Bionic Health plans to bring AI into preventive health care, beginning with a clinic where people can receive assessments, tests and personalized insights based on their results. The Durham, North Carolina, startup raised $3 million in seed funding to develop the service, which combines human doctors with AI built on GPT-4 and other language and machine learning models.
A clinic built around prevention
The first version of Bionic Health is intended for people seeking preventive health services, rather than treatment for issues such as chronic pain or a virus. Patients will undergo bloodwork and other diagnostics, with their results monitored and used to shape individual insights.
That focus gives the company a starting point for applying AI in health care while it works out how the technology should be used. The company describes its offering as an “AI health clinic,” but its early service is designed to support clinical evaluation, not to replace the broader work of a doctor.
Bionic Health’s first clinic will also function as a place to train and refine its AI. Human doctors will participate and provide feedback as the company learns where the system can be useful. Co-founder Dr. Jared Pelo is the clinic’s first doctor.
Doctors remain part of the process
The initial patients are being onboarded from a waitlist. The service will cost $250 per month, covering regular assessments and tests as well as diagnostic services based on those assessments.
Co-founder and CEO Robbie Allen says AI-assisted care is meant to help clinicians with evaluation tasks. The company’s stated aim is to improve the efficiency and accuracy of diagnosis and treatment processes. In practice, that means the AI is being developed alongside clinicians who can assess its work and offer feedback.
Allen sees a longer-term opportunity to extend the technology into more parts of doctor-patient care. He points to shortages of general practitioners and specialists, and difficulty getting appointments, as pressures that could make automation more relevant. He also imagines technology taking on an initial role in specialty care by drawing on information across specialties to produce insights.
Funding and a track record in AI
The seed round included IDEA Fund Partners, Studio VC, Alumni Ventures, Tweener Fund, AI Operator’s Fund, and Operator.VC. Allen said the original target was $2 million, but investor interest was strong enough for the company to raise more.
Both founders have experience building technology companies in AI and health care. Allen previously founded Automated Insights, which created prose from data and prompts. The Associated Press invested in and used that company’s technology to produce hundreds of articles, and Automated Insights is now owned by Vista Equity.
Pelo founded iScribes, an “ambient documentation” company focused on health care. Nuance acquired it, and Microsoft later acquired Nuance. Pelo worked at Microsoft as chief clinical product officer before leaving to start Bionic Health with Allen, who had served on iScribes’ board.
How far should AI go in clinical care?
AI has potential applications across health care, including administrative work, drug discovery, pathology, robotics and clinical interactions. But using AI in clinical roles raises concerns about errors and their consequences.
Alexandre Lebrun, co-founder of health care AI startup Nabla, argues that the risk of a model being wrong is too serious for clinical use. Nabla’s Copilot, released earlier that month, focuses on administrative assistance rather than clinical advice for clinicians and patients.
Allen sees AI’s role as something that can develop over time as the technology improves and health care demand continues to grow. He said early access to GPT-4 changed his and Pelo’s thinking about automated doctor-patient interactions, citing gains in speed and accuracy. The disagreement reflects a central question for Bionic Health: how to make use of AI’s capabilities while keeping clinical judgment and feedback in the process.