Behind the Term Sheet: Meet Nabla, the Leading Ambient AI Assistant for Healthcare Practitioners

Aiding Healthcare’s Shift Back to a Patient-Centric Approach

Written By Jacky Abitbol & Paul Pouyanne, edited by Jaclyn Hartnett, Cathay Innovation

Global healthcare professionals face the dual challenge of overwhelming administrative tasks and inadequate resources, leading to doctors spending as much time on paperwork as they do on patient consultations. This clerical burden not only impedes healthcare efficiency but also significantly diminishes the well-being of professionals, contributing to burnout.

Consider this:

• 16 hours per week are spent on paperwork and admin by healthcare professionals
• 1 out of every 5 days are dedicated to post-consultation paperwork and referencing HCPCS codes for insurance companies
• In the US, $600B is squandered on inefficient admin spend and overhead for healthcare each year — accounting for 30% of total health spend

Meanwhile, the AI era has officially arrived with the last several years seeing remarkable developments in large language models (LLMs) like OpenAI’s GPT4 or Mistral AI’s 8x7B. In the new AI-led tech cycle, healthcare’s administrative burden has emerged as a key area where generative AI powered agents (or copilots) can make a significant and immediate impact on physicians. But don’t take it from us — see Bill Gates’ take here.

This leads us to our latest investment in Nabla, the French founded startup alleviating administrative burden for healthcare practitioners with its ambient AI assistant Nabla Copilot. Having invested in companies like Owkin, Resilience, Inato, Sidecar Health and many more, we’re big believers in the potential of AI and cutting edge technologies to transform the healthcare industry. By leading its $24M Series B, we’re thrilled to back a company that we believe will be at the heart of new medical AI applications as Nabla expands across European and US healthcare systems. Here’s why.

The challenges faced by millions of healthcare professionals in a $1.6T Market

When doctors provide care, they must simultaneously satisfy 3 different audiences: patients, other doctors and insurance providers. Clinicians agree that managing the electronic health record (EHR), largely designed for insurers rather than patients, is the single most burdensome aspect of care — with documentation adding an extra 6 hours per week of EHR work (on top of time spent with patients).

All healthcare professionals, including over 1M doctors and 5.3M nurses in the US, grapple with the meticulous documentation of consultations, emergency calls and reimbursement coding. With 900 US health insurance companies, 600K+ 911 calls a day, 34M annual remote telehealth visits and 30% of medical notes presently under coded — solving for documentation errors is crucial for this $1.6 trillion market.

In parallel, after a year of exploration, healthcare systems have readied genAI tools for integration. These advances promise to revolutionize healthcare, offering opportunities for improved diagnostics, personalized treatment plans and streamlined administrative processes. As these tools become more accessible and refined, the healthcare industry is on the verge of a transformative era, ready to harness the power of genAI for enhanced patient care and operational efficiency.

Enter Nabla — the Ultimate AI Solution for Physicians

With its AI-powered note generation capabilities, medical coding recognition, and EHR integrations, Nabla Copilot is an essential tool for physicians — enabling them to save time and focus on patient care. Providers claim the notes are remarkable for precision, with only 5% requiring adjustments.

However, clinical documentation is just the beginning. We believe Nabla has the potential to transform the way providers deliver care. Why?

The Solution: Nabla Copilot is the fastest autonomous clinical note generation tool with its LLM-based solution generating clinical notes in seconds from any kind of consultation and any specialty. Its “ready-to-use” product integrates seamlessly into doctors’ daily workflows via mobile, desktop, and API, recording any type of voice consultation to generate and categorize clinical notes.

Nabla’s strength lies in its strong defensible tech edge, combining open source with proprietary LLM and Speech-to-Text (STT) technologies built by former Facebook / Meta AI Research engineers. The company is also committed to continuous improvement with a valuable feedback loop with its engaged clinician community. Finally, Nabla’s investment in unique technology stacks, including the “Pseudonymizer” for added security and a privacy-centric approach (the company does not store data), distinguishes it from competitors.

The team: Nabla’s exceptional team understands clinicians’ pain points and has the deep, technical expertise needed to bring cutting edge AI and LLM technologies to the healthcare industry and best support practitioners shifting back to a patient-centric approach.

The company was founded in 2018 by serial entrepreneurs Alex Lebrun, Laurent Landowski, Martin Raison and Delphine Groll — many of which were key players in Meta’s AI research group in France, recognized as one of the most talented teams in the LLM space in the country. Prior to Nabla, Lebrun (co-founder & CEO) had founded and exited two AI startups: Virtuoz, Intelligent Virtual Agent, acquired by Nuance in 2013 and Wit.ai, AI platform for developers to build Siri-like conversational interface, acquired by Meta in 2015.

Nabla also has an all-star lineup of advisors, comprised of AI and medical experts including the godfather of AI, Yann LeCun; Dr. Megan Mahoney, Professor and Chair at UCSF Department of Family and Community Medicine; Dr. Haipeng (Mark) Zhang, Associate Program Director of the Clinical Informatics and Innovation Fellowship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital; and Dr. Andrew Lundquist, Chief Medical Officer of the Mankato Clinic.

The traction: The company experienced rapid growth since its March 2023 launch, with +20,000 providers having already adopted the solution. It also reported 3M consultations conducted through Nabla Copilot annually. In October, the company inked a deal with Permanente Medical Group (the physician division of Kaiser Permanente — one of the biggest health systems in the US) to enroll 10K doctors in Northern California. Importantly, Nabla is scalable with the capacity to cater to both small practices and large health systems and it has partnered with EHR platforms (like EPIC — one of the largest EHR’s in the US, covering 48% of hospitals bed in 2022) who are increasingly looking to embed AI solutions like Nabla, delivering smooth integrations, and streamlining workflows while also prioritizing privacy, accuracy and speed.

This positions Nabla’s AI solution as a leader in medical applications, offering precise code matching, automated drug order requests, enhanced information sharing among healthcare teams and valuable insights into patient symptom evolution.

Parting Thoughts

At Cathay Innovation, with the launch of Fund III (our latest €1B fund), we’ve committed to investing in outstanding entrepreneurs out to transform industries with a focus on 4 key sectors: healthcare, commerce, financial services, and mobility / energy. AI has massive potential in the healthcare industry and Nabla, with its strong tech, exceptional team and impressive early traction can very well make it a reality for millions of professionals — from clinics to health systems and independent doctors — across Europe, the US and the globe.