“The fax machine still exists, but only in healthcare,” said Dr. Kaushal Kulkarni, a neuro-ophthalmologist. “Someone goes out and retrieves records from the hospital basement and proceeds to put 1,000 pages—basically fax records—on my desk. ‘Here you go, doctor. Have fun.’ And now it’s my job, in the middle of a busy clinic where patients are already waiting half an hour or more, to flip through 1,000 pages and try to figure out what’s going on with the person in front of me who needs help.”
When Kulkarni met Nishant Hari—who was trying to solve the problem as cofounder of AI-driven health information management startup Predoc—the two connected. Kulkarni first became a user of Predoc, then an angel investor, and ultimately, a cofounder himself.
“This problem is happening right now, probably in hundreds or thousands of doctors’ offices,” Kulkarni said. “And you can imagine—people always ask, why am I waiting at the doctor so long? It’s issues like this that are getting in the way.”
Predoc—which uses AI to automate medical records management—has raised $30 million in seed and Series A backing, Fortune has exclusively learned. The round was led by Base10 Partners, with participation from Northzone, Eniac, ERA, and angel investors from Flatiron Health, Thirty Madison, and Blackstone. The company was founded in 2022 by Hari, Kulkarni, Dr. Priya Mehta, and Alex Daniels.
“Within six months we were doing about half a million dollars in revenue, and that’s when we got preempted for our seed round,” Hari said. “Fast forward to today, we’ve got about 35 customers that rely on our retrieval and analysis products. In many cases, we’ve become the fully outsourced solution, replacing their internal legacy teams.”
In healthcare, documents aren’t just documents—they’re vehicles of information that substantially affect a patient’s possible outcomes. Dani London, an investor at Base10, told Fortune via email that health information management, or HIM, is a fragmented market that’s “massive and severely underserved.”
“For context, the top HIM service providers only serve the top 10% of the market—yet the five largest service providers do about $2 billion in revenue annually,” London wrote. “Much of this market wasn’t addressable because of the high overhead of legacy providers. Others were left with manual solutions or in-house teams spending hours on email, phone, and fax. Predoc’s approach effectively unlocks the other 90% of the market. Not only does this create a huge opportunity for Predoc, but it also allows care coordinators and health admin teams across the ecosystem to focus on high-impact work.”
Hari said that the company isn’t looking to supplant physicians: “We’re not one of those companies that thinks tech and AI will completely replace doctors,” he told Fortune. “One of our core values is to amplify clinical expertise—to help physicians get to their decisions quicker. We’re not looking to replace clinical judgment.”
Kulkarni—who still practices medicine “one-and-a-half to two days per week”—says this is about freeing up doctors, unencumbering their administrative lives.
“People think the role of technology is to help diagnose the patient, but that’s not the issue,” he said. “Diagnosing is the easiest part of medicine. That’s what doctors love to do. The hard part is everything before and after. The role of technology is to remove all the burdensome administrative tasks now put on doctors—and allow them to just do their actual job.”
See you tomorrow,
Allie Garfinkle
X: @agarfinks
Email: [email protected]
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Venture Deals
– Fermi America, an Amarillo, Texas-based developer of an AI private grid campus, raised $100 million in Series C funding. Macquarie Group led the round.
– Phasecraft, a Bristol, U.K.-based quantum algorithms company, raised $34 million in Series B funding. Playground Global, Plural, and Novo Nordisk led the round and was joined by LocalGlobe, AlbionVC, and Parkwalk Advisors.
– Loman AI, an Austin, Texas-based Voice AI platform for restaurants, raised $3.5 million in seed funding. Next Coast Ventures led the round and was joined by TenOneTen Ventures and Antler.
Private Equity
– Apheon acquired Cain Food, a Dallas, Texas-based manufacturer of clean label ingredients for industrial bakeries. Financial terms were not disclosed.
– Frontline Road Safety, backed by Bain Capital, acquired Peek Pavement Marketing, a Columbus, Ga.-based pavement marking and road safety services. Financial terms were not disclosed.
