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Israel Krush and Rom Cohen first met in an AI course at Cornell Tech, where they bonded over a shared desire to apply AI voice technologies to the healthcare sector. Specifically, they sought to automate the routine messages and calls that often lead to administrative burnout, like calls about scheduling, prescription refills and searching through physician directories.<\/p>\n
Several years after graduating, Krush and Cohen productized their ideas with Hyro<\/a>, which uses AI to facilitate text and voice conversations across the web, call centers and apps between healthcare organizations and their clients. Hyro today announced that it raised $20 million in a Series B round led by Liberty Mutual, Macquarie Capital and Black Opal, bringing the startup\u2019s total raised to $35 million.<\/p>\n Krush says that the new cash will be put toward expanding Hyro\u2019s go-to-market teams and R&D.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we searched for a domain that would benefit from transforming these technologies most, we discovered and validated that healthcare, with staffing shortages and antiquated processes, had the greatest need and pain points, and have continued to focus on this particular vertical,\u201d Krush told TechCrunch in an email interview.<\/p>\n To Krush\u2019s point, the healthcare industry faces a major staffing shortfall, exacerbated by the logistical complications that arose during the pandemic. In a recent interview<\/a> with Keona Health, Halee Fischer-Wright, CEO of Medical Group Management Association (MGMA), said that MGMA\u2019s heard that 88% of medical practices have had difficulties recruiting front-of-office staff over the last year. By another estimates, the healthcare field has lost 20% of its workforce<\/a>.<\/p>\n Hyro doesn\u2019t attempt to replace staffers. But it does<\/em> inject automation into the equation. The platform is essentially a drop-in replacement for traditional IVR systems, handling calls and texts automatically using conversational AI.<\/p>\n Hyro can answer common questions and handle tasks like booking or rescheduling an appointment, providing engagement and conversion metrics on the backend as it does so.<\/p>\n Plenty of platforms do \u2014 or at least claim to. See RedRoute<\/a>, a voice-based conversational AI startup that delivers an \u201cAlexa-like\u201d customer service experience over the phone. Elsewhere, there\u2019s Omilia, which provides a conversational solution that works on all platforms (e.g. phone, web chat, social networks, SMS and more) and integrates with existing customer support systems.<\/p>\n