Month: July 2018

Sight Diagnostics, an Israeli medical devices startup that’s using computer vision and machine learning technology to speed up blood testing, is launching a point-of-care blood diagnostics system today.

It claims the compact, desktop machine — called OLO — which analyzes single-use cartridges manually loaded with drops of the patient’s blood, can deliver “lab-grade” complete blood count (CBC) tests from only a finger prick of blood.

The idea being for clinicians to use the device to perform the most prevalent medical blood diagnostics test directly in their office, rather than a patient having venous blood drawn and sent away to a lab for analysis — a process that can take a few days.

They’re also intending to offer a high tech alternative to carrying out manual microscopy on a blood smear — another technique that can be used to conduct an point-of-care CBC test, but which requires specialist personnel taking the time, care and attention to get it right.

The team hasn’t previously disclosed total funding but are now confirming they’ve raised $25 million in equity financing (Series A and B) from VC firms, including Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors — which they say they’re expecting to take them through their US clinical trials. They are also in the process of raising a Series C. 

Sight Diagnostics is touting OLO as the high tech alternative that healthcare providers have been waiting for — with AI-powered analysis performing a blood count right then and there, after a healthcare worker has pipetted a few drops of the patient’s blood into place.

Sight Diagnostics points out that CBC tests are used to diagnose a broad range of common medical conditions, as well as for the vast majority of baseline tests ordered during routine ‘well visits’, arguing that speeding up this type of routine blood test could support faster diagnostics of medical problems. Or, indeed, speedier reassurance that a person is okay. 

The OLO system uses a patented process for ‘digitizing’ patient blood into a set of specifically colored microscope images. It then applies proprietary machine vision algorithms to the images to identify and count different blood-cell types — with the company claiming its technology simplifies blood testing so that even non-professionals can perform the tests.

According to the company, new sample-preparation methods allow them to present a small amount of blood to OLO’s microscope in a way that is tolerant to inaccuracies in the preparation process — placing what they describe as “minimal burden” on the user — as well as being robust in the face of inaccuracies in any manufacturing processes, saying this means the cost of their testing kits can remain low.

“This novel way of digitizing blood is equally important to our approach as the artificial intelligence driving the analysis,” they add.

Of course any novel blood testing technology claiming a disruptive advantage must be able to prove it is as accurate and robust as traditional lab testing methods.

Very clearly, lives are at stake.

And, well, on the disruptive startup side, the shadow cast by Theranos’ implosion is a very long one.

But — to be clear — Theranos had claimed it could deliver a full battery of laboratory tests from a few drops of blood — not just a CBC count, which is at least the initial aim for OLO. And for CBC tests having only a small blood sample to work is actually not so unusual.

“CBC tests operate even today with low sample volumes,” it says. “For example, several central-lab instruments have been cleared for capillary samples (200-300uL of blood, of which less than 10uL is actually counted), and the older manual method for CBC analysis — the traditional blood smears on microscope slides — uses less than 10uL of blood in total. This is to say that in our domain the use of low sample-volumes stands on solid scientific ground.”

Sight Diagnostics has been working on the OLO system for more than eight years at this stage.

The co-founder duo — Yossi Pollak and Daniel Levner — combine machine vision and AI expertise on the one hand (Pollak worked on algorithms for automotive machine-vision giant Mobileye), with a medical background, via Levner’s postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School (and later a CTO role at a biotech company, called Emulate).

Their key claim is that OLO produces “lab-quality” CBCs.

More specifically, they say a recent clinical trial compared its CBC analysis against Sysmex XN (“a top-of-the-line lab-grade analyzer”) to determine equivalence.

Here’s what Levner — who’s also chairman of its scientific advisory board — told us on that:

The study included the 19 CBC parameters that make up the 5-differential (‘5-diff’) CBC, as well as a number of medical/diagnostic ‘flags’. The results were analyzed statistically, including an analysis of the correlation of each parameter between the two instruments, bias (whether there is a systematic shift between the two instruments), and slope (whether there is a systematic scaling factor between the two instruments’ results).

