Mednition Secures $10M Series A Funding to Expand KATE, an AI-Powered Clinical Decision Support System Outperforming Traditional EHRs

VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) has learned that on September 25, 2019, Mednition, a manufacturer of machine learning solutions for the healthcare sector, announced the completion of its $10 million Series A financing round. The round was led by Concord Health Partners, a private equity firm specializing in healthcare, which raised the investment capital through the American Hospital Association Innovation Fund.

As Mednition further expands the commercial deployment of its KATE system, this round of financing will be used to expand the company’s customer service team.

Mednition, headquartered in Burlingame, California, was founded in 2014 with the aim of helping clinicians improve the quality of care. Initially launching in emergency departments, Mednition provides the KATE system—a machine learning-based clinical decision support solution—to emergency nurses. The system is currently in use at Adventist Health White Memorial in Los Angeles.

“We have first-hand evidence that machine learning is improving healthcare delivery and saving lives,” said Mara Bryant, Director of Operations at Adventist Health White Memorial, in a statement. “Compared with existing EHR systems, the implementation of the KATE system has led to improvements in clinical accuracy, patient safety, and operational efficiency. Our nurses view KATE as a novel machine-learning-enabled tool—akin to an expert consultant—that helps clinicians enhance accuracy and ensure patients receive effective care at the right time. Meanwhile, the system helps mitigate the chaos associated with triage.”

The KATE system was officially deployed in designated hospitals in December 2018. Practice has demonstrated that the system increases triage accuracy for every emergency department patient by 26.9%, with triage accuracy for certain patients improving by up to 93.2%. This research finding is currently under review and is accessible on the Mednition official website.

The KATE system is set to make its public debut at Emergency Nursing 2019, an industry conference for emergency nursing, which will be held from September 29 to October 2 at the Austin Convention Center.

James Olsen, Founder and Managing Partner of Concord Health Partners, stated in a press release: “Concord Health Partners is dedicated to identifying and supporting innovative solutions for healthcare enterprises that reduce costs, enhance safety, and expand access to high-quality medical services. Mednition has currently met our criteria. The company has leveraged machine learning to advance healthcare delivery. We are equally optimistic about its contributions to improving care efficiency for emergency physicians and patients.”

Mednition, founded by Steven Reilly in 2014, is currently providing KATE, a machine learning-based clinical decision support solution, to emergency nurses. The system is currently in use at Adventist Health White Memorial (AHWM) in Los Angeles. Reportedly, more than 70 emergency nurses at AHWM collaborate with the KATE system to triage an average of 160 patients per day. This real-time machine learning solution integrates with the existing triage workflows of the Electronic Health Record (EHR) system. Triage nurses regularly contribute their expertise to KATE’s dataset, thereby enhancing the system’s intelligence.

Concord Health Partners is an investment firm focused on the healthcare sector. The companies it targets typically share the following characteristics: expanding access to healthcare services by reducing costs and improving quality, and enhancing the value of healthcare through innovation in products, services, technologies, and solutions.

(Compiled by Ning Chen)