Durham startup wants to help health care systems navigate AI
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Mark Sendak, right, founded Vega Health after spending time at the Duke Institute for Health Innovation. Photo: Vega Health
A new Durham startup founded by a former Duke physician and data scientist wants to help health care systems navigate the complexities of adding new artificial intelligence tools.
Why it matters: Health care systems nationwide are increasingly turning to new AI tools to improve care or help with persistent work shortages.
- But the process of picking which ones to implement and then monitoring their performance can be overwhelming, argues Mark Sendak, the founder of Durham-based Vega Health.
- "It takes a ton of resources to do this well, and it is impossible that every organization is going to be able to do this on their own," Sendak tells Axios.
Driving the news: Sendak, who previously worked at the Duke Institute for Health Innovation (DIHI), raised $4 million from Bessemer Venture Partners this month to bring Vega out of stealth mode, when an early-stage startup prepares to bring its products to market.
- Vega, which was started this year, has hired seven full-time employees so far, with plans to continue growing in Durham. The firm has an office in the historic Kress building in downtown.
Zoom in: The company is creating a marketplace of AI tools to offer to health care systems.
- Its initial marketplace features around a dozen AI models developed at DIHI, like Sepsis Watch, an AI tool meant to help with the early detection of sepsis.
- But it also aims to continue to add more proven tools to its marketplace, as a way to help innovators commercialize their models more effectively. Sendak noted that DIHI had plenty of effective tools, for instance, but often struggled to get them adopted outside of Duke.
In this way, Vega hopes to act as a sort of AI middleman, helping health care systems become aware of more AI tools, manage all of the data they generate, and then monitor the performance of the tools.
What they're saying: "Most health care organizations today don't know whether or not AI investments are creating value for them, and so we are going to try to solve that," Sendak said.
- "Our goal is to help you scale AI that has positive outcomes and impact and recommend to you to stop using AI that doesn't," he added.
What's next: Sendak said the seed funding the startup has received will give Vega a runway of around two years to find a market fit and hopefully land a few large contracts.