To ascertain what quality of results was necessary to declare OLO equivalent to the Sysmex XN, we relied on values that we discussed with the FDA in our three pre-submission meetings. We applied these quality targets to our recent clinical study despite the CE Mark not sharing the same stringent requirements as the FDA, and we found that we surpassed the targets. Accordingly, we believe that our data supports the claim that OLO is equivalent to standard central-lab tests, which is our goal: testing at the point-of-care without compromising accuracy or depth of information.

As Levner notes there, they have completed a 250-person clinical trial, which took place at Israel’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center — a testing process that led to them obtaining CE Mark registration for OLO; aka the health & safety certification that’s necessary for commercial sale within certain European countries. 

“For the CE Mark declaration, we have verified that OLO complies with the CE in vitro diagnostics directive (Directive 98/79/EC IVD). Accordingly, OLO meets the full list of harmonized standards that the directive requires, including ISO 13485 (quality management system), ISO 14971 (medical device risk management), CEN 13612 (medical device performance evaluation), and various safety, stability and labeling requirements,” he further says on that.

One important point to flag is that Sight Diagnostics has not yet published peer reviewed results of any of its clinical trials for OLO.

But Levner says the results of its most recent clinical trial (testing OLO as a CBC analyzer) are “currently in preparation” for publication in a peer-reviewed journal.

“We strongly believe in the necessity of sharing our data this way, but unfortunately and as you know, the process of publishing in academic journals tends to take several months,” he says, offering to share the results under a confidentiality agreement “so as not to scoop our own publication”.

Nor is OLO the team’s first blood diagnostic test. Previously they developed a diagnostic test for malaria (called Parasight), using digital fluorescent microscopy and computer vision algorithms — and they have three published journal articles that describe clinical trials on their malaria test.

Parasight was first deployed in 2014, and they say more than 600,000 of the malaria tests have been sold to date — claiming they have “accurately and consistently” diagnosed malaria in 25 countries.

Levner says the malaria test used the same underlying technologies they are now redeploying for OLO — including “common sample-preparation methods, microscope design, and artificial-intelligence based algorithms”.

While malaria testing was their first focus, they’re looking to build a far more expansive point-of-care blood diagnostics business with OLO — beginning with CBC testing but envisaging the system as a platform that will, in time, be capable of running a portfolio of blood tests. 

Although on this Levner is careful to note that each additional test would be added individually — and after “independent clinical validation”.

“We see OLO eventually consolidating a number of tests that are important to the doctor’s office and becoming a diagnostics nerve-center for the clinic,” he tells TechCrunch, adding: “We will introduce these additional tests one-by-one, with each test undergoing independent clinical validation.”

Sight Diagnostics is starting by selling OLO in Europe, with both private doctors’ offices and national health services in its sights. Levner says they’re expecting the device to be in doctors’ offices in the EU in “around three months” — noting they’re in the process of finishing up a couple of initial distribution agreements now.

“Ultimately, we intend to distribute OLO in all of Europe and beyond. However, we are prioritizing European countries that are known for being early adopters — for example, countries without a single-payer system or ones with a well-developed private market,” he adds.

He also confirms OLO has been registered in the EU using a Netherlands-based CE Notified Body.

“We are also pursuing several more national registrations that don’t require additional testing, such as Switzerland and Israel, which otherwise accept the CE Mark.”

The team is also conducting a study as part of FDA testing in the US — with a trial ongoing at three US-based sites. They’re aiming to admit more than 500 participants, and are using eight different OLO instruments for testing.

The initial push is to obtain 510(k) approval from the FDA, which would allow OLO to be used in larger US-based clinics (CLIA certified facilities). Levner says they hope to gain that approval “midway through next year”.

The subsequence step would be to obtain a CLIA waiver from the FDA — which would permit it to place instruments in small clinics and doctor’s offices — necessary to the stated goal of “bringing blood diagnostics to the point-of-care”. And the hope is they obtain that waiver in 2020. Though clearly there’s a long way to go to pass all the necessary clinical regulatory hurdles.

