HealthLeap, a South African health tech firm focused on the global healthcare industry with a focus on the United States, has come out of stealth to announce a $1.1 million pre-seed round headed by deep tech investor Fifty Years. Dietitians in hospitals can use the startup as a clinical aid.
HealthLeap plans to use the pre-seed funding to hire software engineers and data scientists to continue developing smart solutions to aid physicians in the prevention and treatment of hospital malnutrition.
Why The Investors Invested
“It’s a tragedy that so many die needlessly because they don’t get the nutrition they need while in the hospital,” said Fifty Years founding partner Seth Bannon in a statement. “By addressing hospital malnutrition in a scalable way using machine learning, HealthLeap will save dietitians time, save healthcare providers money, and most importantly save patients’ lives. That’s easy to get excited about.”
HealthLeap is still in the early stages of revenue generation. According to the company’s preliminary price analysis, 97 percent of its target users are willing to pay a monthly subscription fee out of pocket for NutriLeap access.
Investing in “the next generation of founders who will transform the world for the better” is important to Fifty Years, HealthLeap’s main investor, which recently raised $90 million for its third and newest fund. That’s why HealthLeap was backed by the VC, which is made up of 44 unicorn entrepreneurs.
A Look At What The Startup Does
HealthLeap claims to be developing artificial intelligence-assisted tools for healthcare practitioners to better treat hospital malnutrition.
Meyer created the initial version of the research-backed productivity tool to assist her coworkers in performing computations, making judgments based on the most recent clinical data, and treating more patients in less time.
Read also Nigerian Credit-recovery Fintech Bfree Lands $1.7m From Local Investors
The procudure was standardized with her brother, CEO Josiah Meyer, and CTO Ray Botha, and HealthLeap was launched in April 2021.
“As a clinical dietitian, I saw many patients suffer due to malnutrition being insufficiently addressed in hospitals, partially because clinical dietitians are understaffed, and other clinicians are not adequately trained in clinical nutrition,” clinical dietitian and chief research officer Jemima Meyer said.
“I wanted to help dietitians with the complex clinical calculations that they constantly tailor to each patient case and their changing medical condition.”
NutriLeap is the company’s AI-based clinical assistant solution. Its HIPAA-compliant mobile app provides automated clinical calculations and research-backed suggestions to hospital dietitians (and, soon, other healthcare practitioners with whom they interact). This allows them to estimate accurate, tailored dietary needs for patients much more quickly.
“We are predicting optimal treatment steps to ensure patients receive adequate nutrition,” said CTO Botha. “The decisions clinicians make inside our app combined with data from other sources, including an EHR integration, will further improve our predictions.”
In a limited beta test, 50 dietitians utilize the app. According to the firm, there are around 1,000 nutritionists, pharmacists, and physicians on the waiting list.
HealthLeap not only assists clinical dietitians and other healthcare providers (hospital pharmacists, physicians, and nurses) in identifying patients who are at risk of malnutrition, but it also recommends daily amounts of oral, tube, and IV feeding based on the patient’s ever-changing needs. The company stated that it intends to assist dietitians in treating patients even after they have been discharged.
HealthLeap health HealthLeap health
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer who has advised startups across Africa on issues such as startup funding (Venture Capital, Debt financing, private equity, angel investing etc), taxation, strategies, etc. He also has special focus on the protection of business or brands’ intellectual property rights ( such as trademark, patent or design) across Africa and other foreign jurisdictions.
He is well versed on issues of ESG (sustainability), media and entertainment law, corporate finance and governance.
He is also an award-winning writer