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June 22, 2023 : Outbound AI announced Wednesday $16 million in fresh funding to advance the rollout of its artificial intelligence tools that help healthcare teams interact with insurance companies and automate administrative work during the claims process.
The Seattle startup spun out of Madrona Venture Labs in 2021, aims to improve the “human experience” for healthcare workers. The company recently launched its GPT-powered AI agent to automate medical billing process elements, including claim status updates, benefits verification, prior authorizations, and denials.
The company’s tools can communicate with human representatives, take notes, generate summaries for each call and transaction, and sense when the system reaches its limitations, prompting a worker to step in and take over the interaction.
Founder and CEO Stead Burwell said the new funding and product enhancements come as the US and other countries are bracing for a “dramatic increase” inpatient volume. He said factors such as the greying of America, expanding middle class, and the nursing shortage will strain healthcare workforces.
“This is why we have such a sense of urgency to bring these technologies to market,” Burwell told GeekWire.
The startup said its tools are “four to five times faster” than humans and more cost-effective. They operate continuously, scaling as needed to manage any volume, letting workers offload rote tasks to focus on other work. Outbound said the AI is HIPAA compliant and built on Microsoft Azure.
Outbound declined to reveal its exact client count but said it acquired 15 new customers within four months. The startup targets small- and medium-sized healthcare companies, such as independent doctor practices and the medical billing companies that support them. It generates revenue through a consumption-based pricing model, charging users based on its products’ monthly usage in minutes.
The latest round was co-led by Madrona Venture Group and SpringRock Ventures. Other backers contain Epic Ventures, Ascend, Pack Ventures, Tacoma Venture Fund, Locke Capital, and KCRise Fund. Outbound raised $7 million shortly after its founding in March 2021.
There are a growing number of businesses using AI to ease administrative burdens in healthcare arena:
Seattle-based Cascade Health raised $2 million last month for its healthcare transparency chatbot tool.
“Our approach brings more scalability and efficiency,” Burwell said of the competition. “We’re able to deliver more extensive information relevant to a task, which allows our ML models to make better conclusions and recommendations on behalf of staff and supervisors.”
Burwell is working with three other co-founders: Justin Ith, an ex-product lead at Madrona Venture Labs; chief technology officer Jonathan Wiggs, who assisted in building the speech models for Apple’s Siri while at Nuance, and most lately was vice president of engineering and architecture at tax software conglomerate Avalara along with Saykara veteran Kshitij Moghe.
Outbound has about 40 employees, up from 27 in September. The company said it expects to keep hiring if it continues to hit its milestones.
