CVS Backs HealthTech Firm Kouper’s $10 Million Fundraise

Health technology platform Kouper has emerged from stealth after raising $10 million.

The company announced the new financing — from investors including General Catalyst, 25Madison and CVS Health Ventures — Thursday (May 8), saying it would help fuel its mission of supporting patients transitioning across healthcare settings.

“The period following hospital discharge is widely recognized as the most critical — and vulnerable — in a patient’s care journey,” Kouper said in a news release. “Without thoughtful management, patient outcomes and health care spending can spiral out of control, contributing to over $53 billion in annual avoidable readmission costs.”

According to the release, Kouper addresses this problem by employing artificial intelligence (AI)-powered infrastructure to improve patient engagement, automate scheduling and capture data as patients move from the emergency room, inpatient and urgent care settings.

The company said its platform can integrate with health systems to “harness real-time, contextual data across the care continuum,” unifying siloed information to offer a better view of the patient’s journey.

“By tapping into Kouper’s intelligent infrastructure, health systems and risk-bearing entities can dramatically enhance their transitions of care programs — boosting patient access, coordination and outcomes — without the burden of added full-time employees or complex change management,” the company said.

In other recent healthcare-related news, PYMNTS spoke earlier this week with Marcus Bertilson, chief operating officer at customer experience and payments software platform Weave. At the time, the company had just announced its acquisition of TrueLark, a conversational AI company specializing in automating front-office interactions.

Bertilson told PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster in an exclusive interview that the goal of the acquisition was to develop an intelligent operating system that modernizes and humanizes how medical practices handle everything from scheduling to communication.

“The experience of engaging or scheduling or rebooking or getting answers to your questions from your healthcare practice … is not very modern,” Bertilson said. “The consumer expects immediate answers, but you have to usually wait online.”

However, the innovation Weave and TrueLark are bringing to healthcare doesn’t begin with an app or portal but rather with a more traditional piece of tech: the telephone.

“It’s interesting that Weave as a platform is using the phone as the cornerstone for all of the innovation,” Webster noted. “Many of these innovations start with digital … but it’s really the phone that you’ve established as the connection.”