With relaxed COVID-19 regulations beginning to open the floodgates for elective surgeries that were put on hold throughout the last year, Caresyntax has found itself a nine-figure buoy to ride the deluge.
The Boston-based software company raised $100 million in a series C funding round—more than double Caresyntax’s last financing in late 2019, a reflection of the reported 250% growth in new contract value the company saw in 2020.
PFM Health Sciences led the venture round and was joined by backers new and old including Optum Ventures, Intel Capital, Lauxera Capital Partners, Vesalius Biocapital III, Arno Capital, Rezayat Investments, IPF Partners, the Relyens Group and Surgical.AI.
Caresyntax will use the funding to fuel development of the artificial intelligence algorithms powering its digital surgery analytics platform as well as to make the platform accessible to more surgeons and hire more employees to support all that growth.
The platform’s AI continuously analyzes data gathered through video, audio, images and devices in and around the operating room, as well as clinical and operational data, to provide real-time assistance to surgical teams. Those data can also be viewed by virtual care teams, who can remotely control a connected laser pointer to guide surgeons through an operation.
Even after the procedure is complete, the platform continues to use the collected data to churn out insights. These post-op analyses can be used by surgical teams and hospitals to improve future performance, by medical device companies to develop their technologies and by insurance companies to make coverage of surgical procedures more effective.
The company says its software is now used in more than 4,000 operating rooms around the world, offering its assistance in more than 2 million procedures each year.
Caresyntax’s platform will likely continue to be in demand for the foreseeable future—as canceled surgeries between just March and June of 2020 amount to an estimated $200 billion in hospital revenue losses—and could take up to two years to finally complete, according to the company.
“Operating rooms need to perform as effectively and efficiently as possible, and this is especially true now to make up for the surgical backlog driven by the pandemic,” CEO and founder Dennis Kogan said in a statement.
“With better technology to safely automate surgical pathways while generating decision-grade real-world evidence, we will improve healthcare decision-making, mitigate surgical risks and advance high-value medical technology,” Kogan added.
Caresyntax has been on a growth streak since even before the COVID-19 pandemic. In December 2019, while raking in $45.6 million in series B funding, the company also acquired Syus, which has developed its own platform for surgery-centric data analysis.
Since then, Caresyntax has spent the ensuing year and a half advancing a series of partnerships to bring its software to as many ORs as possible. Among these recent collaborators are Sheba Medical Center, University of Iowa Health Care, the Association of Perioperative Nurses, the American Board of Surgery and Diversified, a technology solutions provider.