Why We Invested: Alvee
Company: Alvee
Founders: Nicole Cook
Stage: Seed
Women’s Health Vertical: Social Determinants of Health
Industry: Healthcare Technology
Meet Alvee: leveraging Artificial Intelligence to drive health equity in care
Alvee is an ai-driven health equity platform helping providers to integrate SDOH into clinical workflows. Alvee helps healthcare organizations to reduce health disparities with AI-driven insights and autonomous care navigation. Its platform proactively identifies barriers to care, lays out actionable pathways for SDOH, and helps to close the loop on resource referrals. Alvee focuses on enhanced health outcomes, regulatory compliance, and cost efficiency.
Why?
Social determinants of health (SDoHs) have been coming to the forefront of the healthcare world in the last ten years. SDoHs are the non-medical factors of a person’s life that impact their health, such as their income, education level, food insecurity levels, housing and basic amenity access, and more (1). Research has shown that SDoHs account for 30-55% of health outcomes in individuals. However, actually tracking SDoHs in a way that allows healthcare organizations to take action on them is a major barrier to care. According to a white paper published by the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) in February 2023, while 8 in 10 healthcare organizations track some form of SDoH data, there are three main issues that create barriers in converting this information into effective outcomes and care (2):
Lack of standardization and integration of the data into an individual’s medical record, even when the data is collected within the organization
Insufficient training and education on how to capture, collect, code, and use SDOH data
Limited use of SDOH data to communicate between healthcare providers and community-based referral organizations
To fully address SDoHs and their impact on health outcomes, these three main challenges need to be addressed in the healthcare system. This is where technology like alvee can come into play.
What differentiates them in the market relative to competitors?
Alvee is a product that sits on top of EHR systems, or Electronic Health Record management systems. Examples of EHR platforms/companies are Epic, Cerner, AllScripts, athenahealth, and Salesforce Health Cloud. The EHR market is large ($30B) and continuing to grow, with an expectation to reach over $38.5B in the US alone by 2025 (3). EHRs are leveraged in all acute care hospitals (~5,400 hospitals across the US) and ambulatory practices.
Additionally, payers and other healthcare organizations also keep patient/customer records in their own systems, and would benefit from a platform like alvee providing insights into their holistic health. For this more general healthcare CRM market, there is a projected CAGR of 8.0% from 2023-2030, with a current market size of $17.9B growing to $30.7B by 2030 (4).
SDoHs are a big part of how payers are thinking about patients moving forward, with regulatory shifts reflecting this effort. One major change has been seen in the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) reimbursement processes, where they have updated their structure to incentivize more SDoH-related interventions (5).
Some of alvee’s main competitive advantages is that it integrates fully into existing EHR platforms, sitting as a layer on top rather than being a separate platform that needs to be connected into the EHR. The expectation for users is that they don’t even realize they are using alvee, but rather just recognize additional features and capabilities within their existing EHR platform. Additionally, alvee incorporates features of automation, proactive support identification, and customized recommendations, supporting clinicians in taking the available patient SDoH data and making it actionable in their care plans.
Over the past year, Alvee has made remarkable strides in advancing its mission to reduce health disparities and improve healthcare outcomes through innovative, AI-driven solutions. The company’s progress has been underscored by securing pivotal pilot partnerships with major health systems, most notably through its successful completion of the Mayo Clinic Platform_Accelerate program. Alvee was the only startup to secure a pilot with Mayo Clinic as a result of this program, validating the platform’s impact and scalability in real-world clinical settings. This achievement is further complemented by collaborations with the University of Miami Health System, Bridge Prenatal, and Wellstar Health System, the latter of which also invested in Alvee, demonstrating significant interest from healthcare systems in Alvee's transformative potential.
Alvee’s defensibility and technical moat is strong for the following reasons:
Comprehensive Data Integration: Traditional EHRs often lack the external data necessary to fully assess patient risk. Alvee bridges this gap by integrating essential external data sources directly into EHR systems, enabling healthcare providers to deliver more comprehensive and personalized care.
Proprietary and Evolving Algorithms: Alvee’s algorithms, powered by advanced machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP) technologies, are proprietary and continuously evolving. By leveraging both external datasets and real-time data from Alvee’s applications, these algorithms enhance the platform’s ability to generate actionable insights and drive better health outcomes.
Innovation in Autonomous Care: Alvee is at the forefront of revolutionizing care management with the development of its Autonomous Care Navigator (ACN) platform, which is currently in advanced stages of development. With a provisional patent soon to be filed, this platform is designed to autonomously support patients with barriers to care and help to close the loop on resource referrals. This innovation represents a major leap forward in the delivery of patient-centered care.