In addition to the co-founders, Levner says the team includes a number of medical, diagnostics and regulatory experts — naming Dr Shai Izraeli (Hematology-Oncology) and Janice Hogan (who he says has previously developed regulatory strategy for hematology analyzers) — as well as several diagnostics-industry experts he says he’s not currently at liberty to disclose.

He also says they recruited “renowned hematology experts” to lead their CBC clinical trials — naming one: Dr Carlo Brugnara, the director of the Hematology Lab at the Boston Children’s Hospital, who they quote in their press release, talking up the challenges for physicians of having to wait for blood test results, and saying: “Previous blood analyzers aimed at in-office testing have involved clinical compromises and are difficult to operate or maintain. OLO has the potential to deliver on the promise of accurate, comprehensive blood testing at the doctor’s office, even with a finger prick sample.”

Nearly half a petabyte of blood image data — sourced from Sight Diagnostics’ own clinical studies over the past four years — has been used to train the AIs powering the OLO blood diagnostics system. (Levner specifies this data “has been anonymized and used in accordance with ethical review (IRB) approvals from their respective clinical institutions”.)

While most of the additional tests they’re envisaging bringing to OLO in future would use the same single-use consumable model as the CBC test, he mentions a subset of tests they’ve been considering which could benefit from sending information digitally to a different facility.

“As one example, imagine that OLO is used to run a CBC for a patient, and an important finding is identified. In the future, the physician could order a follow-on test and have the already digitized blood images streamed to an expert,” he suggests. “The expert (or even multiple experts) could then analyze images remotely, saving the patient additional blood draws or travel.”

So while the initial business model is a traditional sales model — with Sight Diagnostics selling the OLO system plus as many test kits as required, and CBC tests taking place fully onboard the system, with no need for the device to connect to its servers — down the line, should all go to plan, there could be scope to bolt on a SaaS platform element. Such as for enabling clinicians to order additional follow on analyses, and with OLO streaming digitized blood images to remote experts. 

So if their technology is as accurate and robust as they claim, a lot more could flow from just a few drops of digitized blood.

Waymo’s next phase in self-driving cars has begun.

The former Google self-driving project that spun out to become a business under Alphabet has received its first three all-electric I-Pace crossover sport utility produced by Jaguar Land Rover. These I-Pace EVS — the first on U.S. roads outside of JLR’s own fleet — can be seen driving around the San Francisco Bay Area.

These aren’t operating autonomously just yet. For now, Waymo is testing the vehicle’s performance on roads to generate self-driving system design requirements and develop durability tests, the company told TechCrunch.

Waymo announced in March a strategic partnership with Jaguar Land Rover to develop a self-driving electric I-Pace for a driverless transportation service. The plan is for the electric SUV to become part of Waymo’s driverless fleet beginning in 2020.

Ultimately, up to 20,000 modified I-Pace vehicles will join Waymo’s soon-to-be-launched driverless ride-hailing service in the first two years of operation.

The Jaguar I-Pace SUVs are a piece of Waymo’s larger plan to build a self-driving system to be used in ride-hailing, delivery and logistics such as trucking, connecting rides with public transit and licensing the technology with automakers for personally owned vehicles.

Facebook continues to expand its VR ambitions in the Pacific Northwest. The company has been quietly growing its footprint 16 miles East of Seattle, in Microsoft’s backyard.

A new analysis by real estate resource BuildZoom sheds additional light on the Menlo Park-based company’s efforts to build a satellite virtual reality HQ in and around Seattle. Over the last three years, Facebook has spent $106 million on construction and development permits for Oculus offices in Redmond.

In 2018 alone, Facebook spent $88.3 million on Oculus -related permits for as many as eight new offices in the area. BuildZoom’s analysis identifies five properties in particular, all on Willow Road in Redmond, that span more than 90,000 square feet of lab and office space. Those locations are 10545 Willows Rd., 10785 Willows Rd., 9805 Willows Rd., 9845 Willows Rd. and 9461 Willow Road.

