NEW YORK, October 15, 2020 – Savana, the healthtech startup accelerating health science with big data, announced today the successful completion of its $15 million Series B led by Cathay Innovation. Other investors include Seaya Ventures, the lead investor in the previous $5 million round, as well as new investors, such as MACSF, the French mutual insurer for health professionals.
Savana develops artificial intelligence (AI) solutions that provide doctors and pharmacists with life-saving insights into patients’ healthcare by unlocking critical information buried within the free text of clinical notes. Savana’s SaaS platform leads the world in its field with over 400 million Electronic Medical Records processed in English, Spanish, German and French. Founded in 2014 in Spain, the company’s industry-leading technologies and services have been adopted by health systems across Western Europe, the United States and Canada.
The new financing will be used to support Savana’s international expansion and operations in the US. Savana’s team is currently composed of 100+ professionals and over the next year the team at Savana’s headquarters in New York City is expected to grow by between 20 to 30 people. Savana already works with the top 20 pharmaceutical companies in the world and more than a hundred healthcare facilities.
“Savana’s potential positive impact on society is massive. Our mission is to predict the occurrence of disease at the patient level. This focuses our resources on discovering new ways of providing medical knowledge almost in real-time – which is more urgent than ever in the context of the pandemic. Healthcare challenges are increasingly global, and we know that the application of AI across health data at scale is essential to accelerate health science. Cathay Innovation’s expertise in healthcare and track record in bridging continents for digital health technologies is remarkable, and we look forward to working with them to expand our global network,” said Savana’s CEO Jorge Tello.
“Savana is a company founded by doctors for doctors. While we are rooted in technology, the clinical focus and ethics in the healthcare field remain at the core of our approach. One of our main value propositions is that the information remains controlled by the hospital, with privacy guaranteed by the de-identification of patient data before we process it,” said Dr Ignacio Hernandez Medrano, Co-Founder & CMO of Savana.
“Savana’s transformative technologies and solutions bring such incredible value to the medical space, that they are bound for widespread and mainstream adoption across the world. Now more than ever, advancements in the digital health sector is of the utmost importance and a major focus for Cathay Innovation, demonstrated by several investments and our recently sealed partnership with Sanofi. With a global network of experts and partners across North America, Europe and Asia, we’re looking forward to joining efforts with Savana’s talented team to accelerate the company further on the global stage and emerge as a leader in the AI HealthTech market,” said Jacky Abitbol, Partner of Cathay Innovation.
“We believe that innovators like Savana will play a key role in improving the healthcare industry in the coming years by applying the latest technologies. We are proud to continue partnering with such an ambitious project,” said Antonio Giménez de Córdoba, Partner at Seaya Ventures.
“Savana is our fourth co-investment with Cathay. We are excited to be consolidating our partnership with Cathay and proud to continue supporting our common companies in their international growth, through our global platforms,” said Beatriz González, Founding Partner of Seaya Ventures.
“We are delighted to invest in Savana alongside Cathay to bring faster innovation to physicians through its cutting-edge tech platform and so build a better healthcare ecosystem. We have been impressed by Savana’s medical experience, its multi-disciplinary capabilities and its understanding of privacy concerns which are critical for European healthcare groups. We are glad to help them expand their global footprint,” said Stanislas Subra Head of Venture Capital at MACSF.
About Savana
Founded in 2014, Savana is an international medical company that accelerates health science by giving health care providers the power to unlock all of the clinical value embedded within existing Electronic Health Records via Artificial Intelligence (AI) such as Clinical Natural Language Processing (cNLP).
Savana is the first clinical NLP company able to process the unstructured texts from Electronic Medical Records in English, Spanish, French and German.
About Cathay Innovation
Cathay Innovation is a global venture capital partnership, created in affiliation with Cathay Capital. It was founded around the shared conviction that supporting entrepreneurs by providing them with a platform bridging 3 continents – North America, Europe and China – constitutes a particularly powerful value-creation strategy. As a multi-stage fund, Cathay Innovation partners with visionary entrepreneurs committed to the sustainable transformation of the world through innovation and technology. Such transformation is accelerated by leveraging Cathay Capital extensive network with corporates and solid experience in operational excellence. Cathay Innovation has offices in San Francisco, Paris, Beijing, Shanghai and Singapore.
About Seaya Ventures
Based in Madrid, Seaya Ventures has been backing the best entrepreneurs and teams from Spain and Latin America since 2013. Seaya focuses on supporting founders in scaling their businesses and enabling them to become global leaders.
