Punit Soni-led healthcare AI firm Suki raises $55 mn in Series C round

Funding led by led by March Capital, with support from Philips Ventures and all previous investors including Venrock, Flare Capital, Breyer Capital, and inHealth Ventures

Suki, a leading firm in the area of voice artificial intelligence (AI) technology for health care, said that it has closed a Series C funding round of $55 million, led by March Capital, with support from Philips Ventures, and all previous investors including Venrock, Flare Capital, Breyer Capital, and inHealth Ventures. The round is also comprised of super-angels who are leading figures in technology, healthcare, and finance, including Gaingels Group, Pankaj Patel (ex-Chief Development Officer of Cisco), Andrew Deutsch (CEO of RIMA Radiology), and Russell Farscht (former Managing Director of The Carlyle Group).

Suki will use this funding to make strategic investments that will lead to an expansion of its user base. This would be done through new and existing partnerships with leading health systems and medical groups while bolstering employee growth and development. Suki will also advance the AI capabilities of Suki Assistant, its voice-enabled digital assistant, and Suki Speech Platform, its proprietary voice platform. It would also add new features that streamline documentation, coding and other administrative tasks for physicians.

“We are at a turning point in healthcare, where it’s now imperative to offer technology that improves physician burnout caused by documentation and administrative burden,” said Punit Soni,  founder and CEO of Suki. “With the strong support of our investors, Suki is poised to address this issue at an even larger scale and advance high-value, coordinated care through cutting-edge technology that integrates seamlessly into a physician's daily practice.”

An alumnus of National Institute of Technology Kurukshetra, the University of Wyoming and The Wharton School, Soni was chief product officer of e-commerce giant Flipkart for over a year till April 2016 and prior to that had also worked at Google.

Powered by artificial intelligence, Suki uses natural language processing and machine learning to create clinically accurate medical notes and streamline administrative tasks. This includes retrieving patient information from the electronic health record (EHR) or ICD-10 coding. As a true digital clinical assistant, Suki said it supports doctors practicing in any clinical setting, as well as any speciality, including cardiology, orthopaedics, plastic surgery, ophthalmology, paediatrics, and family medicine. Providers can use a wide variety of voice commands to complete tasks, further personalizing the voice-enabled experience and streamlining workflows.

“March was instantly drawn to Suki’s mission to help healthcare organizations lift the administrative burden from doctors so they can focus on taking care of their patients,” said Wes Nichols, partner at March Capital. “My first exposure to Suki was observing my doctor using his phone to update his EHR (electronic health record) and pharmacy, which compelled me to ask him about what he was using. He was thrilled with Suki as a user, and I knew I had to meet the founder. Doctor burnout is a public health crisis which makes Suki’s cutting-edge AI-powered voice assistant a game-changing solution for doctors and health systems everywhere.”

In the last year, Suki has experienced tremendous growth, quadrupling its revenue. It continued to rapidly innovate, introducing new capabilities including the ability to dynamically pull in EHR data and a Suki Windows app that extends the reach and power of Suki Assistant to any Windows computer. It continued to expand its capabilities outside of clinical documentation, refining its ICD-10 (international classification of diseases) coding features to be more accurate and streamlined. The solution reduces documentation time by 76 per cent on average. It is used by physicians across dozens of specialities in more than 90 health systems and clinics nationwide.