PHILADELPHIA, November 11, 2022 — Carenostics, a healthcare AI start-up focused on building solutions for early detection and intervention of chronic diseases, has successfully launched its first product that analyzes electronic health record (EHR) data for the early detection of chronic kidney disease (CKD). The solution has begun deployment at Hackensack Meridian Health, a leading not-for-profit organization that is the largest, most comprehensive and truly integrated health care network in New Jersey.
Carenostics is led by the father-son team of Bharat Rao, Ph.D., and Kanishka Rao, MS, who were inspired by the unfortunate loss of a relative due to a missed early CKD diagnosis. It is estimated that 33 million Americans are living with undiagnosed CKD — many of whom do not become aware of their disease until it has progressed too far for effective treatment and most of their kidney function is irreversibly lost. Upon realizing the magnitude of this problem, Bharat and Kanishka decided to apply their healthcare AI expertise to proactively serve this population of undiagnosed patients.
“My grandfather passed away from kidney disease but did not know he had CKD until his kidneys failed and most interventions were no longer effective,” said Kanishka Rao, Carenostics co-founder and chief operating officer (COO). “Over the past year, we’ve learned just how common this story is, which has fueled our focus on early diagnosis and preventative care.”
Specifically, Carenostics integrates AI-based clinical decision support models directly into provider EHRs to help clinicians identify high-risk chronic disease patients — enabling earlier intervention and preventative treatment for undertreated and underserved patients. All of Carenostics’ solutions examine real-time existing EHR data (enabling scalability), adjust for underlying biases in healthcare data (promoting health equity), and integrate natively into provider workflows (activating clinicians).
“Our vision is to transform healthcare into a data-driven paradigm where readily-available patient data is leveraged to make personalized patient recommendations for diagnostic and therapy decisions — to improve patient outcomes and reduce healthcare costs,” said Dr. Bharat Rao, Carenostics co-founder and CEO.
The Carenostics team assembles executives, practitioners, and researchers with decades of experience applying AI and ML to healthcare problems. Dr. Rao has a proven track record of taking 20+ healthcare AI solutions to market that have generated $5–7B in revenue to date. The broader leadership team has distinctive expertise across healthcare data interoperability and privacy, bias-adjusted machine learning, and clinical research and adoption.
Carenostics’ flagship solution, CKDx, is being deployed at Hackensack Meridian Health (HMH) to help PCPs identify, diagnose, and document undiagnosed Stage 3 CKD patients, and match these patients to evidence-based therapies at the point-of-care. Carenostics is also working on proactive outreach approaches at Hackensack to help tackle the health inequities in CKD (that lead to Black or African Americans being 4 times more likely to have kidney failure compared to White Americans).
“Carenostics is the right partner for Hackensack’s digital health goals: with a single IT integration, they are able to deploy multiple solutions for earlier disease identification and clinical intervention that seamlessly integrate into our human and technical processes,” said Kash Patel, chief information and digital engagement officer at Hackensack Meridian Health. “Physician feedback on the CKDx solution has been overwhelmingly positive. The streamlined interface, appropriate alerts, and interpretable results enable proactive care without overburdening the clinician.”
Carenostics is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program and the Veterans Health Administration (VA) to develop AI solutions for earlier clinical intervention. They have patented a novel privacy-preserving approach to healthcare machine learning, a publication on which has been accepted at NeurIPS 2022.
The Carenostics team is passionate about early diagnosis and treatment of CKD, and expanding to address the third of medical expenses that are estimated to be avoidable with earlier clinical intervention. If you are interested in working with Carenostics to transform healthcare, contact Kanishka Rao at kanishka@carenostics.com.
About Carenostics
Carenostics is a healthcare AI startup that develops solutions to address the underdiagnosis, undertreatment, and health inequities of chronic disease. Carenostics was founded by CEO Bharat Rao, Ph.D., and COO Kanishka Rao, MS. Dr. Bharat Rao has been a global leader in Healthcare AI for 25+ years. He has launched 20+ healthcare AI solutions over his career that have been deployed at 300+ health systems, improved care for 10M+ patients, and generated $5B+ in revenue. He previously led Siemens Healthcare Machine Learning Group and KPMG’s Healthcare and Life Sciences AI and Analytics practice in the US. He holds a PhD in Machine Learning from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, has published 150+ peer-reviewed publications and has been awarded 60+ patents for his healthcare AI innovations. Kanishka Rao is a former growth strategy consultant, who founded and led McKinsey’s Healthcare Startups practice in the US. He holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Pennsylvania, and a bachelor’s in Management, Entrepreneurship and Innovation from The Wharton School. Carenostics has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the Veterans Health Administration and is currently rolling out its solutions for Chronic Kidney Disease at Hackensack Meridian Health and Opioid Treatment Optimization at the VA Pittsburgh.
Business Development / Media Contact: Kanishka Rao, Chief Operating Officer — kanishka@carenostics.com