Today (Tuesday), Israeli MedTech startup Navina, developer of an AI-powered platform that creates clinical and financial insight at point-of-care, announced the completion of a $7 million Seed funding round. The investment was led by Grove Ventures.

“Bringing the intelligence game into the medical realm”

Medical practitioners are overwhelmed with chaotic bits of unorganized data about their patients. This commonly leads to misdiagnoses, patient and provider frustration, as well as a potential financial loss for both sides. Navina has developed an AI-driven platform that organizes all patient’ data and provides actionable insight, as well as creating a clinical I.D. for each patient on an easy-to-use and accessible format - to optimize and improve doctor-patient interaction.

Navina claims that its platform enables doctors real-time data-backed diagnosis, which results in more face-to-face time with their patients, leads to better care, and drastically reduces missed diagnoses while saving costs for both sides. The platform creates a “clinical portrait” based on a patient’s collected data. This is done in order to organize the massive bits of data, resulting in better and faster decision making at point-of-care, both at medical centers and through telehealth visits.

“We recognize that the amount of digital data in the medical realm is insane, and this process is only taking its first baby steps, as it’s expected to grow exponentially over the upcoming years,” explains Navina CEO and co-founder Ronen Lavi in a conversation with Geektime. According to Lavi, the fact that doctors are overwhelmed with chaotic clinical data reminded him and his co-founder and CTO Shay Perera of similar problems from the world of intelligence - where the two first met: “There is a lot of intelligence data coming in from various sources, but even if we use the best intelligence expert in the world, it would be hard for them to analyze the quantity of incoming information. It’s just not humanly possible. Now, we are bringing the intelligence game into the medical realm.”

The outbreak of the global COVID-19 pandemic laid fertile ground for a MedTech company like Navina, with Lavi noting that the Coronavirus has mostly accelerated the healthcare providers’ adoption of digitized solutions and its integration into medical technologies

He explains that COVID has impacted the landscape, resulting in valuable insight like understanding that doctors need to be empowered to do more with less time, by better familiarizing doctors with their patients, transforming the doctor-patient interaction into a proactive one by making time for “home” visits through the system, and reducing the workload created by doctors’ appointments being postponed. Lavi says that Navina aims to tackle all these issues and more.

Navina’s main target market is the U.S., which had led to a few strategic partnerships with Northern Ohio Medical Specialists and American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), whose Chief Medical Informatics Officer Dr. Steven Waldren stated that “the digital age is resulting in vast amounts of patient data being made available. That's the good news. The bad news is that this data is becoming burdensome for primary care physicians. This problem will grow, as the volume and variety of data is unstoppable, and AI has the potential to tame it...”

What about protecting patient data?

“Navina’s technology is in compliance with patient privacy regulations. It’s very simple: In the U.S. it’s impossible to partner with EMR systems that hold the medical data, unless you have been validated by a third party on patient data security management. Currently, Navina has already partnered with leading EMR systems in the U.S., and more are coming.”

Lotan Levkowitz, Partner at Grove Ventures, said “...We are proud to have been part of their journey from day one, happy we've had a chance to partner and shape Navina with such incredible founders, and positive that they have what it takes to solve the complex challenges surrounding the future of primary care."

Navina was founded in 2018 by Lavi and Shay Perera. The two previously established the Artificial Intelligence lab for the IDF Intelligence unit, resulting in a national award for security. The company states that funds will be put towards advancing R&D of the AI and Machine-Learning platform, alongside accelerating business development initiatives to further expand adoption of the system by doctors and healthcare providers in the U.S.