Healthleap Raises $38M to Expand AI Hospital Risk Screening

Healthleap has raised $38 million to expand an AI platform that analyses hospital records and flags patients who may need closer clinical review. The financing includes an $8 million seed round co-led by Sequoia Capital and First Round Capital and a $30 million Series A led by Hummingbird Ventures.

Founded in South Africa in 2022 by siblings Jemima and Josiah Meyer, the company originally built a clinical nutrition tool for dietitians. It later broadened its focus to software that screens hospitalised patients for conditions that may not be identified early, including malnutrition and delirium.

Healthleap combines clinical notes with structured data

Healthleap connects to a hospital’s electronic health record system and analyses both structured information, such as laboratory results, vital signs, and weight, and details in clinicians’ written notes. Those notes can include references to poor appetite, recent weight loss, muscle loss or difficulty swallowing.

The extracted information is combined with risk models to identify patients who may warrant additional review. Healthleap says the system does not diagnose patients. Instead, it writes risk scores into existing clinical workflows and provides care teams with additional information about patient trends.

The platform is currently deployed in more than 50 hospitals and screens for conditions including malnutrition and delirium. Healthleap has also developed programs addressing aspiration pneumonia, pressure ulcers and the risk of readmission for congestive heart failure, which the company says are undergoing further clinical validation.

Malnutrition remains difficult to identify in hospitals

Malnutrition provided an early use case because it can be missed during hospital care despite being associated with poorer outcomes. Published research has documented substantial rates of malnutrition among hospitalised patients, while more recent research has examined its relationship with longer stays and other adverse outcomes.

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has also examined the issue, reviewing approaches to diagnosing and treating malnutrition in hospitalised adults.

Healthleap expands across major hospital systems

CEO Josiah Meyer said Healthleap has grown from three hospital partners to more than 50 over the past year, with customers including Penn Medicine, Cedars-Sinai, Intermountain, Houston Methodist and Emory Healthcare. He also said revenue increased more than tenfold during the same period, although the company did not disclose a figure.

Healthleap sells three-year contracts priced partly according to a hospital’s licensed bed count and also uses outcome-based pricing. At the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, the company says its malnutrition program produced $23.8 million in annualised financial impact, including $6.3 million from additional reimbursement and $17.5 million attributed to shorter hospital stays.

The startup plans to use the new funding for engineering, product development, sales and customer success as it expands the number of conditions its platform can screen for. Meyer said Healthleap ultimately wants to support more than 40 major conditions and extend its technology beyond hospitals into outpatient and home care.