Nandini Roy Choudhury, writer
Brief news
- Amazon Web Services (AWS) and General Catalyst have formed a multi-year partnership to accelerate AI application development in healthcare, starting with Aidoc and Commure.
- The collaboration aims to address challenges in the healthcare industry, such as staff burnout and labor shortages, by leveraging AWS’s resources and expertise.
- General Catalyst, with a strong track record in digital health investments, believes this partnership will facilitate innovative solutions for health systems, enhancing their operational efficiency.
Detailed news
In their most recent effort to carve out a portion of the expanding artificial intelligence market in the healthcare industry, Amazon Web Services and General Catalyst, a venture capital firm, revealed on Monday that they have entered into a new relationship that will last for multiple years.
AWS’s services will be utilized by companies in the General Catalyst portfolio in order to facilitate the development and deployment of artificial intelligence applications for health systems in a more expedient manner. The first two businesses to take part in the initiative are going to be Aidoc, which uses artificial intelligence to improve medical imaging, and Commure, which uses AI to simplify workflows for providers.
No information regarding the financial arrangements was included in the release.
“It’s not going to move as fast as we hope,” Chris Bischoff, head of global health-care investing at General Catalyst, said in an interview with CNBC. “Without a strong partner like Amazon and AWS to stand alongside them, to co-develop and support these companies… it’s not going to move as fast as we hope.”
A number of factors, including staff burnout, growing labor shortages, and razor-thin margins, are impacting the health care systems in the United States. These difficulties frequently appear to be appealing for creative technology firms to tackle, particularly in light of the fact that the health-care business, which is worth multiple trillions of dollars, dangles the potential of enormous financial rewards.
Companies that are just starting out may find it challenging to break into the hospital industry because it is a highly regulated, technologically dated, and complex business. Through the utilization of resources such as processing capacity from Amazon Web Services (AWS), General Catalyst intends to assist its subsidiary firms in accelerating the process of development and going to market.
When it comes to health care, General Catalyst is no stranger to making significant changes.
The company has closed more than sixty digital health agreements since the year 2020, placing it in second place behind Gaingels and Alumni Ventures, according to a study that was published by PitchBook in December. In January of this year, General Catalyst startled the industry by revealing that its new company, the Health Assurance Transformation Company, intended to acquire a health system situated in Ohio. This was a move in venture capital that had never been done before.
The “deep understanding” that General Catalyst possesses of the financial and operational reality of health systems makes it an appealing partner for Amazon Web Services (AWS), according to Dan Sheeran, the general manager of Healthcare & Life Science at AWS, who spoke with CNBC. When Sheeran and Bischoff first met in London approximately nine months ago, they immediately began discussing the partnership that would take place between the two organizations.
Moreover, Amazon Web Services has a well-established position in the healthcare industry. According to a press release, the company provides more services that are unique to the health and life sciences than any other cloud provider. Additionally, the company signed other high-profile agreements with artificial intelligence companies such as GE HealthCare, Philips, and others in the previous year.
Despite the fact that the relationship between General Catalyst and Amazon Web Services will last for a number of years, new tools from Aidoc and Commure are scheduled to be released in 2025. For example, Aidoc is investigating the ways in which it may utilize the cloud to access data modalities in the fields of pathology, cardiology, genomics, and other different types of biological information.
Both Aidoc and Commure have proven a product-market fit, are operational, and are focusing on challenges that are a high priority for AWS customers. As a result, they were chosen to initiate the collaboration because of these characteristics.
“GC has spent a lot of time thinking about how health systems can transform themselves, and we recognize that it is not going to be through 1,000 companies, and we need solutions that are really enterprise grade,” Bischoff continued. “We are looking for solutions that are really enterprise grade.” Amazon is on board with our mission, which is why we are beginning with these two brands.
The organizations have expressed their belief that the relationship between General Catalyst and Amazon Web Services (AWS) will help serve as a way to address the growing need for innovative solutions in the market, despite the fact that only the partnership is in its early stages.
Sheeran stated that “health system leaders who want to realize the benefits of AI now have an easier way to accomplish that as a result of this new development.”
Source : CNBC news