Last November, Seattle-based news site GeekWire reported that Facebook was on the hunt for 200,000 square feet worth of R&D space in Redmond, to expand its existing Oculus research efforts there. At the time, Oculus listed more than 60 job positions in Redmond in additional to a smaller amount of hiring for its Oculus operations in Seattle proper. Oculus is currently hiring for 121 positions in Redmond, with 42 of them in research.

TechCrunch reached out to Facebook about its plans for the new Oculus offices but the company declined to comment. Late last year, an Oculus spokesperson told TechCrunch that the company is growing its Seattle team to achieve its goal to “get 1 billion people into VR.” This May, Oculus announced that its Oculus Research division would be rebranded as Facebook Reality Labs.

The growing Oculus offices join nearby Valve, Microsoft’s HoloLens and other VR operations nearby to cement Seattle as one of tech’s major VR hubs beyond Silicon Valley.

Facebook has released its fifth diversity report, and it’s fine. Unless companies fire everyone and start over, we’re not going to see drastic improvements anytime soon.

“A critical lesson we’ve learned is that recruiting, retaining and developing a diverse, inclusive workforce should be a priority from day one,” Facebook Chief Diversity Officer Maxine Williams wrote in a blog post. “The later you start taking deliberate action to increase diversity, the harder it becomes.”

Anyway, worldwide, Facebook is 36 percent female, up from 31 percent in 2014. In the U.S., Facebook is 3.5 percent black, compared to just 2 percent in 2014, and 4.9 percent Latinx compared to 4 percent in 2014. White people, unsurprisingly, still makes up the single largest population of employees (46.4 percent today versus 57 percent in 2014). The upside to this is that white people no longer make up the majority at Facebook.

At the leadership and technical levels, change has not occurred for black employees. Black employees still make up just two percent of people in leadership roles and one percent of employees in technical roles. For Latinx people, employees make up three percent of the technical team and three percent of the leadership team, down from four percent in 2014.

In her blog post, Williams noted that “diversity is critical to our success as a company.”

It’s true and the data is there to back it up. Companies in the top quartile for ethnic diversity at the executive level are 33 percent more likely to have above-average profitability than companies in the bottom quartile, according to McKinsey’s report, “Delivering through Diversity.”

When the Cambridge Analytica scandal went down, some pointed to Facebook’s overall lack of diversity as part of the problem. That’s because homogenous cultures lead to limited perspectives and potential lack of awareness of things that may be more obvious to diverse groups of people. Perhaps if Facebook had been more diverse, that all fiasco could’ve been prevented.

You can check out Facebook’s full report here.

One year after receiving a whopping $75 million commitment to invest in early stage companies applying artificial intelligence to various industries, Glasswing Ventures has closed its debut fund with $112 million. 

It’s a significant milestone for a firm that purports to be the largest early stage investor focused on machine learning on the East Coast, and one of the largest early stage funds to be led by women.

Founded by Rudina Seseri alongside her longtime investing partner Rick Grinnell and bolstered by the addition of former portfolio executive Sarah Fay, Glasswing so far has invested in three startups: BotChain (a company spun up from Glasswing’s early investment in the AI management company, Talla); Allure Security, a threat detection company; and Terbium Labs, whose service alerts companies when sensitive or stolen information of theirs appears on the Internet.

For Seseri and Glasswing, the close is actually just the beginning. As she said in a statement:

“Raising an AI-focused fund on the East Coast is just the beginning for Glasswing Ventures. As we embark on a journey to shape the future, we are laser-focused on investing in exceptional founders who leverage AI to build disruptive companies and transform markets. Beyond providing smart capital, we are firmly committed to supporting our entrepreneurs with all facets of building and scaling their businesses.”

The story, for Seseri and her co-founder Grinnell actually begins nearly a decade ago at the venture firm Fairhaven Capital, the rebranded investment arm of the TD Bank Group.

At the time of the firm’s launch in 2016, Glasswing was targeting $150 million for its first fund, with a 2.5% management fee and 20% carried interest (pretty standard terms for a venture fund), according to reporting by Dan Primack back when he was at Fortune.

