Aiva Health has received investments from Google and Amazon Inc. to help accelerate its development of a voice operating system for health care services that can be used with Alexa or Google Home.
The Los Angeles-based health care startup received separate funding from the Google Assistant Investment Program and Amazon’s Alexa Fund. The companies didn’t disclose financial terms of the deals.
Aiva uses Google Home, Amazon Echo and other smart speakers to allow patients and the elderly to connect to their caregivers. The voice OS is built on a suite of applications, including a mobile app for caregivers to manage help requests, a dashboard for performance reporting, and a backend for controlling the voice assistants’ settings and their interaction with other smart devices such as TVs, lights and thermostats.
“Voice is the new mobile for delivering better healthcare,”Aiva founder and Chief Executive Sumeet Bhatia said in a statement. “We’re thrilled to be working with the Google Assistant Investments team to help expand our offerings and improve care for people who need it the most.”
Alphabet Inc. established Google Assistant Investments this spring to support startups developing innovative voice technology. Its investment in Aiva is its first in foray into healthcare.
“Google Assistant is already giving millions of people easier access to information, more entertainment options and better control over their environment,” said Google Assistant Investment Program lead and Dialogflow founder Ilya Gelfenbeyn. “It’s exciting to see Aiva pushing the technology even further, using voice to improve vital human interactions like caregiving.”
Aiva’s other investors include Act One Ventures, Mucker Capital, Techstars and the Cedars-Sinai Accelerator Powered by Techstars.
Aiva said it is targeting hospitals, physician offices, skilled nursing facilities, senior communities, a well as elderly home users. The company, which was a 2017 alumni of the Cedars-Sinai Accelerator powered by Techstars, is currently piloting its voice-based operating system at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.
Date: October 2, 2018
Source: Bizjournals