By Michael Millenson
Treating artificial intelligence as only one ingredient in a recipe for business success was a prominent theme at the MedCity Invest 2025 conference, with this AI “best practice” advice embodied by controversial startups inato and prenosis.
“You must build a business model that makes sense and then use AI,” warned Raffi BoyjianDirector of Cigna Ventures and a panel member at the MedCity Invest 2025 conference in Chicago.
That sentiment was reflected and emphasized by colleague investors Aman Shah, vice president of New Ventures at VNS Health, and Dipa Mehta, managing partner of Ventures Ventures. Both emphasized the need in a difficult economic environment to find a “burning platform” that could immediately stimulate the business results of a customer.
In a separate panel, high-profile start-ups inato and prenose accented that AI approach.
Innovation clients needed
Inato was mentioned by Fast company magazine as one of the Most innovative companies from 2024And that same year chosen by fierce health care as one of the bright 15. The company established in Paris connects drugsters with other patients that are difficult to conquer for clinical studies through an AI-based platform that has attracted more than 3000 community research locations in more than 70 countries. By making clinical tests “more accessible, including and more efficient”, in the words of the company, breaking a shocking pattern in which 96% of the tests do not include a representative population, Inato has set up partnerships with more than a third of the top 30 pharmaceutical companies.
When describing his technology, Inato says that “an AI agent has collected to identify patient records, quickly determine which examinations are relevant to each patient and patients evaluate against inclusion and exclusion criteria for assessing suitability” accurately and on a scale. That expression, “an AI agent assembled”, but obscures a more subtle process.
Liz BeattyCo-founder of Inato and Chief Strategy Officer, described with the help of “off-the-shelf” large language models such as chatgpt and claude and then to optimize for a certain process with algorithms tailored to each model. While new models appear, the company adapts accordingly. Although Beatty did not offer analogy, there seemed to be an obvious parallel to a chef who chose the right ingredients in the right proportions to ensure the success of a recipe.
Beatty said, “I hear,” Let’s apply ai to everything. ” That is not the correct answer. According to pitchbook.
AI is also central to the success of Prenose. The Sepsis immunoscore of the company was The first tool approved by Food and Drug Administration with AI To predict the approaching beginning of an often fatal state known as sepsis. Integrated in the clinical workflow, it was greet Time magazine as one of the “the best inventions of 2024”, while Bobby Reddy JR., Co-founder of Prenosis and Chief Executive Officer, was subsequently appointed as the Time 100 health list Recognizing influential individuals in global health.
The Chicago established in Chicago describes itself as an artificial intelligence company that tunes therapy to individual patient biology as part of ‘a new era of precision medicine’. However, just like with Inato, the AI head hides a more complex reality.
Sepsis is a heterogeneous syndrome with nearly 200 different symptoms that may play. “AI brings it together so that we can understand the process of deterioration,” said Reddy. The company used machine learning to develop and validate an advanced algorithm, according to a New England Journal of Medicine study.
But the right AI was only one product ingredient. Prenosis has also assembled a database of thousands of patients and set up a “wet lab” to find sepsis biomarkers – and to use for other circumstances as the company expands its offer – based on what is now 120,000 blood samples. By adding biomarkers to EHR data, the company was able to position itself as a more accurate, real-time addition to the Sepsis Tool Epic offers free hospitals using its EPD.
“That is our competitive advantage,” said Reddy.
Targeted AI
Just as Inato concentrated on AI for its specific purposes, Prenosis also focused on a crucial goal. The AI was used “in the first place to fit the FDA model for approval,” said Reddy.
Sepsis is caused by an overactive immune response on infection. It costs the American health care system billions of dollars a year while it claims the lives of at least 350,000 people – more than all forms of cancer, according to the prenose website. The World Health Organization has labeled Sepsis a threat to global health, and the economic impact of only this one condition amounts to an average of 2.7% of the healthcare costs of a country, according to one 2022 Study.
Not mentioned by Reddy at the Invest Conference was that the performance of an American hospital in the prevention and effective treatment of Sepsis is a factor in value-based payment by Medicare and in the hospital patient safety score published by the Leapfrog Group. A ‘burning platform’, indeed.
For both Prenose and Inato, the best practice of AI is based on usability. As Reddy said, AI is “just a tool” in product development.
Michael L. Millenson is president of Health Quality Advisors & a regular THCB employee. This first appeared in his column at Forbes
#HighProfile #StartUp #Inato #Prenosis #Show #Practice #Health #Care #Blog