In a pitchdeck seen by Primack the firm was touting 4.25x return multiple on its investments including 6x realized and 1.8x unrealized in deals like Grinnell’s exit from EqualLogic (which was sold to Dell for $1.46 billion) and Seseri’s investments in Jibo (which is now basically worthless) and SocialFlow (which isn’t).

Fay, who worked at a portfolio investment of Fairhaven’s, was brought on soon after the two partners launched their new venture.

Glasswing definitely benefits from the firm’s proximity to Boston’s stellar universities. And Seseri, a Harvard University graduate maintains close ties with the research community at both Harvard and MIT — tapping luminaries like Tim Berners-Lee to sit on the firm’s advisory council for networking. 

Chase Martin, Marketing and Events Manager, Emma Marty, Operations and Support Coordinator, Rick Grinnell, Founder and Managing Partner, Rudina Seseri, Founder and Managing Partner, Sarah Fay, Managing Director, and Andre Rocha, Investment Associate 

We announced recently that TechCrunch is staging its first ever Startup Battlefield Latin America on Nov. 8 in São Paulo to find the best early stage startup in Latin America. 

To spread the word, TechCrunch staff will visit São Paulo and Mexico City next week and Bueno Aires and Santiago the following one to meet with the startup community and hold meetups for anyone interested in learning more about the Startup Battlefield and how to apply. Tickets to the meetups are free, but they will go fast so sign up now.

Here are the details:

São Paulo

Tuesday, July 17th, 7:00pm – 9:00pm

Hack Station Sao Paulo – Avenida Paulista, 1374, Bela Vista, Sao Paulo

Register here. 

Mexico City

Thursday, July 19th, 6:00pm – 8:00pm

MassChallenge Mexico, 23 The Gold, Mexico City

Register Here.

At the meetup, we will provide a brief presentation on Startup Battlefield and answer questions. Our goal is to encourage founders to apply to Startup Battlefield because, who doesn’t want a shot at startup stardom? After applications close next month, the editors will choose 15 companies to compete, and one will win $25,000 and a free trip to the next Disrupt SF.  All the companies, however, will receive global exposure, winners or not, because video from their pitches on stage in front of top tier judges will be posted on TechCrunch.

Startup Battlefield is the world’s premier startup launch competition. To date, the Startup Battlefield alumni community comprises almost 750 companies that have raised over $8 billion USD, and produced over 100 successful exits and IPOs.

 

Your typical cloud monitoring service integrates with dozens of service and provides you a pretty dashboard and some automation to help you keep tabs on how your applications are doing. Datadog has long done that but today, it is adding a new service called Watchdog, which uses machine learning to automatically detect anomalies for you.

The company notes that a traditional monitoring setup involves defining your parameters based on how you expect the application to behave and then set up dashboards and alerts to monitor them. Given the complexity of modern cloud applications, that approach has its limits, so an additional layer of automation becomes necessary.

That’s where Watchdog comes in. The service observes all of the performance data it can get its paws on, learns what’s normal, and then provides alerts when something unusual happens and — ideally — provides insights into where exactly the issue started.

“Watchdog builds upon our years of research and training of algorithms on our customers data sets. This technology is unique in that it not only identifies an issue programmatically, but also points users to probable root causes to kick off an investigation,” Datadog’s head of data science Homin Lee notes in today’s announcement.

The service is now available to all Datadog customers in its Enterprise APM plan.

Paidy, a fintech startup that enables Japanese consumers to shop online without using a credit card, announced today that it has raised a $55 million Series C. The round was led by Japanese trade conglomerate Itochu Corporation, with participation from Goldman Sachs.

The Tokyo-based startup says this brings its total funding so far to $80 million, including a $15 million Series B announced two years ago. One notable fact about Paidy’s funding is that it’s raised a sizable amount for Japanese startup, especially one with non-Japanese founders (its CEO and co-founder is Canadian and Goldman Sachs alum Russell Cummer, left in the photo above with CTO and co-founder Lee Smith).

