Globally, health IT systems are groaning under the weight of legacy platforms. Thankfully, a new wave of startups is entering the space. British startup Anima is a “care enablement” platform that works almost like a combination of Slack, Salesforce, and Figma, but for medical clinics and hospitals.
The company recently raised $12 million in a Series A funding round led by Molten Ventures and includes existing investors Hummingbird Ventures, Amino Collective, and Y Combinator, as well as Peak Games founder Sidar Sahin New angel investors also participated.
An alumnus of Y Combinator's Winter 2021 batch, Anima launched in September 2022 and is currently being used in 150 NHS clinics in the UK. The startup's software allows clinic staff to process and file medical documents, but adds a high degree of automation compared to traditional systems.
“Anima autonomously collects specific medical history for every complaint that presents itself and brings this to the clinic along with potential differential diagnoses and suggestions for next steps,” said Shun Pang, co-founder and CEO of Anima. “We'll show you the red flags so you don't miss them,” he told TechCrunch. “The entire clinic is built in real-time multiplayer like Figma where he can collaborate on dashboards and ping cases to each other and chat on his UX like Slack,” he said. Ta.
He added that Anima's processing system “can autonomously ingest any document, including handwriting, drawings, and images, and output a summary using structured fields.”
Competitors in this space include UK-based accuRx, which has raised £36.6 million following its Series B. In the US, Memora Health has raised his $80.5 million to date, and post-Series C NexHealth has raised his $177.2 million.
Mr. Pan told me: “We believe our real competition will be those with a trusted path to a ‘care enablement’ platform that captures the clinical workflow from intake to resolution. It's similar to what Salesforce did in the distribution department.”
He's also a somewhat unusual founder in this space, having been in private practice before this startup. I trained as a doctor in Cambridge and am a self-taught software engineer who wrote much of the code for Anima. I was essentially building what I wanted for myself and what I knew would save lives. ”
Given its traction and its founder's hinterland, Anima has made an encouraging foray into the notoriously difficult NHS.
Inga Deakin, principal at Molten Ventures, said in a statement: “Software and artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare is a multibillion-dollar, rapidly growing field, but it will take time to integrate the many solutions and realize its potential… Anima are growing rapidly because they can have a direct and immediate impact.”