WELL Health Technologies Corp. (TSXV: WELL) subsidiary, WELL Ventures, introduced a new artificial intelligence-focused investment program to support the next generation of medical technology tools using artificial intelligence.
The WELL AI Investment Program will also consider investments in data protection and cybersecurity applications since this is an essential part of WELL’s platform. The program was announced on Wednesday.
WELL has already placed numerous investments in early-stage companies that provide tools (including AI) for healthcare providers in Canada, the US, and abroad through WELL Ventures.
WELL Ventures is already fully funded for making these investments directly from WELL’s overall treasury position. While there is no defined timeline for these investments, WELL intends to make several investments in 2023.
A few of these include early-stage digital health companies INSIG, Circle Medical, Phelix.ai, Pillway and Twig Fertility.
Read more: Elon Musk and other industry experts sign open letter urging temporary pause on AI development
Phelix.ai reduces repetitive tasks
One of the company’s prior investments, Phelix.ai, is an advanced healthcare automation tool that saves over 75 per cent of staff time spent on repetitive tasks associated with workflows related to electronic medical records.
It uses various technologies, including vision, optical character recognition, and natural language processing, to sort and triage incoming faxes, e-mails, and e-referrals.
Phelix’s virtual agents and chatbots can triage and action incoming requests by phone, text, or web chatbot, including bookings, voice notes, FAQ’s, and more. Moreover, Phelix can build custom pathways for outgoing checkpoints triggered by appointment time, status updates, or flagged events.
It enables asynchronous automation of eligibility checks, prior authorizations, claims processing, and patient invoicing behind the scenes.
Phelix brings several benefits to healthcare providers, including increased efficiency and improved patient care. By automating routine and time-consuming tasks, Phelix allows healthcare professionals to focus on more critical aspects of patient care.
Read more: Powerbridge Technologies integrates ChatGPT for online education services
WELL Ventures plans to make a minimum of 10 AI-related investments
WELL aims to achieve two primary objectives through The WELL AI Investment Program.
Firstly, it plans to make a minimum of 10 AI-related investments of at least $250,000 each in companies advancing healthcare applications and/or protecting data.
Secondly, each investor will have a strategic alliance agreement with WELL, allowing them to benefit from WELL’s healthcare ecosystem, which includes access to its health application ecosystem, and access to the over 23,000 provider network supported by WELL’s digital and services tools and the over 2,800 providers working internally in WELL’s own patient services businesses.
“What makes The WELL AI Investment Program unique, besides being the first healthcare centric AI investment program in Canada, is that WELL is not just looking to provide capital but also leverage its own products, distribution and significant size and scale to help advance the proliferation of the best AI inspired health focused technologies,” said Hamed Shahbazi, founder and CEO of WELL Health Technologies.
The WELL AI Investment Program will not only provide capital to investees but also offer extensive support from WELL’s ecosystem to develop, test, refine, secure, de-risk, and integrate the most promising AI technologies into the Canadian healthcare ecosystem at scale.
Furthermore, the program will give investees access to the over 23,000 care providers who use WELL’s apps.health ecosystem, which is operated by its provider Solutions Business Unit.
As a recognition of WELL’s longstanding work with digital health solution nonprofit, Canada Health Infoway (Infoway), Infoway will collaborate with WELL to help get it out to Canadian start-ups.
Infoway will provide guidance on security, privacy, interoperability, and other data standards to ensure that the resulting products and services meet pan-Canadian standards and effectively serve the needs of providers and patients.
.
Follow Joseph Morton on Twitter
joseph@mugglehead.com