In just the past year, Alvee has not only expanded its technical capabilities but also established itself as a key partner to some of the most prestigious health systems in the country. With a clear vision, strong strategic partnerships, and a commitment to advancing health equity, Alvee is well-positioned to lead the transformation of healthcare into a more inclusive, effective, and equitable system for all.
About the team
Alvee’s Founder & CEO is Nicole Cook, who has extensive experience in the healthcare technology industry. She started her career at Epic, one of the world’s leading EHR technology companies, as a consultant and implementation director, giving her insight into how this industry operates and understanding exactly how the sales cycles at health systems and payers work. She then took her industry and sales insights and became employee #15 at SameSky Health as Director of Client Relations, reporting directly to the COO. Here she continued honing her industry expertise while also gaining experience in the fast-paced, fluid nature of startups in the healthcare ecosystem.
Nicole is supported by a team of leading experts in data science, engineering, and analytics to ensure the team has the right level of expertise across healthcare and technology. Additionally, the team has the support of advisors from across the healthcare industry to supplement Nicole’s career expertise.
Coyote Ventures Investment
Coyote Ventures is proud to join Alvee in their Seed round alongside Catalyst by Wellstar, Alumni Ventures, MedMountain Ventures, Ideaship Fund, and Mayo Clinic Platform_Accelerate.
Selected as a finalist in the Accenture HealthTech Challenge, completed the MVP for their AI-driven Personalized SDOH Care Plans, hired 2 commission-only sales people to accelerate revenue, and Nicole was selected as a ‘24-’25 RockHealth Innovation Fellow.
How the company is advancing the conversation around Social Determinants of Health?
Alvee is paving the way for healthcare systems and payers to more efficiently and effectively track and act upon SDoH data. There has been a lot of movement within the regulatory systems in recognizing the impact SDoHs have on health outcomes. One of the first explorations, the Accountable Health Communities (AHC) Model of this was launched by CMS in 2017 and ended after 5 years in 2022. There are many learnings gained from this first iteration, and the CMS Innovation Center is leveraging its findings to share out tools and resources from the AHC as broadly as possible. They’ve also launched a new model, the Accountable Care Organization Realizing Equity, Access, and Community Health (ACO REACH) Model, to start in 2024, which builds upon the AHC Model. There are also state-level programs recognizing SDoH’s impact on health outcomes, such as Colorado’s Social Health Information Exchange. States are investing not just in SDoH identification but more specifically data infrastructure to support whole-person health.
Platforms like alvee can continue pushing these efforts forward by making them easier to attain by providers and payers. For example, alvee’s capability to create automated ICD coding would be beneficial to both providers and health systems to get them the benefits of having these codings in their system (reimbursements, staying within regulation requirements, etc.) without requiring vast manual effort. Additionally, alvee’s autonomous care navigator to recommend specific execution plans would be extremely beneficial in healthcare systems as providers tend to be stretched very thin and don’t feel it is worth tracking SDOH unless they can give their patients actionable steps to take to support them. Some major hospitals spend thousands to build out their own custom platform on Epic to support them in these areas but smaller/mid-sized and less technologically advanced health systems would most likely benefit from a built-out solution in this space.
Going forward: vision of the company
Looking beyond the current offerings, alvee aspires to become the definitive leader in health equity innovation, transforming healthcare into a more inclusive and patient-centered system. Their vision is to complete the development of their Autonomous Care Navigator (ACN), which will revolutionize the delivery of healthcare by advancing whole-person care, promoting health equity, and significantly reducing health disparities. Alvee is committed to building a platform that can eliminate bias in healthcare settings, ensuring that all patients receive equitable treatment and care regardless of their race, ethnicity, gender, or socioeconomic background.
Alvee aims to rehumanize the patient experience by automating workflows, allowing providers to spend more meaningful time interacting with their patients. As alvee scales their SDOH initiatives, they envision a healthcare landscape where every patient’s needs are met, from social determinants to clinical care. Additionally, alvee is dedicated to alleviating health worker burnout and documentation fatigue by streamlining administrative tasks, enabling healthcare professionals to focus on what truly matters—caring for their patients. As they expand their reach and capabilities, alvee is committed to leading the charge in creating a healthcare system that is truly equitable, efficient, and compassionate.
The team at Coyote is thrilled to witness alvee’s vision in leveraging social determinants of health to create a more holistic healthcare system, which strongly resonates with our own fund values. As we share this common goal, we look forward to collaborating with alvee and contributing our collective efforts to bettering the lives of healthcare workers and their patients.