Healthleap raises $38 million to help hospitals catch missed conditions
A patient’s medical records may contain clues that something else is wrong, but those clues can be easy to miss when hospital staff are managing several patients at once. Healthleap wants to help hospitals pick up those signs using AI.
Healthleap
A patient’s medical records may contain clues that something else is wrong, but those clues can be easy to miss when hospital staff are managing several patients at once. Healthleap wants to help hospitals pick up those signs using AI.
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A patient’s medical records may contain clues that something else is wrong, but those clues can be easy to miss when hospital staff are managing several patients at once. Healthleap wants to help hospitals pick up those signs using AI. The startup, founded by South African siblings Josiah and Jemima Meyer, has raised $38 million across seed and Series A funding rounds. It started out helping dietitians identify patients at risk of malnutrition and is now looking to apply its software to other medical conditions.
The idea is to use information hospitals already collect, rather than ask medical staff to work through another separate system.
Looking for what might have been missed
“Building software that can analyse patient records is one part of the job. Getting hospitals to adopt it is another.”
Healthleap's software connects to a hospital's electronic medical records. It reviews blood test results, medication records, vital signs and doctors' notes, then flags patients who may need further attention. A patient might have lost weight or reported a poor appetite, for example. When those details appear alongside other clinical information, they could point to malnutrition that has not yet been addressed.
The software alerts medical staff, who decide whether further assessment or treatment is needed. It does not make the diagnosis itself. Healthleap now wants to extend the technology beyond malnutrition to conditions such as heart failure, pressure ulcers and infections acquired in hospital.
The question is whether hospitals get results
Healthleap says one hospital using its software identified and treated 39% more cases of malnutrition, generating an additional $11 million in revenue. That is a company reported result, and it does not tell us whether other hospitals would see the same outcome. The financial impact will depend on how the software is used, the hospital's existing systems and how the additional revenue is calculated.
Hospitals will also need to weigh the cost of implementation against the benefits. Software that flags too many cases can leave doctors and nurses with more alerts to check. If the alerts do not lead to useful action, the hospital may struggle to justify the expense. Healthleap charges according to a hospital's licensed bed count and also offers outcome-based pricing. That puts the focus on whether the product delivers enough value for customers to keep paying for it.
More conditions, more hospitals
The $38 million will help Healthleap expand its teams and develop its software for additional conditions. Moving into more hospitals, however, means dealing with different record systems, clinical routines and ways of working. The company will need to show that its software can operate reliably across those settings, not just in the hospitals where it has already been used.
For healthcare AI businesses, that is where the commercial challenge lies. Building software that can analyse patient records is one part of the job. Getting hospitals to adopt it, helping staff use it and demonstrating that it improves care are separate tasks. Healthleap has raised the money to pursue that market. Its next challenge is to show that the results can hold up as the business grows.
