Dive Brief:
- Artificial intelligence company Aidoc said Wednesday that it has raised $150 million to fund the development of a foundation model that will help physicians with clinical decisions.
- Venture capital firms General Catalyst and Square Peg led the funding round. Nvidia’s venture capital arm, NVentures, and health systems Hartford HealthCare, Mercy, Sutter Health and WellSpan Health also participated.
- Foundation models are large, pre-trained models that can be used for a wide range of applications. Aidoc said its CARE foundation model was the basis for two solutions for rib fracture and aortic dissection that have received Food and Drug Administration clearance. The company has also done enterprise-wide rollouts at Advocate Health and Sutter Health.
Dive Insight:
When Aidoc was founded in 2016, it started with building point solutions for radiology, such as AI to help detect and triage intracranial hemorrhages and pulmonary embolisms. Since then, the company has looked to develop broader foundation models, which can be used to detect multiple features in an image.
Aidoc developed its CARE foundation model, which the company says will allow for development of new indications faster. The company plans to transition all of its AI models to CARE, and expects to cover more clinically relevant diseases in the future, such as cancer and cardiovascular conditions.
Chief Technology Officer Michael Braginsky said in a statement that he expects “foundation models will soon be as ubiquitous in healthcare as ChatGPT is in general use.”
Aidoc said it plans to invest more than $150 million in the coming years through strategic initiatives with Nvidia and Amazon Web Services to bring its CARE model to market.
Aidoc also plans to use some of the funding to expand a separate solution, called aiOS, an operating system to help health systems deploy and manage multiple AI solutions. The technology is designed to support Aidoc and third-party models.
The funding round includes a $40 million revolving credit facility. Aidoc said it has raised $370 million to date. The company said it currently supports more than 150 health systems.