Paidy was launched because even though Japan’s credit card penetration rate is high, their usage rate is relatively low, even for online purchases. Instead, shoppers pay cash on delivery or at convenience stores, which function as combination logistics/payment centers in many Japanese cities.

This is convenient for buyers because they don’t have to enter a credit card online or worry about fraud, but a hassle for businesses that often need to float cash for merchandise that hasn’t been paid for yet or deal with incomplete deliveries.

Paidy makes it possible for people to buy online without creating an account or using their credit cards. Instead, if a merchant uses Paidy, its customers are able to check out by entering their mobile phone numbers and email addresses. Then Paidy authenticates them with a four-digit code sent through SMS or voice. Every month, customers settle their bills, which include all transactions they made using Paidy, at a convenience store or through bank transfers or auto-debits (installment and subscription plans are also available).

The value proposition for businesses is that Paidy can increase their customer base and guarantee they get paid by using machine learning algorithms to underwrite transactions. The company claims that there are now 1.4 million active Paidy accounts, with the ambitious goal of increasing that number to 11 million by 2020 by expanding to bigger merchants and offline transactions.

In a press statement, Cummer said “We are extremely honored that Paidy’s business concept was highly valued by one of Japan’s most prestigious business conglomerates, ITOCHU. Through this tie-up, we expect to launch new merchants in order to deliver Paidy’s frictionless and intuitive financial solution to a much broader audience.”

The millennial generation — people born between 1981 and 1996 — are on the cusp of becoming America’s largest generation, according to projections from the U.S. Census Bureau. What else we know about this demographic: millennials are increasingly choosing to live at home with their parents, put off marriage and children, and not buy stuff like cars and luxury goods but instead access those goods through sharing services.

What they can’t do without: wellness. It’s one area where they’re willing to spend money on compelling brands and experiences, even when they cost an arm and a leg. And that’s something that Soraya Darabi, Will Nathan, and Marina Hadjipateras inherently appreciate as millennials themselves, as well as, more newly, investors.

In fact, after embroiling themselves in startups — Nathan started an interior design startup called Homepolish; Darabi’s last startup was a (now-shuttered) fashion marketplace called Zady; Hadjipateras worked as VP of investor relations for her family’s shipping company, Dorian LPG, which went public in 2014 — the three friends decided to try funding companies that make their peers feel good.

Enter Trail Mix Ventures, a New York-based outfit that invests in the “future of living well.”

It’s a broad mandate, but the trio apparently sold the idea, securing enough capital — $3 million — from founder friends in January of last year to get started. Some of the then-nascent companies they have backed since include The Wing, a 2.5-year-old women’s-only work and community that has now raised $42 million altogether; Parsley Health, a two-year-old, membership-based wellness practice with locations in on both coasts that has raised more than $10 million; and Henry the Dentist, a two-year-old mobile dental clinic whose seed investors also include the early-stage, New York-based venture firm Brand Foundry.

Asked where the three get their deal flow, Nathan points to the many entrepreneurs who Trail Mix counts as investors, including cofounder Neil Parikh of the sleep company Casper; cofounder Nick Taranto of the meal kit company Plated; and Warby Parker cofounder Neil Blumenthal, who is also CEO of the eyewear company.

Nathan says the broader network in New York that the friends have built over the years also “opens doors for us and connections that help founders get to their next level.”

Meanwhile, Darabi notes that while a lot of investors talk about being former founders, having so recent a memory as the three do of being in the trenches adds meaningful value. She calls it “founder-to-founder intimacy.”

Whatever the case, things have gone well enough that the outfit — which is officially closing its debut fund today with $11 million — has now funded 16 companies altogether, typically via first checks that are roughly $300,000 in size.

It’s too soon to say how any of bets will fare longer term, of course. But one is doing sufficiently well that Trail Mix is right assembling a special purpose vehicle (essentially a pop-up fund designed to invest in one startup) to enable its backers to invest more in the company.

Asked if more of these SPVs are in the firm’s future, she says, “Absolutely. We receive a lot of inbound interest from our [investors] in doing these.”

