Amsterdam-based healthech startup Nori Health has landed $670,000 in funding from an unnamed angel investor. The company has also reported that it's completed a six-week trial of its AI-enhanced digital assistant for people living with Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), namely Crohn's disease and colitis.
Founded in 2017 with the backing of an EU Horizon 2020 grant, Nori Health is a chatbot for people with IBD — that's 3.4 million people in Europe alone. Nori's founder and CEO Roeland Pater is one of them: he was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease as a teenager.
“Doctors don’t have much time for Crohn’s sufferers unless urgent medical intervention is needed, so people like me usually end up with a 15-minute appointment twice a year,” Pater said. “Secondly, it’s well known that lifestyle changes can make a huge difference to the level of suffering, but there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Thirdly, the personal nature of the symptoms can prevent people from speaking openly about them. I decided an AI-powered chatbot was the way to help me - and potentially millions of others - identify and change what was making me sick.”
Nori Health plans to use the fresh funding to focus on business development activities and bring the product to the markets of the Netherlands and the UK by the end of this year. It's also going to launch a second trial, followed by a pilot for early adopters.
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Image credit: ROBIN WORRALL on Unsplash
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