Plenful Raises $9 Million for AI-Powered Healthcare Workflow Automation

Plenful has raised $9 million to continue bringing its artificial intelligence (AI)-powered workflow automation platform to healthcare and pharmacy operations.

With more than 20 health systems and pharmacy customers utilizing its platform, Plenful aims to improve efficiencies in patient care while combating staff burnout, the company said in an Oct. 3 press release.

“Our use of configurable workflow automation and AI maximizes output for operations teams, from supporting revenue growth to eliminating manual work,” CEO and Founder Joy Liu said in the release. “Plenful’s goal is to free up healthcare staff for top-of-license tasks and empower organizations to do more with less.”

Combining AI-based workflow automations with human oversight, Plenful provides a comprehensive solution to healthcare and pharmacy operations, according to the press release. The platform offers a range of automation capabilities, including document data entry, 340B auditing and savings identification, and pharmacy revenue cycle management.

Plenful’s no-code infrastructure and flexible endpoints have allowed it to overcome traditional integration challenges, the release said. Implementing new technology in healthcare settings often comes with IT-related barriers, but Plenful said its approach has simplified the process. Use-case focused implementations typically take only a few weeks to go live, compared to the months or even years it may take with other solutions.

Once it’s implemented, Plenful said its customers have reported up to 97% reductions in manual work and over 50 man-hours per day saved, per the release.

The recent $9 million funding round was led by Bessemer Venture Partners and more than 20 enterprise customers, according to the release.

Andrew Hedin, partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, said in the release: “Plenful is addressing existing labor shortages for a significant and growing part of healthcare — enabling pharmacy operations teams to do more meaningful work.”

Observers and industry players believe that healthcare system workflow automation and optimization is one of the priority areas where AI can have an immediate impact, PYMNTS reported in September.

For example, HCA Healthcare has partnered with Google Cloud and Augmedix, a tech company specializing in ambient medical documentation, to use AI technology to improve workflows on tasks like replacing clinical documentation with conversation-created medical notes via text-to-speech processing.