovation. With the latest funding round valuing the company at $500 million, Munjal Shah’s Hippocratic AI is poised to revolutionize healthcare by leveraging the power of generative AI to support healthcare professionals and improve patient care.
