Robin Healthcare has set out to change healthcare in America. They believe that by writing a doctor's notes for her, they can do just that.
Most of us have had interactions with our doctors that are sub-optimal. Perhaps the doctor is typing notes into a computer as she's talking to us, making us feel like she's not fully present. Perhaps we've seen fatigue take over while the doctor is talking to us, knowing that they spend more time on paperwork then on caring for their patients. And we've certainly seen the inefficiencies as doctors click a mouse button more than 4,000 times per day while working in antiquated systems.
Robin has set out to solve this problem. They do the paperwork so the doctor can go back to the business of actual medicine. Robin is unobtrusive (no keyboards, mice, people or accessories), effortless (passively captures with very low correction rate), fully integrated with any EMR and affordable for providers and practices. And of course they're HIPAA compliant too.
The Robin device
I've known Noah Auerhahn since at least some time in 2012. I was an advisor to his last company, Extrabux, which he sold to eBates/Rakuten in the summer of 2013. Although he was young at the time - and still is compared to me - he always struck me as being extremely thoughtful and deep, while also having the ability to make a decisive decision and move quickly. After leaving eBates, in 2015, Noah took some time away from work to travel the world, get married and think through how to best fix healthcare in America. On that path, he met his co-founder, Emilio Galan. Emilio is an entrepreneur, data geek and an MD candidate; he's helped start companies, is the Executive Director for Honest Health, got deep into health care data and pricing with Catalyst for Payment Reform and is now completing his MD requirements - he's definitely been busy. These two have really formed a terrific nucleus for this company.
Robin Founders, Noah on the left and Emilio on the right
Since our investment at the end of last year, Noah and Emilio have brought on an incredible team of experts. They have leaders and entrepreneurs in the scribing space (Kathleen Myers and Adam Okeson) that are taking their knowledge and domain of the "old world" and are applying it to the new paradigm. They have attracted PhD's in NLP and machine learning (Adam Richards and Marc Errlinger) to ensure that the application is able to automate as much of the interaction as possible. And they've brought on world class expertise in IoT and hardware (Sid Mirgati and Justin Atienza) as they assemble the next version of their hardware. Of course there's a larger tech and product team that's not mentioned, but is driving immense value to the company. They've also recruited and trained 3 separate classes of incredible scribes that power the business. And they've generated more demand from individual doctors and practices than they can handle at present. They're moving fast and will be moving even faster shortly.
When talking about the opportunity in front of Robin and our excitement for the Robin vision, one of our co-investors said it best:
“...my view is that voice-to-text and NLP is not at the point where it can not only be encoded and scored correctly, but placed in the proper fields based upon note structure and domain. ...where I see Robin going is merely using massively scalable scribing as a beachhead for taking over the ugly parts of the medical practice, namely coding, dealing with insurers and ultimately underwriting the risks associated with coding errors. This, to me, is the real game changer, when the most impactful burdens of doctoring are removed and certainty and convenience is brought to the key parts of the practice.”
Speaking of co-investors, we're thrilled to be joined on this journey by Roger Ehrenberg of IA Ventures and Scott Law of Meridian Street Capital. Both of these investors and their firms are very much excited by Robin's vision and the team that's coming together to make that vision a reality.
I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the name. Although I had nothing to do with it, I smile thinking that this is now our second investment in a "Robin H" company. The first, is doing quite well and of course, we have lofty expectations of the second as well!