LuminDx Closes Oversubscribed Pre-Seed Round To Build AI Platform
To Help Frontline Providers Quickly, Accurately Identify Skin Conditions
46 million Americans misdiagnosed with skin conditions each year
BOSTON, MA, JULY 21, 2020 — LuminDx, a digital health company building an AI-powered smartphone app to help front-line healthcare providers quickly and accurately identify likely skin conditions, today announced the closing of a $2 million pre-seed financing round. Argon VC led the round, with participation by Flare Capital, Good Growth Capital, Techstars, and TBD Angels. Several notable angel investors also participated, including serial health tech entrepreneur Andy Palmer, Bob Davoli with Gutbrain Ventures, Esther Dyson, and William Crawford, Chief Technology Officer at Medically Home.
Cofounded in 2017 by Susan Conover, a graduate of MIT’s System Design and Management Program, the LuminDx app uses machine learning and computer vision to analyze a set of images and related information. The plan is to collect information from a wide array of patients and enable all front-line providers to quickly and accurately assess skin conditions.
“Our goal is to help transform the dermatology field and assist primary care physicians and other providers to quickly and appropriately triage patients. LuminDx intends to improve outcomes for patients and accelerate those patients needing specialty care, so every patient gets the right care at the right time,” said Susan Conover, CEO, LuminDx. “Closing our oversubscribed pre-seed round allows us to access large scale image collections of skin conditions, improve our platform’s AI accuracy to the level of a dermatologist, and strategically expand our team.”
Each year, 2.3 billion people seek help for skin issues worldwide, with two-thirds of these cases evaluated by non-specialists; 50% are misdiagnosed. In the U.S., 46 million Americans are misdiagnosed and mistreated for skin conditions annually. “Dermatological conditions can be notoriously difficult to diagnose, and many dermatologists have months-long wait times to see new patients. This exacerbates the need for non-specialists to fill in gaps in patient care” said Vic Lanio of Flare Capital Partners. “LuminDx’s platform is elevating the practice of dermatology for non-specialists, relieving pressure on the healthcare system, accelerating access to expert care for those in need, and enabling a better overall patient experience.
Argon Venture’s Managing Partner Andy Feinberg commented “We’re thrilled to have Argon Ventures lead LuminDx’s pre-seed round. We are convinced of Susan’s leadership and vision and the company has a compelling opportunity to build out a meaningful data repository against which to apply machine learning to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of skin disease identification. We believe the platform will emerge as a critical and highly valuable tool for doctors across the globe.”
“There are thousands of different skin diseases, which can vary across skin color, body parts, and many other factors. I’ve been diagnosed with melanoma three times, and through those experiences learned the challenges patients and physicians face to effectively address skin conditions,” Conover added. “Dermatology software innovation has lagged behind radiology, pathology, and other medical imaging fields. Especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve seen teledermatology play a major role in effectively treating patients remotely. Machine learning models are proving to be highly successful in analyzing medical images on par or even surpassing expert evaluations.”
LuminDx participated in the Techstars Boston accelerator in 2019 and MassChallenge in 2018.
About LuminDx
LuminDx, headquartered in Boston, is developing cutting-edge technologies that promise to better address some of the most common skin conditions to help primary care physicians and front-line providers make quick and accurate decisions for every patient with a skin issue, every time. LuminDx is also building solutions to help identify patients who can benefit from new therapies. For more information, visit www.lumindx.com.
About Argon Ventures
Argon Ventures leads deep tech, pre-seed investments in Intelligent Industry Solutions. Argon seeks out companies which unlock new industry value through enterprise applications that solve tangible business problems today and resolve long-term market inefficiencies. These solutions are shaped by founding teams who marry deep industry insight with novel technology platforms and often leverage proprietary data sets. As former founders and operators, they bring decades of hands-on leadership experience in enterprise technology companies from initial founding to public market scale. They seek to partner with mission-driven founders with whom they can roll up their sleeves to help build impactful, global businesses. With Argon’s inaugural fund launched in 2020, Argon is already off to an exciting start with partnerships including Appland, Bodeswell, Secure AI Labs, and now LuminDx. For more information, please visit www.argon.vc
About Flare Capital
Flare Capital is a team of proven healthcare technology venture capital investors and senior operating executives known for their unparalleled strategic industry resources, insight and total commitment to the success of its entrepreneurs. Flare Capital raised one of the industry’s largest dedicated venture capital funds focused exclusively on early stage opportunities in healthcare technology innovation and is privileged to closely partner with founders and management. Selected investments include Aetion, Aspen RxHealth, Bright Health, Circulation (acquired by LogistiCare), ClearDATA, Cohere Health, Curisium, Eden Health, HealthReveal, HealthVerity, higi, Iora Health, Oui Health, Somatus, Suki, Tausight, Valence Health (acquired by Evolent Health), VisitPay and Welltok. Learn more at www.flarecapital.com and follow the firm on Twitter @flarecapital.
Contact: lauren at lumindx.com