Given that kind of traction, along with the opportunity the group is chasing — new startups are cropping up every day focused on broadening access to wellness — we’d guess a new fundraising effort can’t be too far off for Trail Mix, either. Stay tuned.

In recent months, we’ve seen more and more funding flowing into tools for mental wellness — whether that’s AI-driven tools to help patients find help to meditation apps — and it seems like that trend is starting to pick up even more steam as smaller companies are grabbing the attention of investors.

There’s another one picking up funding today in Spring Health, a platform for smaller companies to help their employees get more access to mental health treatment. The startup looks to give employers get access to a simple, effective way to start offering that treatment for their employees in the form of personalized mental wellness plans. The employees get access to confidential plans in addition to access to a network and ways to get in touch with a therapist or psychiatrist as quickly as possible. The company said it has raised an additional $6 million in funding led by Rethink Impact, with Work-Bench, BBG Ventures, and NYC Partnership joining the round. RRE Ventures and the William K. Warren Foundation also participated.

“…I realized that mental health care is largely a guessing game: you use trial-and-error to find a compatible therapist, and you use trial-and-error to find the right treatment regimen, whether that’s a specific cocktail of medications or a specific type of psychotherapy,” CEO and co-founder April Koh said. “Everything around us is personalized these days – like shopping on Amazon, search results on Google, and restaurant recommendations on Yelp – but you can’t get personalized recommendations for your mental health care. I wanted to build a platform that connects you with the right care for you from the very beginning. So I partnered with leading expert on personalized psychiatry, Dr. Adam Chekroud our Chief Scientist, and my friend Abhishek Chandra, our CTO, to start Spring Health.”

The startup bills itself as an online mental health clinic that offers recommendations for employees, such as treatment options or tweaks to their daily routines (like exercise regimens). Like other machine learning-driven platforms, Spring Health puts a questionnaire in front of the end employee that adapts to the responses they are giving and then generates a wellness plan for that specific individual. As more and more patients get on the service, it gets more data, and can improve those recommendations over time. Those patients are then matched with clinicians and licensed medical health professionals from the company’s network.

“We found that employers were asking for it,” Koh said. “As a company we started off by selling an AI-enabled clinical decision support tool to health systems to empower their doctors to make data-driven decisions. While selling that tool to one big health system, word reached their benefits department, and they reached out to us and told us they need something in benefits to deal with mental health needs of their employee base. When that happened, we decided to completely focus on selling a “full-stack” mental health solution to employers for their employees. Instead of selling a tool to doctors, we decided we would create our own network of best-in-class mental health providers who would use our tools to deliver the best mental health care possible.”

However, Spring Health isn’t the only startup looking to create an intelligent matching system for employees seeking mental health. Lyra Health, another tool to help employees securely and confidentially begin the process of getting mental health treatment, raised $45 million in May this year. But Spring Health and Lyra Health are both part of a wave of startups looking to create ways for employees to more efficiently seek care powered by machine learning and capitalizing on the cost and difficulty of those tools dropping dramatically.

And it’s not the only service in the mental wellness category also picking up traction, with meditation app Calm raising $27 million at a $250 million valuation. Employers naturally have a stake in the health of their employees, and as all these apps look to make getting mental health treatment or improving mental wellness easier — and less of a taboo — the hope is they’ll continue to lower the barrier to entry, both from the actual product inertia and getting people comfortable with seeking help in the first place.

“I think VC’s are realizing there’s a huge opportunity to disrupt mental health care and make it accessible, convenient and affordable. But from our perspective, the problem with the space is that there is a lot of unvetted, non-evidence-based technology. There’s a ton of vaporware surrounding AI, big data, and machine-learning, especially in mental health care. We want to set a higher standard in mental healthcare that is based on evidence and clinical validation. Unlike most mental health care solutions on the market, we have multiple peer-reviewed publications in top medical journals like JAMA, describing and substantiating our technology. We know that our personalized recommendations and our Care Navigation approach are evidence-based and proven to work.