ScienceIO Launches with $8 Million Seed to Fix Healthcare’s Data Problem
Company emerges from stealth with new Chief Commercial Officer, successful deployments with healthcare partners and funding from leading tech and life sciences investors.
ScienceIO, the data science company transforming healthcare, emerged from stealth mode today with $8 million in seed funding from notable technology and life sciences investors. Led by CEO Will Manidis, Thiel Fellow and former managing partner of Dorm Room Fund, and President and COO Gaurav Kaushik, PhD, former lead of real world data products at Foundation Medicine, the company uses AI to help healthcare providers and payors organize large amounts of patient data, improve workflows and deliver better patient outcomes. Section 32, Sea Lane Ventures and prominent investors and entrepreneurs like Lachy Groom and Josh Buckley were among those who joined the funding round.
Read More: Interworks.Cloud Discusses With HPE About The Evolution Of Cloud Services In Recent Webinar
Despite massive amounts of biomedical data collected across the healthcare industry, the vast majority remains unutilized. ScienceIO’s AI-powered technology turns this unstructured data into usable information for professionals across the U.S. healthcare system without compromising patient privacy. By using contextual cues to identify and link biomedical terms to larger concepts, a single line of code can discern every medical procedure, condition, therapy, biomarker and more. Automating data processing and analysis in this way helps teams make faster decisions, build on top of healthcare data at unprecedented scale and create better patient outcomes.
“Healthcare providers and organizations want to make patient-first decisions, but somewhere along the line that mission got buried under vast amounts of fragmented and unused patient data,” said ScienceIO Co-Founder Will Manidis. “The industry’s data problem is too large for people to solve alone. That’s why we built ScienceIO, to help every healthcare professional, from technologists to executives, fully leverage data to build new solutions and improve patient outcomes” said Co-Founder Gaurav Kaushik.
Additional investors include Quiet Capital, Jeff Silverstein, Dorm Room Fund, Toba Capital, Swell Partners, Neal Khosla, Oliver Cameron, Jude Gomila, Packy McCormick, Turner Novak, Ankur Nagpal, Harry Hurst, Jack Altman, Austin Rief, Scott Belsky, Todd and Rahul’s Angel Fund and Earl Grey Capital. ScienceIO will use the funding to continue expanding its machine learning repositories and healthcare AI capabilities, upgrading its NLP capabilities and advancing programs with key healthcare systems. The company will also expand its engineering, product and commercial teams and is launching an API early access program for developers.
Read More: SalesTechStar Interview With Frank Jennings, SVP And Chief Sales Officer At Castlight Health
“Our healthcare system wrestles with ever-expanding volumes of data that often are inaccessible, unstructured and non-actionable for the user,” said Mike Pellini, MD, managing partner for venture firm Section 32. “ScienceIO’s machine learning platform directly addresses this challenge. By contextualizing information and weaving and interconnecting data across silos, ScienceIO can potentially deliver transformative change, both at the healthcare system level and ultimately, in individual health outcomes.”
“As an investor, I seek opportunities to support companies that push boundaries and disrupt the narrative about what’s possible in healthcare,” said investor and entrepreneur Dr. Ling Wong, PhD. “ScienceIO is one of those rare companies challenging the fundamental assumptions about how healthcare works, and how it can work harder for patients. I’m pleased to participate in this funding round and excited for what’s next.”
Additionally, ScienceIO has hired Chuck Smolky as its first chief commercial officer. A former vice president of both Optum and Aetna and senior vice president at Health Fidelity, Smolky has experience delivering multi-million dollar revenue increases for companies navigating a complex, evolving healthcare market. Smolky will lead ScienceIO’s commercial strategy, driving customer digital transformation enablement at the payor-provider interface.
“We are thrilled to bring Chuck Smolky onto the ScienceIO team,” said ScienceIO Co-Founder Gaurav Kaushik. “His decades of experience securing strategic business opportunities will be crucial to our growth, and his expert knowledge of the healthcare industry will be invaluable as we work to close the gap between massive amounts of healthcare data and life changing solutions.”
