Employers face increasing healthcare costs, but there is a dearth of digital health tools built for their human resources teams to better manage benefits.
That's where Avante comes in. The company is officially launching today, and it provides an artificial-intelligence-enabled platform that makes it easier for HR to track benefits usage, vendor assessments, insights into optimizing cost and data that assess the return on investment in real time.
The platform is designed to be a "single source of truth" for critical information on managing benefits, according to an announcement from the company. Through its Beacon technology, Avante is able to deploy a "constellation" of AI tools that surface insights and data to users.
Rohan D'Souza, CEO and co-founder of Avante, told Fierce Healthcare that he's spent much of his career in healthcare software "in the trenches on the provider side," and it was in that work that it became clear a significant opportunity lies in the employer market.
Employers are seeing medical costs rise by close to 10% each year, and benefits are among the largest expenses for employers overall, D'Souza said. These firms also generally have much of the needed tech infrastructure in place to make a platform like Avante's work, he said.
"We just happen to be in this unbelievable time, probably in our generation, where AI just changes everything, right?" he said. "You don't have to go build custom apps and custom notification systems, and you can just come in, sit on top of all of this infrastructure that's already there and deliver value so fast that when you get those magic moments, it has actual meaning and value behind it."
"So that's why we decided to go and tackle the space," D'Souza said.
Avante was co-founded with Carly Eckert, M.D., who now serves as its head of innovation and impact. She also plays a key role in ensuring that the company's AI tech is deployed ethically, D'Souza said.
The team first began research and development in late 2023 and since then has partnered with several companies, including Datavant, OneDigital, Real Chemistry and Zscaler, to build out and refine the tech. In its work with those firms, it has seen a 40% decrease in HR workload and a 7x increase in employee engagement compared to baselines in the industry.
The company secured a $10 million seed round in 2024 that was led by Fuse Venture Partners, according to the announcement.
Vin Gupta, M.D., a public health leader and advisor to Avante, told Fierce Healthcare that the company is poised to be a leading voice in the employer space.
"I don't think we talk enough about the employer space," he said. "The employer space doesn't tend to be thought leaders in healthcare policy ... policy wonks on the government side tend to sort of drive the debate."
"I think that needs to change, and I think Avante is really helping to drive that," he said.
Eckert said the team has been encouraged by the initial results, and those data serve a strong foundation for the company to build on now that it's officially launching.
"I'm just most excited about continuing that journey," she said. "When we can add precision to some of these benefits managers' tasks, how can that then actually improve health outcomes as well? I'm just excited for all the steps along the way."