Elaborate lands $10M in Seed funding to simplify lab results for patients and offer insights about their health

The US healthcare system is getting increasingly complex by the day. Getting access to your health records outside of the doctor’s office has further exacerbated the problem. Even more challenging is making sense of the health data and translating them into understandable and simple language that patients can understand.

For example, doctors know that out-of-range lab results aren’t always a cause for concern, but about half of the patients with out-of-range lab results call their physician for help. Understanding the challenges faced by patients, one health tech startup has built the solution for this problem.

Enter Elaborate, a New York-based startup that has developed the tool that doctors and their staff use to deliver contextualized, action-oriented lab results to patients. By providing context to these lab results, Elaborate helps reduce unnecessary back-and-forth, while empowering patients to take charge of their health.

Elaborate was founded in 2021 by Nicole Bocskocksy, a health-tech executive with early and founding experience at both Oscar and Parsley Health, with teammates. The startup is also backed by investors from fast-growing, successful health and consumer businesses including Pillpack, GoodRx, Behance, Flatiron School, Advantia Health, and Greenhouse.

To further grow its team and deliver a more deeply embedded practitioner experience for select EMRs, Elaborate announced today it has raised $10 million in Seed funding led by Tusk Venture Partners, with participation from Founder Collective, Company Ventures, Bling Ventures, and Arkitekt Ventures, as well as renowned investors such as Elliot Cohen (Pillpack, Amazon), Sara Wajnberg (Oscar), Scott Belsky (Behance, Adobe), and Sean and Peter Glass, MD (Advantia).

In conjunction with the funding, Elaborate also announced that Jordan Nof, Managing Partner and Co-Founder at Tusk Venture Partners, will join its Board of Directors.

Today, over 44% of patients getting routine bloodwork will receive at least one out-of-range value that is not clinically relevant or an immediate cause for concern but causes the patient to call or message their practitioner for clarification. In the past, clinical practices have withheld results from patients to ease the burden of panicked patient calls and messages. However, the recent 21st Century Cures Act mandates the electronic release of all medical records to patients, including test results, without delay. While this mandate ensures patients have access to their own health data, it has unintended consequences for a doctor’s workload, skyrocketing the number of questions patients have about their lab results.

Since its inception two years ago, Elaborate seamlessly integrates with a doctor’s existing electronic medical records (EMRs) to deliver patients personalized and contextualized lab results that offer insights about their health and action items in real-time. By providing contextualized health data, Elaborate reduces unnecessary back-and-forth between patient and doctor, while giving patients greater agency over their health.

“When patients receive lab results without context, they consistently do 2 things: start Googling and then reach out to their doctor in panic after they’ve diagnosed themselves with something new,” said Nicole Bocskocksy, CEO and Founder of Elaborate. “Regulation requiring the direct release of health data has the right intent, but fails to consider the extra work it creates for doctors and the poor patient experience. I’ve witnessed firsthand how doctors are bombarded by unnecessary patient questions following routine bloodwork. They spend hours of their personal time answering the same basic questions over and over again, knowing they’ll be doing it again the next time the patient gets their results. I created Elaborate with the vision of our software acting as the doctor’s trusted assistant, offering a credible, clinically-backed explanation to the patient to give doctors desperately needed relief from these administrative tasks.”

To deliver this new patient experience, Elaborate’s technology leverages underlying clinical guidelines sourced from reputable sources such as UpToDate and PubMed, as well as a medical advisory board of clinicians with years of experience at institutions like Mt. Sinai and John Hopkins. Additionally, it offers clients the option to incorporate custom protocols to fit their clinical approach. Using Elaborate’s bespoke technology, doctors reduce their administrative workload by an average of 32 mins every day, freeing up more time for in-person patient care, education, and diagnosis.

“When Nicole first came to me with the concept, I thought it would be impossible to capture the clinical nuance when interpreting these reports,” shares Amy Esposito, MD, member of Elaborate’s medical advisory board and Medical Director at Reside Health. “But what the team at Elaborate has been able to do for their clients, including my practice, is nothing short of remarkable. Because they’re plugged into the EMR, they use all of the information in the patient’s chart to summarize the key findings and help them schedule a billable follow-up visit if necessary. Plus they customize everything our clinical protocols for us. Our team has saved a ton of time and frustration, but even more importantly, our patients love the ease and clarity of the results.”