San Francisco-based startup Plenful has recently emerged from stealth with $9 million in funding from top investors, including Bessemer Venture Partners and Waterline Ventures. The company’s goal is to automate pharmacy and healthcare operations using AI technology, revolutionizing the industry.
Expanding Platform Reach and Streamlining Administrative Tasks
Plenful plans to utilize the funding to expand its platform and no-code applications throughout the healthcare industry. This expansion will allow organizations to streamline administrative tasks, freeing up care teams to focus on high-priority tasks related to patient care. The global healthcare industry is currently experiencing significant worker shortages and burnout, making the need for automation solutions more critical than ever.
“Over the past year, we’ve seen an influx of tech resources prioritizing provider burnout. Plenful is addressing existing labor shortages for another significant and growing part of healthcare – enabling pharmacy operations teams to do more meaningful work,” Andrew Hedin, partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, said.
While clinicians, nurses, and pharmacies are crucial to healthcare delivery, much of their work is tied to routine administrative tasks. These tasks include data entry, patient intake management, and compliance with drug procurement programs. Currently, most teams handle these tasks manually, taking away valuable time that could be spent on patient care and assistance.
AI-Driven Automation to Improve Efficiency
Plenful’s innovative platform addresses these operational inefficiencies by combining AI technology and human oversight. The platform can automate tasks such as document data entry, referral management, 340B auditing, savings identification, and revenue optimization. By automating these processes, care teams and pharmacists can focus on more high-value tasks and provide better patient care.
“After seeing the prevalence of disjointed and manual processes, particularly within pharmacy operations, I was inspired to innovate and address operational inefficiencies for the betterment of patients, caregivers, and providers,” Joy Liu, CEO and co-founder of Plenful, told VentureBeat.
Plenful’s platform can seamlessly integrate with both unstructured (such as faxes/PDFs) and structured (like data from EHRs and pharmacy management software) healthcare data. By tapping into AI technology, the platform can provide valuable insights and automate workflows, ultimately driving efficiencies across healthcare operations.
- No-code platform for automating workflows
- Specialized focus on pharmacy operations use-cases
- Ability to process both unstructured and structured data
- Limited direct competition in the market
Customer Success and Future Growth
Since its launch in 2021, Plenful has onboarded over 20 customers in the healthcare industry, including health systems, pharmacies, and other organizations. Dr. Peter Chang, VP of Healthcare Design at Tampa General Hospital, praised Plenful for its seamless adoption process and integration capabilities.
While there are other players in the healthcare workflow automation space, Plenful stands out due to its specialized focus on pharmacy operations use-cases and its highly configurable no-code platform. The company plans to use the recent funding to grow its team and expand its customer base, helping healthcare organizations automate administrative tasks and improve retention rates.
“We will continue to grow across our core product, engineering, partnerships, and customer success functions,” Liu said.
