Munich healthtech startup Avelios has raised €30 million Series A (€30m) funding led by Sequoia to advance its efforts in developing its hospital data operating system.

Most hospitals run on data centres developed in the ‘90s, if not earlier. Data is unstructured; interoperability is non-existent; UIs are anything but user-friendly. 

The consequences, in terms of both inefficiencies and patient outcomes, are severe. Yet despite decades of technological development, hospital information systems (HIS) remain undisrupted because they are incredibly difficult to build.

The founders of Avelios have first-hand experience with these challenges. 

During the height of COVID, Dr Sebastian Krammer spent valuable time counting patients by hand, then reporting the results to authorities via fax. 

When he and Nicolas Jakob, a software engineer and deep learning expert, tried to expand their promising research on classifying skin conditions with AI, they quickly discovered hospitals’ antiquated systems couldn’t provide the needed data. 

So they teamed up with Christian Albrecht, a McKinsey alum and previous co-founder with Nicolas, to solve the problem. 

Instead of “treating the symptoms” by building on top of outdated legacy software, they decided to take the hard path of “treating the cause” and tackle the problem at its core by building a completely new HIS. 

Over the last couple of years, Avelios has built a full hospital information system that inclu:

• Documentation such as EHR, medication, and operating room management.
• Administration: billing, staff, clinic management.
• Patient portal.
• AI solutions, and more. 

They took a modular approach so they could land in hospitals with one offering before expanding to the full operating system. 

According to Sequoia. Avelios epitomises “the right team, with the right product, at the right time.” 

Fortuitously, one of the leading HIS providers announced they would sunset their product in 2027, creating an urgent need for more than 1,000 hospitals to replace their systems.

Further, regulators in Germany and elsewhere responded to problems revealed by COVID-19 with both fines for failing to digitise and funding for modernisation — Germany’s Hospital Future Act, for example, dedicates €4.3 billion to this.

Additionally, demand for AI exploded, spotlighting the difficulties of accessing data and integrating with legacy hospital systems — exactly the challenges that Avelios was designed to solve.

As a result, the startup has already won contracts with several of Germany’s largest public and private hospitals.A statement by Sequoia on its website shared:

“When we met the team, we were deeply impressed by their ambition, the depth and breadth of the product, the customers they’d won and their revenue growth—and more importantly, that they achieved all of this with just Pre-Seed funding. 

Fortunately for us, Christian, Nicolas, and Sebastian agreed to a partnership, and we are proud to lead this Series A round as they and their fast-growing team work toward their goal of revolutionising healthcare.”

With Avelios, doctors and staff will have the system of record and AI tools they need to make better, more informed decisions. They’ll be able to focus on why they got into medicine in the first place—helping people. 

Lead image: Avelios. Photo: uncredited.