Ajax Raises $100M, Focused on Advancing Med-Tech

Following a $100 million funding round in April, Ajax Health today announced it raised an additional $100 million to form Ajax 3, which will advance med-tech innovations.

“Ajax 2 and 3 are highly focused on the connectivity between traditional med-tech, artificial intelligence, machine learning and the next generation of technology,” Duke Rohlen, MBA, chairman and CEO of Ajax Health, told Inside Digital Health™. “We want to fuse the old with the new.”

The money will be used to invest in areas of med-tech, healthcare services and healthcare IT that focus on innovative approaches to addressing major issues in healthcare. More specifically, Rohlen said Ajax is investing in companies in the fields of cardiology and electrophysiology.

“The companies use data, information and machine learning not only to improve speed, but data-driven efficacy and improved care to simplify the project and help interpret information,” he said.

But why the focus on those two areas of health?

“Significant challenges still remain there,” Rohlen said.

In fact, electrophysiology has a success rate of just over 50% and experts in the cardiology field still can’t figure out why a healthy person could drop dead from a massive heart attack despite showing no symptoms or tightening of arteries.

By leveraging machine learning and AI, experts have the ability to better understand disease processes to define and develop tech to improve outcomes.

These technologies, while improving outcomes, also benefit health systems, Rohlen said.

“Health systems are looking for ways to take time, costs and complexity out of the system,” he said. “If you look at what has to happen, there has to be a new paradigm of health IT, machine learning, AI and ways you can take deep troves of data to make something better.”

Combining those factors with med-tech gives health systems the opportunity to treat patients who traditionally fit a specific paradigm, to treat patients more efficiently and cost-effectively and follow up with patients to see if the benefit from the procedure is sustainable.

HealthQuest Capital led the funding, with additional investments from Polaris Partners and other partners.

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