Hospitals lose thousands of clinical hours each year to manual quality reporting. Now, a startup backed by prominent VC firms aims to solve this problem.
Pharos has announced a $5 million seed round led by Felicis, with participation from General Catalyst, Moxxie, and Y Combinator. The San Francisco-based company uses AI to automate the tedious process of extracting patient safety data from medical records.
"A single case can take up to eight hours to report," says Ryan Isono, Partner at Felicis. "It's a big problem, but one that you only know about if you're deep in the industry."
Currently, nurses and clinical staff must manually review electronic health records to report quality metrics to organizations like the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. This reporting helps identify critical issues such as post-surgery infections, but it pulls healthcare workers away from patient care.
Pharos's AI technology automatically pulls required data from unstructured medical records, enabling real-time quality monitoring instead of the weeks-long delays typical with manual reporting. The company says this faster access to data helps hospitals prevent patient harm before it occurs.
The startup's founders bring unique expertise to this challenge. CEO Felix Brann previously led data science at Vital, where he and CTO Matthew Jones deployed AI systems in over 70 hospitals. They're joined by Dr. Alex Clarke, who holds both a medical degree and a PhD in artificial intelligence from Imperial College London.
The timing appears right for this technology. Studies show that 60% of surgical site infections are preventable with proper processes, according to the American College of Surgeons. By freeing up clinical staff and providing faster insights, Pharos aims to help hospitals reduce these preventable harms.
The company plans to use the funding to expand its engineering team and increase the range of quality metrics it can track. While Pharos currently consists of just its three co-founders, they're now hiring to build out their hospital sales and support capabilities.
For hospitals spending millions annually on manual quality reporting, Pharos's automated approach could offer both cost savings and something even more valuable – the ability to spot and fix safety issues before patients are harmed.