Israeli healthtech startup MDI Health launches with $6M in funding to prevent medication-related problems using personalized AI medication

Recent studies of medical errors have estimated that medication errors may account for as many as 251,000 deaths annually in the United States (U.S)., making medical errors the third leading cause of death, according to a 2017 report from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In addition, medication-related errors also cost the US $528 billion every year.

With patients taking seven types of medication or more, 82% are at risk of an adverse drug event. Therefore, it is no surprise that in the USA alone there are 275,689 preventable deaths a year due to the negative impact of taking multiple medications.

Comprehensive medication reviews (CMRs) undertaken by clinicians are effective in reducing these drug-related events, but the harsh reality is that most patients do not receive CMRs because it is still a manual process taking hours per patient. While positive strides have been made in recent years to address this issue with 1:1 drug interaction systems, these only offer a partial solution focused on alerts and adherence. Now, one startup is aiming to combat the increasing number of deaths and costs associated with adverse drug events.

Today, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based health tech startup MDI Health announced the launch of its breakthrough end-to-end AI platform for personalized medication with a $6 million seed round to solve the fourth-largest cause of world deaths, ‘medication-related problems.’ The company also announces the first results of live clinical trials in Israel, and the launch of new pilots in the USA with one of the top three largest health insurers and top five largest health systems in the country.

MDI Health will use the new capital infusion to achieve its objective of being the mainstream medication management system of the future. The round, which came from a group of venture capital funds, was led by Hanaco Ventures and joined by existing investors such as Fresh Fund, Jumpspeed VC, Basad Ventures, and Arc Impact.

This brings its total funding to date to $7M. The investment will be used to further optimize its end-to-end AI personalized medication treatment platform, as well as enabling it to scale up the business to support its aggressive growth in 2022.

Founded at the beginning of 2019 by CEO Avishai Ben-Tovim and Dr. Dorit Nahlieli, MDI’s personalized AI technology takes medication management to the next level, providing the world’s first full solution to adverse drug events. Not only automating CMRs so clinicians can complete them in minutes instead of hours, but also enabling them to make comprehensive and informed decisions on prescriptions based on multi-drug interactions, individual medical history, lifestyle, and other key patient-specific factors. As tested recently in clinical trials at Hadassah University Hospital in Israel, MDI Health’s AI platform presented up to 40% more life-saving patient insights than the clinical pharmacists had identified.

MDI’s end-to-end medication treatment platform also empowers clinicians in providing comprehensive medication reviews in minutes instead of hours. The solution checks, in real-time, for many-to-many drug interactions, assures patients have exactly the medications they need, and enables health payers and at-risk providers to improve patient outcomes, medication safety, prevent hospitalizations, and avoid adverse drug events, which costs $528B in the US every year.

The new MDI Health AI platform also represents a dramatic new lifeline in the quest to reduce expenditure in the global healthcare industry, with annual excess care costs associated with these events, estimated at $528 billion in the USA alone. By significantly reducing adverse drug events, the AI platform can save the healthcare sector billions in costs associated with ER visits and hospital stays.

Dr. Dorit Nahlieli, Co-founder and CSO, MDI Healthcare comments: “As a drug safety expert, I’ve been trying for decades to better manage patient risk, especially when it comes to patients taking multiple medications. It is a tragedy that so many people die each year when we know CMRs are an effective solution, yet clinicians like me don’t have the tools to automate such a time-consuming process and customize patient’s prescriptions with the quality they deserve.

“The main solutions available focus on 1:1 interactions and adherence, leading to partial analyses, laborious processes, and a lack of standardization in terms of the outcome,” she continues. “In contrast, MDI’s novel AI technology enables multi-drug analyses featuring patient-specific lifestyle data to generate reliable CMRs within minutes and at scale, meaning significantly more patients get improved quality of care and lives are saved.”

Avishai Ben-Tovim, CEO and Co-Founder of MDI Health, adds: “We believe this is a watershed moment in the democratization of healthcare in the US, making high-quality personalized medication treatment accessible to all. Consider us an AI clinical pharmacist, empowering clinicians to be able to perform more medication reviews while maintaining the highest standards. We give clinicians all the tools they need to find the best balance between efficacy of the treatment and risks of the medications for each patient individually, at mass-scale.”

Pasha Romanovski, Co-Founding Partner of Hanaco Ventures, comments, “MDI Health is on an essential mission to democratize healthcare services and enable healthcare providers to save the lives of millions through its end-to-end platform. Following the results from the clinical trial with Hadassah Medical Center, we are excited to support this extremely talented team on its venture.”