More and more people are asking OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other LLMs about their health, often finding that chatbots provide extremely useful medical insights.
KJ Dhaliwal (pictured left), who in 2019 sold South Asian dating app Dil Mil for $50 million, says he’s been thinking about the inefficiencies of the US health care system since he was a child as a medical translator for his parents and saw the advent of LLMs as an opportunity to do something about it.
In May 2024, it launched Lotus Health AI, a free primary care provider available 24/7 in 50 languages. On Tuesday, Lotus announced it had raised $35 million in a Series A round led by CRV and Kleiner Perkins, bringing its total funding to $41 million.
People are already consulting AI about their health, but Lotus is going one step further: it’s moving beyond these conversations to facilitate actual medical care, including diagnosis, prescriptions and specialist referrals.
Essentially, Lotus is building an AI doctor that works like a real doctor’s office, equipped with licensure in all 50 states, malpractice insurance, HIPAA-compliant systems, and full access to patient records.
The key difference is that the majority of the work is done by artificial intelligence, which is trained to ask the same questions a doctor would.
Since AI models are also prone to hallucinations, the company always has board-certified doctors from top health institutions like Stanford, Harvard, and UCSF review final diagnoses, lab orders, and medical prescriptions.
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Lotus has developed an AI model that, similar to OpenEvidence, synthesizes the latest evidence-based research with a patient’s history and clinical responses to create a treatment plan.
“AI gives the advice, but real doctors sign it,” Dhaliwal told TechCrunch.
Lotus recognizes the limits of virtual care. For urgent health issues, Lotus directs patients to the nearest urgent care center or emergency room. And if a case requires a physical exam, the platform refers the patient to a physician, Dhaliwal said.
Outsourcing such an important part of medical decision-making to artificial intelligence is an ambitious gamble given the regulatory hurdles in healthcare. For example, doctors are limited to seeing patients only in the states where they are licensed.
As CRV general partner Saar Gur, who led the deal and joined the company’s board, said: “There are a lot of challenges, but it’s not SpaceX sending astronauts to the moon.”
Gur (pictured right), an early investor in DoorDash, Mercury and Ring, is convinced that the telemedicine frameworks created during the pandemic, combined with recent breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, allow Lotus to navigate many of the existing regulatory and engineering hurdles.
“It’s a big swing,” Gur said. But for an investor like Gur, that’s the upside: Lotus is trying to fundamentally redefine the entire primary care model.
While the primary care physicians are in inadequacyLotus claims it can see 10 times more patients than a traditional practice, even when it limits each visit to 15 minutes.
The startup isn’t the only one creating an AI doctor. With light speed support Doctrinal is one of the competitors. Lotus is differentiating itself — at least for now — offering the entire suite of care completely free.
Dhaliwal said potential business models could include sponsored content or subscriptions, but the current focus remains solely on product development and patient acquisition, not revenue.
