Medication is among the most extremely regulated fields on the earth, and for good motive — the distinction between doing a course of accurately and incorrectly can typically be that of life or demise.
However consider the many individuals concerned in offering care at hospitals: it’s not simply docs and nurses, but in addition your complete medical assist employees who deal with affected person information, tools, and eliminate medical waste. All of them should be following the principles and greatest practices to make sure the hospital stays a secure and wholesome place to work, administer, and obtain care. But every job obligation and division has its personal listing of steerage and greatest practices to observe — typically siloed away in numerous functions like SharePoint, SmartVault, Docuware or others.
For New York Metropolis AI startup C8 Well being, that disconnect isn’t simply an inconvenience — it’s a $345 billion drawback.
“Once I started working towards drugs, I used to be shocked by how laborious it was to entry the data I wanted,” stated Dr. Ido Zamberg, an anesthesiologist and C8’s Chief Medical Officer, in a current video name interview with VentureBeat. “In a area so knowledge-intensive, it felt absurd to have to go looking throughout 10 or 15 totally different methods simply to search out a solution.”
Now, the New York-based startup that originally centered on offering anesthesiologists with data to place folks beneath is betting that its AI-powered chatbot and data platform, constructed to deliver construction and immediacy to medical greatest practices, can remedy it.
“Our platform ensures data is at all times accessible — whether or not on cellular, desktop, or throughout the Digital Medical Data (EMR) — so clinicians don’t waste time searching throughout 20 methods,” stated CEO and co-founder Galia Rosen Schwarz in the identical interview.
Backed by a recent $12 million Collection A spherical led by Team8, with 10D and Vertex Ventures additionally taking part, the corporate plans to scale up deployments and broaden its attain throughout the U.S. healthcare system.
Funding to develop
The newly introduced funding brings C8 Well being’s whole raised to $18 million.
Based on Rosen Schwarz, the capital will go towards increasing the group, refining the product, and assembly the rising demand amongst hospital methods looking for a greater approach to ship on their very own requirements of care.
Based in 2022, the corporate is concentrated squarely on probably the most persistent challenges in healthcare: making certain that evidence-based greatest practices truly make it into the palms of these delivering care — no matter whether or not they’re on evening shift, rotating in from one other facility, or simply beginning their residency.
“In lots of hospitals, protocols are nonetheless printed out and taped to the partitions,” stated Zamberg. “Stakeholders know nobody has time to dig by way of software program to search out them. It’s that rudimentary.”
Zamberg, a educated doctor and former software program engineer, constructed the primary model of C8 Well being as a workaround to this problem in his personal division. However he and the corporate’s different management noticed the issue went far past the anesthesiology division.
As Rosen Schwarz put it: “I interviewed over 100 well being professionals within the U.S. and Switzerland, and it turned clear how large this drawback was — the affect on each suppliers and sufferers was simple.”
Little shock, then C8’s utility shortly unfold, first to 13,000 staff throughout 5 hospitals in Switzerland, after which on to greater than 100 hospitals throughout the U.S., with purchasers together with Dartmouth Well being, Mount Sinai, MetroHealth, and the College of Texas Medical Department.
A Crimson Panda avatar supplies ideas with out prompting
C8 Well being’s platform goals to centralize every bit of medical steerage—insurance policies, protocols, tips, academic supplies—and make it immediately accessible in a format tailor-made to the clinician’s function, division, and even every day schedule.
The system is out there by way of cellular, desktop, and straight inside EMRs, permitting hospital employees to have interaction with it within the stream of their work. A pleasant crimson panda avatar serves up the data from the group’s personal siloed databases, full with citations to the underlying data sources, information, and paperwork.
The system doesn’t simply look forward to customers to question. Primarily based on behavioral patterns, schedule information, and institutional context, it might probably proactively floor related protocols earlier than a scheduled process, or ship focused high quality reminders if a person’s efficiency metrics are slipping.
“We don’t simply let customers search,” Rosen Schwartz defined. “We proactively push the suitable content material to the suitable individual, on the proper time—based mostly on their function, conduct, and what others like them are doing.”
Early affect earns rave critiques
In every deployment, the corporate reviews clinician adoption charges above 90% inside three to 6 months—a notable achievement in a sector the place new software program instruments typically wrestle to achieve traction.
At MetroHealth, Dr. Luis Tollinche, Chair of Anesthesiology, described the state of affairs earlier than C8 as a multitude of six totally different protocol places—e-mail threads, shared drives, and coverage databases amongst them.
“We had protocols scattered throughout six totally different places—emails, shared drives, coverage databases, even cognitive aids within the EHR,” he wrote in a quote supplied to VentureBeat by C8. “When clinicians wanted steerage, they typically couldn’t keep in mind the place to search out it, or just gave up attempting. We wanted a single, dependable supply that made our greatest practices immediately accessible on the level of care.”
After deployment, over 750 data gadgets have been centralized, every day engagement hit 3.49 views per person, and practically 90% of that exercise got here from cellular gadgets.
Actual-time suggestions and efficiency monitoring
Certainly one of C8’s defining options is its capability to combine efficiency information into the identical expertise clinicians use to entry data.
Via dashboards and metrics tied to particular procedures, customers can see how their efficiency stacks up towards division targets—and obtain steerage to assist enhance it.
“A clinician can see tomorrow’s circumstances, who they’re working with, the related greatest practices, their high quality efficiency, and the right way to enhance—multi functional interface,” Zamberg stated.
Dr. Brian Masel, Chief of Pediatric Anesthesiology at UTMB, famous that this type of real-time, individualized suggestions may shift how hospitals strategy high quality enchancment.
As a substitute of counting on retrospective administrative reviews, suppliers can now interact with their very own efficiency information within the second, with clear suggestions on the right way to enhance.
Constructed to deal with healthcare’s distinctive complexities
In contrast to generic enterprise software program, C8 was constructed particularly for the fragmented and time-sensitive atmosphere of recent healthcare. The platform’s backend makes use of general-purpose LLMs, however all information ingestion, cleansing, structuring, and formatting is proprietary—designed to make medical data simple to entry, reliable, and related.
“Our assistant distinguishes between a coverage, a protocol, academic materials, or a nationwide guideline,” stated Zamberg. “It’s tailor-made to every person’s function, coaching stage, and division.”
Rosen Schwarz additionally emphasised the breadth and suppleness of the platform: “We constructed proprietary methods to ingest and construction any sort of content material—PDFs, movies, scanned docs—so clinicians can get clear, actionable solutions with out data overload.”
Progress and system integration
With the brand new funding, C8 plans to deepen its relationships inside current hospital purchasers and develop to broader system-level deployments.
Dartmouth Well being, for instance, is already utilizing the platform to bridge greatest practices throughout its predominant campus and satellite tv for pc places.
Whereas the corporate stays centered on hospitals for now, Rosen Schwarz says they see clear alternatives to increase the platform into outpatient and pressing care settings, the place fragmented entry to data stays a big barrier to constant care supply.
“Clinicians want data immediately, typically at 3 a.m. within the OR,” she stated. “They don’t have time to marvel which app or drive might need the reply—that delay can result in errors.”
Sarit Firon, Managing Associate at lead investor Team8, stated the platform’s traction with clinicians is an indication that C8 is fixing an actual ache level. In her view, the corporate is well-positioned to turn into a foundational layer in how care high quality is managed and improved.
As medical workflows turn into extra advanced and staffing extra fluid, C8 Well being is betting that higher entry to institutional data isn’t simply useful—it’s important.
