Saving Lives With AI That Gets Cancer Patients Treated Faster
RISA Labs founders Kshitij Jaggi and Kumar Shivang
RISA
'If you're a cancer patient, time is the most important currency in your life.' So says Kshitij Jaggi, co-founder and CEO of RISA Labs, a California-based start-up that is today announcing it has raised $3.5 million of seed round funding. The business's goal is to reduce the time it takes for US cancer patients to get treatment – and therefore to improve their health outcomes.
Launched last year, RISA has developed software that enables cancer treatment centers to automate key elements of the administrative process that gets in the way of patients receiving the treatment they need. Once a doctor has diagnosed a patient's cancer, he or she must get authorisation from the patient's insurer before beginning treatment – but manual processes and paperwork in the health system often mean this takes much longer than it should.
'Prior authorisations remain one of the least automated parts of our healthcare system,' explains Ben Freeberg, managing partner at Oncology Ventures, one of the investors in RISA. He says 70% of cancer patients experience delays in care because of prior authorisation requirements. In a third of those cases, the delay is one month, Freeberg add, a time window he says can increase the risk of death by 13% in certain cancer types. 'The current system isn't just inefficient – it's dangerous.'
RISA's solution is an artificial intelligence platform that breaks down the authorisation process into micro tasks that can be managed by its automation agents. These AI agents complete the tasks automatically, connecting with insurers' systems to short-cut the manual processes that so often cause delays.
Jaggi claims the solution can reduce the amount of time spent on prior authorisations by medical center staff by as much as 80%. The software is also more accurate, he says – there are so many different types of cancer that coding errors and other mistakes often get made in communications with insurers, but automation can substantially reduce error rates.
Jaggi and co-founder Kumar Shivang, now RISA's chief technology officer, believe their solution could make a huge difference to cancer patients' lives. 'The more people we can support, the more worthwhile this will be,' Jaggi adds.
Jeffrey Vacirca, CEO of New York Cancer and Blood Specialists, one center that is now using RISA's technology, says automation can have a massive impact. 'Cancer care is time sensitive and every delay in treatment can affect outcomes; prior authorisations continue to slow us down,' he warns. 'RISA's technology removes barriers so our teams can move faster and stay focused on what matters most: caring for patients.'
RISA is currently in the final stages of agreeing implementations at a number of other facilities across the US. It expects to go live in up to seven centers in the coming months, with Jaggi hoping to work with as many as 100 centers over the next two years.
Today's fund raising will help with the scale-up. RISA's $3.5 million round is led by Binny Bansal, a co-founder of Flipkart, with participation from Oncology Ventures, General Catalyst, z21 Ventures, OddBirdVC, and Ashish Gupta, another business angel.
Bansal says he was drawn to the company by the opportunity to invest in an AI agent solution producing positive societal outcomes. 'RISA is proven in oncology and built to scale,' he says.
The company's business model is based on an upfront 'transformation fee' that it charges for implementing its software at a cancer center; it then makes additional charges for each process completed. Jaggi says the technology could eventually be deployed to help hospitals, clinics and medical centers treating many other conditions, but RISA will focus specifically on cancer in the short term.
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