AI in health care: green and red investors among startups

While artificial intelligence becomes a fashionable word in almost all healthcare fields, investors are increasingly difficult to distinguish which are really worthy of media.

This is why, during a round table Thursday among the venture capital of the Medcity Invest Digital Health Conference in Dallas, this question was asked: what measures do you want the founders highlighting more often when they ponte, and what is a red flag that makes you question the validity of their technology? The session was moderate by Neil Patel, business manager at Redesign Health.

Here is what they had to say:

What the founders should highlight

For Maddie Hilal, an investor at OAK HC / FT, it is important that startups have strong retention of net income, which measures the capacity of a company to maintain income from existing customers.

“If we do not necessarily have visibility on these harshs [profit and loss] Impact proof points, but your existing customers increases its contracts, they are clearly excited, “she said.” They see the value. “”

Another investor is looking for companies with high quality data.

“If you have better better quality data, you can solve problems much better, [with] higher predictability of models. I think we are looking for this. What is this set of owner data? What are you formed on? Who and in what environment was it deployed? “Said Rohit Nuwal, partner at Telus Global Ventures.

Vickram Pradhan, vice-president of Sopris Capital, wants to see AI startups with a good clinical impact.

“People are asking for a clinical impact in a way that they may not ask for five years ago,” he said on the panel. “I think the reason is that some of the reimbursement and financial and payment mechanisms in health care are a bit of a black box. … But if you know that what you do has a really significant clinical impact, it’s a good enough basis for knowing that it will have value, and someone will want to pay for that.”

Red Flags of AI

Many health care startups will use AI fashionable words in their bridges, but do not save their claims with solid data and validating the measures, according to Hilal. It is a major red flag, she said.

Nuwal echoes Hilal’s comments.

“I think there are a lot of throttles where it is essentially a problem of automatic learning that people try to solve,” he said. “I don’t hold it against them, the founders do a difficult job to collect funds in this environment, so you have to play the game a little. But I think the simple fact of being authentic on the problem you solve goes very far.”

For Pradhan, a red flag has “Squishhy” income measures. It is important that companies are realistic with investors.

“I think it is very common to see today, especially with some of these AI companies that make many drivers who speak:” We have 10 million contracted income “. And then when you somehow go a layer or two deeper, it’s like: “Oh, that’s what it will look like in the third year.” … It makes a little more difficult to reach a solid base of truth, “he said.