Pathway raises $1.3 million
Medical knowledge startup Pathway Medical has raised $1.3 million to scale its clinical decision support platform. Investors participating in the round include Panache Ventures, Amplify Capital, Desjardins Venture Capital, BoxOne Ventures, Formentera Capital, and several healthcare entrepreneurs.
Founded in 2018, Pathway helps clinicians and patients access medical information more effectively throughout the care journey. The Pathway mobile app, which is currently available directly to healthcare professionals on the Apple App Store and soon on the Google Play Store, uses natural language processing and machine learning to provide evidence-based answers to clinical questions for the diagnosis and treatment of patients. The company also revealed that it has released an enterprise version of its clinical decision support technology.
The startup is looking to alleviate the burden of information overload on clinicians, which leads many doctors to depression and burnout according to a JAMA Network Open study. According to Pathway, the recent explosion in medical knowledge means that a general practitioner would now need to read 21 hours a day to keep up with primary care literature alone. Pathway solves this problem with interactive “pathways” that guide health care professionals step-by-step to diagnostic approaches and treatments based on sound evidence.
“We’re thankful for our investors’ continued support in our efforts to democratize medical knowledge and advance evidence-based care. This investment will help us scale our operations and expand the functionality of our software to support additional use cases. Most notably, we’re augmenting our platform to help hospitals disseminate their own guidelines and pathways more efficiently.” – Pathway co-founder and CEO Jonathan Hershon St-Jean.
“Pathway fills an unmet need for clinicians to have easy, user-friendly access to clinical guideline recommendations. The status quo alternative, which involves jumping through hoops to find guidelines and distill their essential message, is clearly suboptimal.” – Dr. Jonathan Afilalo, a cardiologist and associate professor in the Department of Medicine at McGill University.
“The complexity of providing evidence-based care is increasing along with the accelerating pace of information generation and consensus development in the medical community. Clinical tools that were built from the digitization of the medical textbook are ill-equipped to keep physicians informed and up-to-date today. This contributes to the fact that physicians have the highest rate of burnout, depression, and suicide of any profession. Healthcare professionals love Pathway because we understand their needs, and reduce cognitive load by delivering concise, quality clinical guidance in an efficient, easy manner.” – Pathway Medical co-founder and Chief Medical Officer Dr. Louis Mullie.
“Amplify Capital is excited to add Pathway to our portfolio. Pathway is another perfect example of an impact investment that solves for rapid democratization of access to quality health care to populations that need it most. Pathway’s machine learning platform offers a unique proprietary decision-support product that can improve health outcomes quickly and at scale. Jonathan and his team are poised to grow the Company rapidly and we’re excited to support them to achieve their growth goals.”
– Kathryn Wortsman, Managing Partner, Amplify Capital
