London tech firm launches $1.7m funding round for AI-powered healthcare platform

A UK tech company has announced a $1.7m seed funding round to support its creation of the world’s first AI-powered healthcare marketplace.

Vamstar, based in London, has launched the funding round led by btov, a digital startup backer, with participation from Antler and Begin Capital.

The company will use the funding to develop its platform, which uses data science to connect data points across the supply chain, improving market access for healthcare providers.

It said that the platform comes following demand for simpler healthcare procurement in the wake of the pandemic.

The company is also planning to create new jobs before the end of the year.

Praful Mehta, co-founder and CEO of Vamstar, commented: “The healthcare industry is still spending 40 per cent of its revenue base on matching buyers and suppliers manually, using legacy systems.

“This is a time consuming process that costs hospitals money, while hampering the ability of suppliers to position new technologies. We want to put an end to that.

“Vamstar is introducing data-driven decision making in the $8.4tn global healthcare supply chain to replace manual processes in sourcing and procurement.

“Connected transaction level data is critical to lead the transformation of the healthcare supply chain and has the potential to unlock tremendous value.”

Jan-Hendrik Buerk, principal at btov, said: “An increasing need for competitive, diversified and transparent sourcing approaches and the manifestation of value-based tendering and procurement ​create the foundation for a future infrastructure platform in health care procurement.

“Having known the company since its very early days, we were able to eye-witness the impressive and rapid development of Vamstar over the last few months.”