Here’s an exclusive look at the pitch deck that got an ex-Amazon exec $10 million to bring AI agents to health systems

Ascertain CEO Dr. Mark Michalski, a radiologist by training, loved practicing medicine. But the administrative burdens he faced as a clinician eventually drove him to stop seeing patients.

It’s the very problem Michalski wants to fix at Ascertain, a healthcare startup that’s collaborating with top New York health system Northwell Health to relieve clinicians of those administrative burdens using AI.

“It’s so hard to deliver care in a scalable way that’s fulfilling for providers and meaningful for patients,” Michalski said. “I don’t want to pass the baton on to the next generation [of clinicians] with the same story.”

In its efforts to change that story with AI, Ascertain just raised $10 million in Series A funding, led by private equity firm Deerfield Management with participation from Northwell Health.

The startup launched in 2022 out of New York-based startup studio Aegis Ventures, in partnership with Northwell Health. Its AI agent platform helps hospitals tackle a wide range of administrative tasks, from clinical documentation to prior authorization to compliance management.

Michalski joined Ascertain in 2023 from Amazon, where he worked on Amazon Web Services’ life sciences business and on Amazon’s healthcare brands, from primary care chain One Medical to Amazon Pharmacy. There, he saw how new AI technologies could be hugely useful to automate the brands’ rote administrative tasks — and, soon, could be revolutionary for clinical care.

“While I was at Amazon, there was early proof of concept that AI agents were going to be very effective for healthcare minutiae, which the industry is drowning in,” he said. “I came to Ascertain with that thesis, and we retooled the company around it.”

Ascertain launched its AI agent platform as a copilot for case managers, who are typically nurses who coordinate patient care, payments, and hospital discharges.

Ascertain is one of many startups gaining ground to tackle healthcare administrative tasks with AI. Some have already raised tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars from VCs, such as General Catalyst-backed Hippocratic AI, which raised $141 million in January at a $1.64 billion valuation for its AI agents to help providers automate some patient-facing tasks.

Michalski said Ascertain has intentionally moved more slowly, improving its tech thoughtfully over the past two years according to Northwell Health’s needs. Northwell Health treats about 2 million patients every year, more than any other New York health system, volumes that would leave any hospital overrun with administrative tasks.

“It’s almost impossible to solve these problems at a large health system like Northwell without a really intimate partnership early on,” Michalski said.

He said Ascertain’s focus on case managers also sets the startup apart. “For the life of me, I can’t understand why people are not looking at case managers. They are the nexus of so many things — denial rates, length of stay, patient satisfaction,” he said.

Ascertain’s next phase of customers will come from its Series A lead investor, Deerfield Management, where Michalski will now also serve as Chief Information Officer. Deerfield’s portfolio includes a number of healthcare delivery companies that Ascertain will soon sell into, Michalski said.

Dr. Julian Harris, an operating partner at Deerfield, said he sees lots of opportunities for Ascertain to enhance the firm’s portfolio companies’ workflows, as well as to connect with the hospitals and health systems that Deerfield has previously partnered with, co-invested with, or that are limited partners in Deerfield’s fund.

Deerfield also has relationships with health plans, Harris said, which could help Ascertain expand into payer contracts in the long term. “But out of the gate, the health system opportunities are massive,” he said.

Here’s the 10-slide pitch deck Ascertain used to bank $10 million from Deerfield.

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