Digital Owl, a provider of AI-powered medical claim analysis software, today emerged from stealth with $6.5 million. The company plans to use the funding, a seed round, to expand its workforce and further develop its technology platform.
In health care, the processes of underwriting and claims analysis are labor-intensive and error-prone. Claim adjusters and underwriters are required to read and carefully parse hundreds of documents per case. Each year, the insurance market invests an estimated more than $3 billion in work hours devoted to collating and summarizing medical records.
Digital Owl — which aims to solve these challenges — was founded in 2018 by brothers Yuval Man, a lawyer by training, and Amit Man, who specializes in AI. The idea sprung up at a family dinner, according to Yuval Man.
“We talked as usual about how the past week was. I shared what I was doing in the office as a tort lawyer, which primarily involved parsing hundreds of pages of documents to assess medical damage,” Yuval Man told VentureBeat via email. “Amit replied that it was insane that this work was still done manually and not via artificial intelligence. I rejected the idea and said a trained professional was a must because the work requires skills, precise judgment, and professional expertise. The following Sunday, I was going through medical documents in the office yet again, and realized that Amit was right. We opened the company the next day.”
Using natural language processing, Digital Owl extracts information from hundreds to thousands of pages of electronic medical records. The data is presented chronologically, allowing users to search and filter by condition, date, body part, body system, and provider. The complete history is contained within a “smart” and “dynamic” PDF. Every condition, date, and entry is clickable, taking users to the source of the information in the record.
The global market for big data analytics in health care was valued at $16.87 billion in 2017 and is projected to reach $67.82 billion by 2025, according to a recent report from Allied Market Research. It’s believed that health care organizations’ implementation of big data analytics might lead to a more than 25% reduction in annual costs in the coming years. Better diagnosis and disease predictions, enabled by AI and analytics, can lead to cost reduction by decreasing hospital readmission rates, among other factors.
“Leveraging advanced natural language processing, Digital Owl has built a unique proprietary engine that addresses a pressing need from insurers to better predict risk and claims,” Nicole Priel, managing director at Ibex, a Digital Owl investor, said in a statement. “Digital Owl removes the friction from underwriting and claims analysis, allowing providers to replace a lengthy, manual, and error-prone process with automation and accuracy. We are thankful to partner with them on this journey.”
Beyond Ibex, Fusion LA, Menora Mivtachim, and Mobileye founder Amnon Shashua participated in Digital Owl’s latest fundraising round. The company currently employs 41 people across offices in Israel and the U.S.
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