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Startup Lucem Health Lands $7.7 Million in Financing for Chronic Disease Platform
By Alex Keown
May 22, 2023
With $7.7 million in financing, Mayo Clinic Platform portfolio company Lucem Health is advancing its artificial intelligence-based Lucem Health Reveal platform to identify patients at higher risk of serious or chronic disease.
North Carolina-based Lucem Health’s Reveal platform uses available clinical data to surface previously undiscovered insights, in order to help physicians and providers deliver improved health outcomes for patients. Lucem Health Reveal is designed to leverage existing electronic health record data to identify patients who may be at a higher risk of serious or chronic disease. The Reveal platform focuses on boosting upstream patient identification and care coordination.
It is estimated that approximately 60% of Americans live with at least one serious or chronic disease, such as cancer, diabetes, stroke, or heart disease. Diagnosing these conditions as early as possible can improve patient outcomes, as well as their quality of life.
The Reveal platform is an AI agnostic platform, Lucem Chief Executive Officer Sean Cassidy told BioBuzz. Cassidy said the platform enables clinicians to deliver improved care and boost patient outcomes, all while lowering costs. He said the platform can increase the chances for treating physicians and clinicians to detect problems before they become life-threatening concerns.
“The idea of the company was to bring clinical AI from bench to bedside,” Cassidy said. “This was purpose-built for the needs of healthcare. AI when applied to healthcare has the potential to be able to do enormous good in the world… as long as it’s deployed responsibly and practically.”
He noted that in today’s world, virtually every clinical department, from healthcare to pharmaceutical industry, has an AI component. The Lucem platform was established to extend AI out in the world, he said. The platform is designed as a plug-and-play solution, optimized for the data needs of algorithms that drive the technology. Cassidy described the Lucem platform as fuel for those algorithms.
“We’ve constructed this to handle any kind of AI you can think of,” he said. “We like to say we are carmakers, not engineers. We’ve built a car into which you can drop any engine. Our car (platform) is flexible enough that it can take any engine down the road.”
Earlier this year, Lucem partnered with Medial EarlySign to showcase the power of Lucem Health Reveal by using available patient data to identify people who appear to be at a higher risk for developing or worsening diabetes or lower gastrointestinal disorders, including colorectal cancer.
“We have barely scratched the surface of AI’s potential in healthcare,” Cassidy said. The beauty of AI is the sensitivity of this tool. It can take things like biomarker data to help detect things even the most skilled physicians can miss. AI has tremendous potential to transform and augment how physicians and providers practice medicine, make decisions and serve their patients.”
Cassidy added that AI technology has the ability to democratize the delivery of healthcare, including in rural areas where the rate of treating physicians and hospitals are declining. The eastern and western parts of North Carolina have seen a decline in healthcare options, forcing residents to travel for treatment. This impediment to ready care has become a concern. In cases of prediabetes, that lack of early intervention has led to full-blown cases of diabetes in rural communities, Cassidy said.
“If we can help doctors get to patients in diabetes care early on, what a beautiful thing that would be,” he said. Cassidy added that when AI is used in the early detection of disease, patients will be provided access to numerous medications that can address the symptoms and underlying causes of disease.
“Being able to find patients earlier in the process is critical.”
The $7.7 million Series A fundraising round was backed Mayo Clinic, Granger Management and Mercy. Additional investors, including Rally Ventures supported the raise. The funds raised in this round build on the company’s existing funds. The funding will be used to advance development of Lucem Health’s platform for clinical AI solution deployment, grow the company’s solution portfolio and expand its sales and marketing capacity.
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Alex Keown is a freelance journalist who writes about a variety of subjects including the pharma, biotech, and life science industries. Prior to freelancing, Alex has served as a staff writer and editor for several publications.
