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A Sydney-based healthtech startup founded just six months ago by two former employees of design unicorn Canva has raised $10.15 million to build the future of personalised healthcare.
Co-founded by Georgia Vidler and Kate Lambridis, Human hopes to create a simpler way for people to access medical information by developing a platform that draws on research from doctors and the experiences of patients.
The seed round - which Human claims to be the largest of its kind ever raised by an all-female founding team - was backed by high-profile investors including Air Tree Ventures’ Elicia McDonald (who led the round) and Skip Capital - the investment office of Atlassian co-founder Scott Farquhar and Kim Jackson’.
“Great ideas know no limits, and Human's potential to improve the lives of millions of people around the world who suffer from symptoms associated with chronic conditions is huge,” Airtree Ventures partner Elicia McDonald said.
“Both Georgia and Kate have experience building great products and have a deep connection to the problem space through personal experience.
“Their commitment and their ability to inspire top talent, supporters, and advisors to join them, is a huge competitive advantage. We feel privileged to support them in making their vision a reality.”
The founders identified the need for improved accessibility to medical information and research, given they both have family and friends living with chronic conditions.
As such, the platform will learn from doctors, researchers and patients about which treatments work, and will publish their findings on Human for everyone for free.
Vidler, a former head of product at Canva, said patients were looking for new options, but the sheer volume of medical information made it harder for people to decipher what information was relevant.
“The stats on chronic conditions are incredibly heartbreaking: more than half of the world’s population are currently living with a chronic condition today, and there is a huge amount of unnecessary suffering associated with these conditions,” said Vidler, the former Canva head of product.
“Kate and I saw an opportunity to bring together our skills in designing great products and teams, to capture the world’s best medical information and get it into the hands of patients and doctors everywhere, in a personalised and data-driven way.”
Lambridis, a former Canva product lead, added that Human aimed to empower doctors and patients to make more data-driven decisions.
“With Human we’ll be consolidating and finding gaps in existing medical research — and more importantly, conducting our own research with mass data sets from doctors and patients,” Lambridis said.
“Science is ever-evolving, and we want to help drive medical breakthroughs at a much faster rate.”
“We are building this product alongside clinicians and scientists across the world who see Human as a way to share their learnings and research with as many people as possible.”
In its first six months Human has already experienced significant growth, and has hired 18 people across medical, research, engineering, design and people.
The team is currently focused on building out the beta version of Human, which includes multiple novel pieces of research, and a medical patient network for early access to their first product.
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