Attendees walk through an exhibit hall at AWS re:Invent, a conference hosted by Amazon Web Services, at the Venetian in Las Vegas on Nov. 28, 2023.
Noah Berger | Getty Images Entertainment | fake images
Amazon Web Services and venture capital firm General Catalyst announced Monday a new multi-year partnership in their latest effort to grab a piece of the growing healthcare artificial intelligence market.
Through the collaboration, General Catalyst portfolio companies will use AWS services to build and deploy AI tools for health systems more quickly. Aidoc, which applies AI to medical imaging, and Commure, which automates provider workflows with AI, will be the first two companies to participate.
AWS and General Catalyst declined to disclose financial details of the deal.
“Without a strong partner like Amazon and AWS to come along, co-develop and support these companies… it's not going to move as quickly as we hope,” Chris Bischoff, head of global healthcare investments at General Catalyst. , he told CNBC in an interview.
Health care systems are under pressure in the United States, with exhausted staff, growing labor shortages and razor-thin margins. These challenges often seem attractive to tech startups, especially when the multibillion-dollar healthcare industry offers the prospect of big financial returns.
Hospitals operate in a complex, technology-weary and highly regulated sector that can be difficult for new companies to enter. General Catalyst hopes to help your companies accelerate the development and commercialization process by leveraging resources such as the computing power of AWS.
General Catalyst is no stranger to big changes in healthcare.
The firm has closed more than 60 digital health deals since 2020, trailing only Gaingels and Alumni Ventures, according to a December report from PitchBook. In January 2024, General Catalyst surprised the industry by announcing that its new business, Health Assurance Transformation Company, planned to acquire an Ohio-based health system, an unprecedented move in venture capital.
General Catalyst's “deep understanding” of the financial and operational realities of health systems made it an attractive partner for AWS, Dan Sheeran, general manager of healthcare and life sciences at AWS, told CNBC. Sheeran and Bischoff began outlining the collaboration between the two groups after meeting in London about nine months ago.
AWS also has an established presence in the healthcare sector. The company offers more healthcare and life sciences-specific services than any other cloud provider, according to a statement, and signed other high-profile AI partnerships with GE Health Care, Philips and others last year.
Sheeran said the partnership between General Catalyst and AWS will span several years, but that new tools from Aidoc and Commure will arrive in 2025. He said Aidoc is exploring how it can use the cloud to leverage data modalities in pathology, cardiology, genomics and others. molecular information, for example.
Aidoc and Commure were selected to begin the collaboration because they have established product-market fit, are operational, and are focused on issues that are high priorities for AWS customers, Sheeran said.
“GC has spent a lot of time thinking about how health systems can transform and we recognize that it's not going to be across 1,000 companies and that we need solutions that are truly enterprise-grade,” Bischoff said. “Amazon shares the same vision, so we'll start with these two.”
Although the partnership between General Catalyst and AWS is still in its infancy, the organizations said they believe it will help meet growing market demand for new solutions.
“Health system leaders who want to harness the benefits of AI now have an easier way to do so,” Sheeran said.
