(This story is from our new Health Tech newsletter. If you’d like to sign up, just click here.)
As more startups get into the business of treating obesity, one weight loss startup acquired another to provide doctors with AI-assisted care plans.
Knownwell, an in-person and virtual primary care startup focused on obesity and backed by venture giant Andreessen Horowitz, bought obesity management startup and Y Combinator alum Alfie Health, the companies said Thursday. They did not disclose financial terms of the deal.
Alfie’s AI platform, called ObesityRx, gathers information such as patients’ intake surveys and health records, formulary data, medical studies and knownwell policies to come up with personalized treatment plans. For example, the AI might recommend certain GLP-1 drugs for weight loss based on what’s covered by the patient’s insurance plan.
The AI isn’t meant to replace the doctor’s expertise but instead serve as a copilot by citing the latest medical research to back its recommendations, knownwell founder and CEO Brooke Boyarsky Pratt told Endpoints News.
“A clinician can’t possibly keep up, especially in primary care, with how much is changing by the week with the latest and greatest research,” she said. “So it is providing unique insight, and it’s able to structure the data that’s just harder for humans.”
Earlier this week, OpenAI said that it’s working with Color Health to develop an AI copilot that helps doctors come up with cancer screening and treatment plans.
When it comes to the crowded world of weight loss solutions, companies that have clinical evidence and infrastructure in place to deliver quality weight loss medicine are in a good place to acquire other services, said Vineeta Agarwala, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz.
“Once you build that backbone, then you can start to add,” she said. “You can add additional technology infrastructure that helps you better match patients to the right therapeutic regimens, which is kind of what Alfie had built previously but hadn’t really built out the full infrastructure to scale the care delivery.”
Knownwell in December raised $20 million in a Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Flare Capital Partners, bringing its total fundraising to $24.5 million.