Two French entrepreneurs raise 32 million dollars for their AI-powered medical search engine

Maxime Allouch and Taieb Bennani have raised 32 million dollars in a Series A funding round for their medical search engine, Vera Health. The funding was led by Threshold Ventures, with participation from Optum Ventures, Mantis VC, and SV Angel. Historical investors, including Y Combinator and Gradient, also contributed to the round, tripling their initial investment.

Vera Health, launched in the summer of 2024, aims to help medical professionals keep up with the vast amount of scientific literature published every day. The startup has developed a search engine that quickly finds, evaluates, and cites the best scientific data to address healthcare providers' questions, indicating the reliability of each claim.

The search engine queries over 60 million publications, clinical practice guidelines, consensus conference reports, and medication information. Each study is categorized based on its methodology, level of evidence on the Oxford scale, sample size, publication date, the journal it appeared in, and citation frequency. A color-coded system is used to represent the strength of evidence, with red indicating studies that are not sufficiently robust.

Vera Health claims that more than 700,000 healthcare professionals are using its medical search engine for free across 190 countries, with 50,000 users in France alone. The company states it had almost no users in Europe as of January this year. Allouch noted that physicians are adept at analyzing data quickly, and Vera Health's role is to provide them with the best available medical knowledge exactly when they need it.

The company emphasizes that while its search engine is designed to simplify the daily tasks of doctors, it should not replace their critical thinking and uncertainty inherent in their profession. Allouch mentioned the importance of showing uncertainty rather than masking it, as overly confident AI responses can be misleading.

With a team of around twelve employees, Vera Health plans to use the Series A funding to enhance its knowledge base, adapt to the specific needs of different countries, and forge new partnerships with scientific institutions and healthcare facilities. Bennani concluded that the gap between medical knowledge and what patients receive should be measured in seconds, not years. Maddyness reported the story.