Healthcare providers continue experimenting with AI for patient communications as the technology’s real-world effectiveness remains under evaluation. In the latest such effort, University Hospitals, an Ohio-based academic health system, announced a collaboration with Hippocratic AI to deploy conversational AI agents across its network for non-diagnostic patient support tasks.
Key Points
- University Hospitals will deploy Hippocratic AI’s voice-based conversational agents to support patients in non-diagnostic use cases including pharmacy-related needs, preventative screening calls, patient education, and appointment support. Initial deployment focused on pharmacy-related patient needs, with the companies describing early results as “promising” without providing specific metrics.
- The AI agents have undergone physician and nurse evaluations, health system partner testing, and continuous performance monitoring as part of what the company calls its “Polaris Constellation safety architecture.”
- University Hospitals operates an integrated network of more than 20 hospitals, over 50 health centers, and more than 200 physician offices across 16 counties in northern Ohio, with over 30,000 employees. The system maintains a $214 million annual research portfolio and has been named to U.S. News & World Report’s Best Hospitals list for 27 consecutive years.
- Hippocratic AI has raised $278 million in total funding from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, Kleiner Perkins, NVIDIA’s NVentures, Premji Invest, SV Angel, and six health systems. The company describes its platform as a “safety-focused Large Language Model for healthcare.”
The collaboration aims to provide patients with conversational support between clinical visits, though the companies did not specify implementation timelines or volume targets for patient interactions.
The Data
- University Hospitals operates more than 20 hospitals (including five joint ventures), over 50 health centers and outpatient facilities, and more than 200 physician offices serving 16 counties in northern Ohio.
- The health system employs more than 30,000 people and maintains an annual research portfolio of $214 million with over 3,000 active clinical trials and research studies.
- Hippocratic AI has received $278 million in total funding and is backed by six health systems in addition to venture capital investors.
- The partnership announcement did not provide specific data on patient volume, call completion rates, patient satisfaction metrics, or quantitative outcomes from the initial pharmacy-focused deployment beyond describing results as “promising.”
Industry Context
Our agents are designed to be empathetic, safe, and effective extensions of the care team delivering personalized support at scale, when and where patients need it most.
Munjal Shah, CEO and Co-founder of Hippocratic AI
The collaboration addresses what the organizations identify as communication gaps between patient visits and the need to support clinicians in spending more time on complex clinical work. University Hospitals has positioned itself as focused on healthcare innovation, recently named one of America’s Most Innovative Companies by Fortune, with initiatives including Hospital@Home programs, remote patient monitoring, and clinical AI applications.
Hippocratic AI was co-founded by Munjal Shah alongside physicians, hospital administrators, and AI researchers from institutions including El Camino Health, Johns Hopkins, Stanford, Microsoft, Google, and NVIDIA. The company’s approach focuses on non-diagnostic applications, distinguishing its agents from clinical decision-making tools.
