A healthcare AI company which claims to be used by more than 60% of NHS GPs will this week announce a funding injection led by one of Wall Street’s most prominent investors.
Sky News has learnt that Heidi, which promises to reduce doctors’ workloads by removing layers of bureaucracy from their daily tasks, will unveil a $65m (£48m) Series B fundraising which will value the company at $465m (£346m).
The round has been led by Point72 Private Investments, part of the investment empire of Steven Cohen, the billionaire asset management tycoon.
Existing investors including Blackbird, Headline and Latitude – which is part of the London-based venture capital group LocalGlobe – are also participating in the funding boost.
The raise brings the total sum of funding injected into Heidi since it was founded by a trio of Australian healthcare professionals to nearly $100m.
Heidi says its technology is now used to support more than 340,000 patient consultations each week in the UK.
It adds that organisations utilising it include One Care and Modality Partnership, the NHS’s largest GP “super-partnership”.
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Heidi is also running pilot programmes with NHS Trusts across the North West London Acute Provider Collaborative – a group of hospitals serving a local population of approximately 2.2 million people – as well as One LSC, a collective of five NHS Trusts in Lancashire and South Cumbria which serves nearly 1.8 million people.
The company says its administrative aids have already saved British doctors 3 million hours annually by cutting paperwork and other bureaucracy.
It automates tasks such as clinical documentation, evidence search, and follow-up communications with patients.
More widely, Heidi claims to have supported more than 70 million patient consultations globally over the last 18 months, returning more than 18 million hours to frontline clinicians by streamlining administrative functions.
“It is untenable that healthcare demand continues to rise while clinical time continues to shrink,” Dr Thomas Kelly, the CEO and co-founder of Heidi, said.
“Building a sustainable healthcare system requires expanding clinical capacity without compromising clinician wellbeing or patient safety.”
The new funding will be used to accelerate Heidi’s expansion in the US, UK and Canada, including doubling its workforce in Britain to meet growing NHS demand.
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“What we’re witnessing with Heidi in the UK’s NHS isn’t just fast growth, it’s a clinician-led movement,” said Ferdi Sigona, a partner at Latitude.
“When doctors themselves are championing a tool so passionately – from individual practices to major NHS Trusts serving millions of patients – we know we’re backing a company with universal appeal across healthcare.”
Alongside the funding round, Heidi is also expected to announce the appointment of Paul Williamson, a former executive at the fintech Plaid, as chief revenue officer, and former Microsoft chief medical officer Dr Simon Kos to the same role.
