Osage Venture Partners is excited to announce that we recently led the $7M Series A round for TruLite Health (“TruLite”), the industry’s first comprehensive health equity platform that detects and addresses clinical bias at the point of care. TruLite was founded in 2021 by accomplished healthcare leaders who are committed to breaking the chain of systemic inequity in healthcare. The TruLite platform provides patient-specific health equity insights and recommendations, enabling care teams to make actionable clinical, social, and behavioral interventions at the point of care for diverse populations.
Health inequities in clinical care account for $320 billion in additional healthcare spending, and this number could potentially increase to $1 trillion by 2040. There are a number of factors that cause clinical bias including prejudices formed by personal experience, flawed medical education content that over-indexes on white male patients, and unique predispositions for certain demographics based on the Social Determinants of Health to which they have been exposed. Simply put, patient outcomes are worse for minorities.
Current solutions mainly address health equity at the population level or by providing access to specialty resources related to the Social Determinants of Health (SDoH). While these efforts will hopefully have an impact on health equity, health disparities still exist because of misdiagnoses, delayed or incomplete screenings, or a general mistrust between physicians and patients. As a result, health equity is still considered a top three issue by major health systems. However, only 55% of organizations provide education to employees on health equity and disparities, and none of this education is personalized to the patient or delivered to the care team at the point of care.
TruLite’s platform integrates with a hospital’s EMR system and provides the care team with real-time nudges and action items that are specific to individual patients. These nudges are generated from a proprietary health equity knowledge base, which is curated by an industry-leading clinical content team that analyzes and summarizes the latest research in health disparities. This content is then transformed into action items and insights, which are embedded into algorithms that match EMR data to the insights that are most relevant for that patient. There is also a patient-facing side of the platform, which gives patients access to personally relevant health equity research, allowing them to advocate for their own care and build trust with their healthcare providers.
Most importantly, we are honored to partner with an exceptional team of executives who have experience scaling healthcare companies. The team is led by CEO Alan Roga who brings a unique set of skills as an MD and proven entrepreneur who founded an early Telehealth business that merged with TelaDoc, where he served as a top executive from early revenue through IPO. Alan is joined by a great team that includes Shaung Liu (CTO) who joined him from TelaDoc and was previously the Chief Technology and Product Officer at CommonSpirit Health, the largest non-profit health system in the US.
We are very excited to join many respected investors and industry experts to support Alan, Shaung, and the TruLite team in their growth. These include Ensemble Innovation Ventures and Xcellerant Ventures. We look forward to partnering with TruLite Health to address this significant need and minimize clinical bias.