Healthleap, a startup that uses AI to read patient records and flag patients at risk of undiagnosed illnesses, has raised $38 million in seed and Series A funding. This total includes an $8 million seed round co-led by Sequoia Capital and First Round Capital, along with a $30 million Series A led by Hummingbird Ventures. The company has not revealed its valuation.
Founded in South Africa in 2022 by siblings Jemima and Josiah Meyer, Healthleap initially offered a clinical nutrition tool for dietitians. The startup later pivoted to develop a broader platform aimed at identifying patients in hospitals who may be experiencing conditions like malnutrition or delirium–issues that often go undetected in their early phases. CEO Josiah Meyer remarked, “A patient’s chart holds two kinds of data. Labs, weights, and vital signs sit in structured fields, but the most telling signs sit in clinicians’ written notes: poor appetite, recent weight loss, muscle loss, trouble swallowing.”
Healthleap’s platform is now in use at over 50 hospitals, screening for various conditions, including malnutrition and delirium. The startup has also created tools to identify aspiration pneumonia, pressure ulcers, and the risk of readmission for congestive heart failure, which are currently undergoing further clinical validation.
The technology integrates with a hospital’s electronic health record (EHR) system, utilizing language models to extract insights from written notes. It identifies data points such as recent weight loss or difficulty swallowing, processing this information through risk models that combine structured data–like lab results and vital signs–with unstructured notes to highlight patients needing further evaluation. It is important to clarify that Healthleap’s software does not diagnose conditions; it only flags cases for additional review.
Every night, Healthleap analyzes the records of all adult inpatients, looking at lab results, vital signs, weights, medications, diet orders, diagnoses, and clinicians’ notes. By the next morning, the system generates a risk score for the care team, along with a dashboard that presents patient trends. Josiah Meyer said the company has grown from three hospital partners to over 50 in the past year. Its clients now include prominent institutions such as Penn Medicine, Cedars-Sinai, Intermountain, Houston Methodist, and Emory Healthcare.
Revenue has grown more than 10x over the past year, Josiah Meyer said, though he didn’t disclose specifics. The startup provides three-year contracts based on the number of licensed beds in a hospital, as well as an outcome-based pricing model. Meyer highlighted the financial outcomes, stating, “To date, every customer has seen a 5x hard ROI or more, in some cases over 20x annual total ROI.”
At the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Healthleap says its malnutrition program resulted in $23.8 million in annualized financial impact, including $6.3 million from additional reimbursements and $17.5 million from shorter hospital stays.
With the newly acquired funding, Healthleap intends to focus on engineering, product development, sales, and customer support initiatives. The company aims to cover more than 40 major health conditions and expand into outpatient and home care.
