Europe’s healthcare systems have achieved nothing short of remarkable outcomes over the past half century. Life expectancy has increased by 10 years since 1960 and people born today can expect to live a vigorous life well into their 80s [1]. High population coverage rates and low levels of out-of-pocket spend have enabled strong access, quality and equity in care – making Europe’s health systems the envy of the world [2]. 

And yet, as we see it, today European health systems face multiple crises that are endangering the hard-won accomplishments of public health. Two out of three European hospitals are at a financial breaking point [3, 4], and while industry leaders are engaging in yet another short-term cost cutting exercise, they likely cannot ‘squeeze the lemon’ much longer.

Making healthcare organizations more financially resilient is the mission of Phare Health, an AI-native financial operating system that we believe provides a lighthouse for the industry. Phare Health co-founders Martin Seneviratne, Lee Kupferman, and Tymor Hamamsy, to us, not only have unique talent and expertise that sets them apart to take on this challenge, they are also funny, kind and positive – the type of founders we dream of partnering with. 

Phare Health’s platform leverages the founders’ decade of experience leading major academic and product initiatives at Stanford and Google DeepMind. With an initial focus on solving the medical coding pain point and enabling next-generation Revenue Cycle Management (RCM), the team believes it will be on the right path toward a trusted financial source of truth. Over time, Phare Health plans to modernize the entire financial infrastructure of health systems to become a real-time, action-oriented intelligence engine that can surface opportunities to improve financial performance. From there, the company intends to integrate a number of adjacent financial products to create an ecosystem of solutions that will help deliver financial resilience for health systems. 

Now, Martin, Lee and Tymor are growing their team in London, where they aim to tackle financial resilience at a national, regional and global scale. At General Catalyst, we are thrilled to lead Phare Health’s Seed round alongside our partners KHP Ventures and Bertelsmann Investment, and welcome the entire team to GC’s Health Assurance family.