VC funding into AI tools for healthcare was projected to hit $11 billion last year — a headline figure that speaks to the widespread conviction that artificial intelligence will prove transformative in a critical sector.
Many startups applying AI in healthcare are seeking to drive efficiencies by automating some of the administration that orbits and enables patient care. Hamburg-based Elea broadly fits this mould, but it’s starting with a relatively overlooked and underserved niche — pathology labs, whose work entails analyzing patient samples for disease — from where it believes it’ll be able to scale the voice-based, AI agent-powered workflow system it’s developed to boost labs’ productivity to achieve global impact. Including by transplanting its workflow-focused approach to accelerating the output of other healthcare departments, too.
Elea’s initial AI tool is designed to overhaul how clinicians and other lab staff work. It’s a complete replacement for legacy information systems and other set ways of working (such as using Microsoft Office for typing reports) — shifting the workflow to an “AI operating system” which deploys speech-to-text transcription and other forms of automation to “substantially” shrink the time it takes them to output a diagnosis.
After around half a year operating with its first users, Elea says its system has been able to cut the time it takes the lab to produce around half their reports down to just two days.
Step-by-step automation
The step-by-step, often manual workflow of pathology labs means there’s good scope to boost productivity by applying AI, says Elea’s CEO and co-founder Dr. Christoph Schröder. “We basically turn this all around — and all of the steps are much more automated … [Doctors] speak to Elea, the MTAs [medical technical assistants] speak to Elea, tell them what they see, what they want to do with it,” he explains.
“Elea is the agent, performs all the tasks in the system and prints things — prepares the slides, for example, the staini …