Israeli healthtech startup Sweetch raises $20M for its AI-powered engagement platform to help people with chronic conditions

Sweetch is an engagement platform that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to significantly increase individuals’ adherence to essential health promotion, disease prevention, and disease management recommendations, in a highly personalized and scalable way.

Sweetch makes it possible for medical teams to remotely monitor, follow, manage and optimize intervention in COVID-19 positive patients with chronic diseases including diabetes, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and obesity.

Today, the Tel Aviv, Israel-based Sweetch announced it has closed a $20 million Series A round of funding led by Entrée Capital. The round was joined by Tal Capital, Netherlands-based impact investor Noaber, Brazil-based Kortex Ventures, and Insurtech VC FinTLV Ventures, as well as existing investors Philips, OurCrowd, and Qure Ventures.

Sweetch will use the funding proceeds to accelerate global expansion and further the development of its behavioral science technology that helps people achieve their health goals by sending them the right message in the right tone, time, and real-world context. To date, Sweetch is the only behavioral science platform that provides messages to patients based on both AI and EI (emotional intelligence).

In a clinical trial conducted at Johns Hopkins University, Sweetch’s fully automated intervention significantly improved clinical outcomes for patients with early-stage diabetes, including lowering HbA1c levels, a diabetes biomarker for blood sugar.

“90 percent of healthcare costs in the US are attributable to chronic diseases, which afflict 50 percent of the population. We need a scalable solution to provide better care at lower costs. This seemingly contradictory statement can be achieved through technology like Sweetch,” said Dr. Doron Dinstein, Venture Partner at Entrée Capital. “Sweetch’s digital therapeutic platform provides sustainable behavior changes and has been shown to significantly impact people’s lives. We see the company radically improving the economics of healthcare.”

Founded in 2013 by Dan Lichtenfeld, Dana Chanan, and Yossi Bahagon, the Sweetch mobile intervention program is being used around the world as an effective method for achieving sustainable engagement and improved clinical outcomes across various dimensions of chronic disease management. In a clinical trial conducted at Johns Hopkins University’s Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism, Sweetch’s fully automated intervention achieved 86 percent retention and significantly improved clinical outcomes for patients with early-stage diabetes, including lowering HbA1c levels, a diabetes biomarker for blood sugar.

Sweetch provides a hyper-personalized, scalable, and cost-effective solution to increase patient adherence across various aspects of disease management and improve clinical outcomes for people with chronic conditions. The company’s proprietary JITAI technology converts millions of data points originating from an individual’s smartphone and other connected devices into hyper-personalized recommendations in just the right tone, time, and real-world context to catalyze behavioral change as part of their daily routine. JITAI technology can be used across multiple chronic conditions, including cardiometabolic diseases, autoimmune disorders, and oncology.

“We believe that every person with chronic conditions should have a trusted voice empowering them to reach their micro-goals every step of the way throughout their unique health journey,” said Yoni Nevo, CEO of Sweetch. “The rapidly evolving remote health era is missing a critical component: effective continuous relationships between pharmaceutical companies, device manufacturers, payers, healthcare providers, and each of their individual patients. Sweetch provides this missing critical capability at scale to outsmart chronic conditions, together.”