Healthcare
See the 17-slide presentation an AI startup used to raise $15 million to improve post-hospital care
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- Patients typically need to follow a care plan after they leave the hospital.
- But often, life gets in the way and that can cause readmissions, which drive up costs for insurers.
- Laguna Health raised $15 million to make it easier for patients to stick to their care plans.
Proper self-care at home is an important part of getting better when patients leave the hospital.
But life can get in the way, which can make it difficult to get the rest and treatment people need to recover. Sometimes, patient don’t stick to their care plans, due to factors like conflicting responsibilities and financial limitations.
Yoni Shtein, the CEO of AI-powered healthcare startup Laguna Health, said that his company is focused on identifying the barriers to proper care that patients face once they leave the hospital. His goal is to make it easier for them to stick to their post-hospitalization care plans, and avoid more medical costs down the line.
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Laguna uses AI and natural language processing to analyze conversations between care managers at insurance companies and patients to figure out what might be preventing patients from sticking to their care plans. It then modifies the plan to address these issues. Shtein declined to disclose which insurers the company works with today.
The company raised a $15 million Series A round in May led by SemperVirens and HC9 Ventures.
Laguna Health removed financial details from the pitch deck it used to raise its Series A round before sharing the presentation with Insider.
This article was updated on June 20 to replace slide 10 and slide 14 with newer versions provided by the company.
Founded in 2020, Laguna Health provides an AI-powered platform that helps patients with care once they leave the hospital.
Its executive team hails from companies like Microsoft and Amazon.
Laguna Health’s CEO said that in the same way Google Maps helped change navigation, Laguna’s wants to improve how patients think about their self care once they’re discharged.
While options like hospices and home-care providers exist today, Laguna says that around 65% of patients who leave hospitals recover at home.
This creates a need for a tool that helps people stick to their care plans — and ultimately avoid more medical costs.
Limited access to care and other responsibilities could get in the way of sticking to self-care once at home.
Taking individual life circumstances into creating care plans can help patients get better and avoid more medical costs, Laguna Health says.
Lack of proper self-care at home means substantial costs for insurers.
Laguna uses an AI-powered platform to identify issues in real time and adjust patients’ care plans.
In the same way that Google Maps adjusts your route based on traffic and road conditions, Laguna says its platform adjusts its plan based on various personal factors that come up in real-time.
Conversations between insurer care managers and patients are analyzed by Laguna and the platform then raises red flags that may affect patients.
That information is then fed into a system that gives both managers and patients access to potential solutions.
Often, a patient is sent home after their procedure with a stack of papers designed to help them recover. But conflicting priorities could get in the way of adhering to the plan and ultimately lead to readmission.
Laguna says that its platform helps patients avoid a worst-case scenario by identifying issues that come up in real time and modifying the plan to fit their individual situation.
In an alternative scenario, where an ER visit is inevitable, the platform could help patients get the treatment they need sooner.
Laguna says that in a trial the company conducted, using the platform helped lower care costs by about half compared to a control group.
The money raised in the Series A round will go toward investing in Laguna’s platform and expanding its sales and marketing team, Shtein said.