Interview Preparation

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 industry. Specifically, they sought to automate routine messages and calls that often lead to administrative burnout, such as scheduling calls, prescription refills, and medical directory searches.

Several years after graduating, Krush and Cohen brought their ideas to fruition with Hyro, which uses AI to facilitate text and voice conversations across the web, call centers and apps between healthcare organizations and their customers. Hyro announced today that it has raised $20 million in a Series B round led by Liberty Mutual, Macquarie Capital and Black Opal, bringing the startup’s total raised to $35 million.

Krush says the new cash will go toward expanding Hyro’s marketing and R&D teams.

“When we searched for a domain that would benefit most from the transformation of these technologies, we discovered and validated that healthcare, with its understaffing and antiquated processes, had the greatest need and pain points, and we continued to focus on this particular vertical. Krush told TechCrunch in an email interview.

According to Krush, the healthcare industry is facing significant staff shortages, exacerbated by logistical complications that have arisen during the pandemic. In a recent interview With Keona Health, Halee Fischer-Wright, executive director of the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA), said MGMA heard that 88% of medical practices have had difficulty hiring front-office staff in the past year. According to other estimates, the field of health has lost 20% of its staff.

Hyro does not try to replace the employees. But does 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.

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.

Many platforms do, or at least claim to. See red route, a voice-based conversational AI startup that delivers an “Alexa-like” customer service experience over the phone. On the other hand, there’s Omilia, which provides a conversational solution that works across all platforms (eg phone, web chat, social media, SMS, and more) and integrates with existing customer support systems.

But Krush claims that Hyro is different. For one thing, he says, it offers an AI-powered search function that pulls up-to-date information from a client’s website, apparently preventing incorrect answers to questions (a notorious problem with text-generating AI). Hyro also features “smart routing” which allows it to “intelligently” decide whether to complete a task automatically, send a self-service link via SMS or route a request to the correct department.

A bot created with the Hyro development tools. Image Credits: Hyro

“Our AI assistants have been used by tens of millions of patients, automating conversations across multiple channels,” Krush said. “Hyro creates a feedback loop by identifying missing knowledge gaps, basically mimicking the operations of a call center agent. It also shows within a conversation exactly how the AI ​​assistant deduced the correct answer to a patient’s or customer’s query, which means that if wrong answers were given, a company can understand exactly which piece of content or data set is labeled. incorrectly and correct it accordingly.

Of course, no technology is perfect, and Hyro’s is probably no exception to the rule. But the startup’s sales pitch was enough to win over dozens of healthcare networks, providers and hospitals as customers, including Weill Cornell Medicine. Annual recurring revenue has doubled since Hyro hit the market in 2019, Krush says.

Hyro’s future plans involve expanding into industries adjacent to healthcare, including real estate and the public sector, as well as rounding out the platform with more customization options, business optimization recommendations, and “variety” in the AI ​​skills it supports. hyro.

“The pandemic accelerated the digital transformation of healthcare and made the issues we are solving very clear and obvious (eg, increased calls for information, access to testing, etc.),” Krush said. “We were one of the first to offer a COVID-19 virtual assistant that was deployed in less than 48 hours based on reliable information from the health system and trusted resources such as the CDC and the World Health Organization…. Hyro It’s well funded, with good growth and momentum, and we’ve always budgeted responsibly, so we’re actually looking to expand and get more market share while competitors are slowing down.”