Singaporean startup Bot MD landed $5 million for its artificial intelligence-enabled clinical assistant. Monk’s Hill Ventures led the round with participation from SeaX, XA Network, SGInnovate and individual investors.

This builds on the company’s $700,000 investment from Y Combinator and angel investors in 2018.

WHAT IT DOES

The technology was designed to work as a chatbot to help answer doctor’s clinical questions. Doctors are able to access information about anything from drug interactions to medical calculations, guidelines and protocols, and disease information. The system lets hospitals integrate their EMR into the platform in order to help with the searches.

During the coronavirus pandemic, the company updated the technology to include COVID-19 vital-sign monitoring, as well as including coronavirus-specific guidelines in the clinical chatbot.

The company recently launched a pilot to use the bot to order and schedule radiology exams and view a patient’s radiology report.

WHAT IT’S FOR

The new infusion of cash will be put towards growing the company’s regional footprint. In particular, Bot MD is setting its sights on expanding into Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia and India.

Additionally, the team is looking to expand its design and engineering teams in order to work on new functions, including EHR integrations, billing, scheduling integration, chronic disease monitoring and clinical alerts, according to the company’s release.

“​The global pandemic has added tremendous pressure on healthcare systems around the world and reinforced the need for efficient operations and productive healthcare professionals. We have witnessed first-hand the team’s strong ability to execute and their sheer tenacity.

"Unlike other pure SaaS enterprise players, the team’s extensive experience in the healthcare industry have given them deeper insights into the real pain points of doctors and hospitals, which [have] allowed them to build an incredibly intuitive product for doctors to use without any training needed – a feat that is virtually unheard of in the healthcare industry,” Michele Daoud, partner of Monk’s Hill Ventures, said in a statement.

THE LARGER TREND

As physician burnout rates continue to rise, more and more innovators are looking to tackle the issue with tech. In the U.S., we’ve seen this reflected in a number of funding rounds.

For example, Robin, an AI-enabled workflow management physician helper, landed $11.5 million in Series A funding in 2019, bringing its grand total to $15 million. In 2020 voice-enabled digital assistant Suki scored a whopping $20 million in Series B funding, bringing its funding total to over $40 million.