Pathway Raises $1.3 Million To Scale Its AI-Powered Medical Knowledge Platform

Pathway enables rapid evidence-based decisions at the point-of-care

A solution to combat medical information overload, a major contributor to clinician burnout

In a context where the COVID pandemic has generated an unprecedented volume of evolving clinical guidelines and revealed vulnerabilities within information dissemination systems, medical knowledge startup Pathway Medical has announced it raised $1.3 million ($CAD 1.6 million) to scale its clinical decision support platform. Investors include Panache Ventures, Amplify Capital, Desjardins Venture Capital, BoxOne Ventures, and Formentera Capital.

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The funding round also included participation from veteran healthcare entrepreneurs Dr. Josh Landy (ICU physician and cofounder of Cherif Habib and emergency physician entrepreneurs Dr. Julien Martel, Dr. Louis Charbonneau and Dr. Alexandre Tratch, co-founders of DXA, an AI-powered medical triage startup that was acquired by Dialogue in 2018.

The Pathway mobile app, which is currently available directly to healthcare professionals on the Apple App Store and soon on the Google Play Store, uses natural language processing and machine learning to provide evidence-based answers to clinical questions for the diagnosis and treatment of patients. The company also revealed that it has released an enterprise version of its clinical decision support technology.

“We are thankful for our investors’ continued support in our efforts to democratize medical knowledge and advance evidence-based care,” stated Pathway cofounder and CEO Jonathan Hershon St-Jean. “This investment will help us scale our operations and expand the functionality of our software to support additional use cases. Most notably, we’re augmenting our platform to help hospitals disseminate their own guidelines and pathways more efficiently.”

In an environment where more than 95 new medical studies are being published every hour, Pathway wants to alleviate the burden of information overload on clinicians, which leads many doctors to depression and burnout according to a JAMA Network Open study. The recent explosion in medical knowledge means that a general practitioner would now need to read 21 hours a day to keep up with primary care literature alone. Pathway solves this problem with interactive “pathways” that guide healthcare professionals step-by-step to diagnostic approaches and treatments based on sound evidence. With 33 medical specialties, more than 1,000 guidelines, and more than 45,000 graded recommendations, Pathway offers one of the most robust structured knowledge bases available today.

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Dr. Jonathan Afilalo, a cardiologist and associate professor in the Department of Medicine at McGill University, believes that “Pathway fills an unmet need for clinicians to have easy, user-friendly access to clinical guideline recommendations.” He adds, “The status quo alternative, which involves jumping through hoops to find guidelines and distill their essential message, is clearly suboptimal.” By seamlessly integrating into a healthcare professional’s daily workflow, and by leveraging the power of machine learning technology, Pathway increases the speed of delivering reliable evidence-based care.

“The complexity of providing evidence-based care is increasing along with the accelerating pace of information generation and consensus development in the medical community,” stated Pathway Medical co-founder and Chief Medical Officer Dr. Louis Mullie. “Clinical tools that were built from the digitization of the medical textbook are ill-equipped to keep physicians informed and up to date today. This contributes to the fact that physicians have the highest rate of burnout, depression, and suicide of any profession. Healthcare professionals love Pathway because we understand their needs, and reduce cognitive load by delivering concise, quality clinical guidance in an efficient, easy manner.”

“Amplify Capital is excited to add Pathway to our portfolio. Pathway is another perfect example of an impact investment that solves for rapid democratization of access to quality health care to populations that need it most. Pathway’s machine learning platform offers a unique proprietary decision-support product that can improve health outcomes quickly and at scale. Jonathan and his team are poised to grow the Company rapidly and we’re excited to support them to achieve their growth goals.” — Kathryn Wortsman, Managing Partner, Amplify Capital

Typically, Pathway cuts down the time it takes for a healthcare professional to make an evidence-based decision from minutes to seconds. With a net promoter score of 69, which is higher than Amazon and Netflix, Pathway has a very enthusiastic user base of clinicians in over 180 countries and across 33 medical specialties relying on the app for efficient, evidence-based decision making.

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