Nursing shortages had been an issue properly earlier than our hospitals had been rocked by a pandemic. Two years in and overloaded methods have additional contributed to burnout, stress and different elements plaguing the folks we depend on for our personal well-being. We’ve seen robotics utilized to simply about each different subject of late, so why not nursing — a subject that can require a million new faces to maintain up with demand within the U.S. alone?
Diligent has been main that particular cost for a while now. Late final yr, we spoke with Georgia Tech affiliate professor Andrea Thomaz, who co-founded the corporate in 2017 with Vivian Chu, to debate exactly how profound an impression the previous two years have had on the agency. She famous, partially:
It’s actually only a dramatic shift in labor markets throughout a variety of totally different industries. It appears to be associated each to folks type of having an important resignation, the place individuals are deciding that they need to do various things. And lots of people shifting jobs. We’re seeing that every one throughout tech work, lots in our trade and healthcare. Lots of people are simply deciding to do one thing else. There have been already workforce challenges pre-pandemic, and now these are reaching disaster ranges.
Diligent timed its final funding spherical completely, scoring $10 million in March of 2020, proper earlier than many U.S. hospitals had been inundated. This week the robotics firm introduced that it’s tripling that quantity for a Sequence N of “over” $30 million. Tiger World, which appears to have its striped paws in all issues robotic funding, led the spherical. Current buyers True Ventures, DNX Enterprise, Ubiquity Ventures, E14 Fund, Subsequent Coast Ventures, Growth Capital and Gaingels joined in, together with new participant, Cedars-Sinai Well being Ventures.
“This new spherical of funding will assist us scale the corporate to fulfill the unimaginable demand for our healthcare service robotic,” Thomaz mentioned in a launch tied to at present’s information. Due to the assist of our buyers and the Diligent crew, we’re targeted on increasing automated assist for medical groups so nurses and clinicians can deal with duties that matter most, affected person care.”
Diligent says will probably be utilizing the funding to assist navigate some provide chain points because it continues to deploy its nurse aiding bot, Moxie. This new spherical brings the startup’s funding to simply beneath $50 million.
