Only have 1 minute? Here are 3 takeaways from the piece:
• Greek-founded healthtech startup LANGaware raises €2 million in fresh funding
• The round is led by Eleven Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm in Southeast Europe, together with existing investor Metavallon VC
• LANGaware employs AI to predict and monitor cognitive and mental health conditions (such as Mild Cognitive Decline, Alzheimer’s Disease, and Depression)
Founded by Greek researcher Dr. Vassiliki Rentoumi, LANGaware’s technology brings innovation in healthcare by analyzing language, voice, and speech through digital biomarkers. The company’s platform has been rigorously tested and proven effective in both clinical and virtual care settings in the US and Greece.
LANGaware’s clients are health systems, providers, and pharma firms who look to reduce healthcare costs and improve patient outcomes by ensuring accurate diagnoses and minimizing unnecessary treatments.
The fresh funding will now be used to enhance LANGaware’s technology and product teams, as well as to expand the company’s business development team and presence across virtual care platforms and health systems in the US.
“We plan to utilize the funding to enhance LANGaware’s technology and product teams, thereby boosting our AI capabilities. Our strategy includes running existing and new research projects in collaboration with Harvard Medical School, evolving our software stack to version 2.0, adopting new technologies, expanding our platform’s capabilities to address new diseases and functionalities such as anxiety detection, and optimizing product performance in data acquisition,” the company told The Recursive in a statement.
Additionally, LANGaware plans to grow its engineering team with new members to support these initiatives.
Transforming lives through AI driven disease detection
As the company further points out, it has a vision to transform lives with AI-driven disease detection, and create a “future where cognitive and mental health conditions are detected at their earliest stages”.
“This funding brings us closer to a future where early detection and personalized care are the norm, reducing healthcare burdens and enhancing overall well-being,” the company added.
With a background in the intersection of computational linguistics, natural language processing, and machine learning, Vassiliki founded LANGaware in 2019 as a spinoff from the Greek National Center for Scientific Research “Demokritos” and St. George University Hospital in London. The company is also a part of the Endeavour Greece scaleup program.
For Eleven Ventures, supporting LANGaware also means addressing some of the most pressing issues in healthcare right now.
““Problem” is a light word to describe the domino effect of late-stage diagnostics in neurodegenerative disorders. For example, Dementia Medicare beneficiaries receive nearly 3x > payments compared to other receivers but early diagnostics can save up to $14K annually for payers, a 1/3rd of the total cost. Through its speech-based flagging system for early detection, LANGaware is an example of how even the most pressing issues in healthcare can be addressed through the power of science and technology,” Valeri Petrov, partner at Eleven Ventures, comments.