Announcing Our Investment in H1: Creating a Healthier Future By Connecting the Dots in Healthcare

We are thrilled to share the news of Lux’s investment in H1, which today announced a $58M Series B to catalyze its mission of improving human health by increasing collaboration between stakeholders in the healthcare ecosystem. I have had the pleasure of getting to know co-founder/CEO Ariel Katz over the last year, witnessing the transformative growth and impact of the company and Ariel’s own evolution as an extraordinary CEO — mission-driven, transparent, and grounded in ethics and values.

Lux has invested in a range of innovative companies across the healthcare sector — from digital therapeutics to ML-powered drug development to virtualization of clinical trials. Prior to my investing role, I also spent time helping build Google’s early healthcare products in both the patient-provider and data space. It has become abundantly clear that there is a fundamental inefficiency that pervades across the industry — a disconnect between key players, including between pharmaceutical companies and key clinical researchers, between patients and physicians, and between payers and patients. With its unique platform powered by advanced machine learning, H1 has emerged as the leading company that bridges this gap, enabling greater collaboration and discovery and ultimately better outcomes. A more collaborative and connected ecosystem results in not only happy customers, but healthier people.

H1 is already working with a majority of the leading pharmaceutical and drug development companies, employing AI and machine learning to connect them to key thought leaders, researchers, and clinicians. The company has enabled greater transparency for patients — and better connectivity with all parties across the R&D spectrum — to help drive the development of more breakthrough drugs and therapies. Its advanced platform unlocks collaboration at the earliest stages of R&D, enabling pharmaceutical companies to partner with the top physicians for clinical trials and healthcare providers to partner with each other to accelerate innovation, ultimately helping patients to get the best care.

Such tools are more critical today than ever before. COVID has illuminated the life-saving potential of fast, breakthrough R&D — but speed cannot come at the expense of quality, ethics, or diversity and inclusion. Indeed, as the clinical trials around the COVID vaccine exemplified, it has never been more important to include under-represented communities in medical research — both as patients and also by enabling collaboration with diverse researchers in the industry.

As the WSJ op-ed that made the rounds this past weekend reminded us, there is too often a dismissal of diverse expert voices — especially womxn, Black, and Latinx — across industries; medicine, academia and research are not immune. Greater connectivity enabled by H1’s AI platform may help reduce the potential for human bias and broaden access to breakthrough research and researchers at the earliest stages.

At Lux, we seek out founders innovating at the edge of what’s possible. H1 is truly a next-generation healthcare company working to create a healthier future for the next generation. We are delighted to be joined by co-investors IVP, Menlo Ventures, Transformation Capital, and Lead Edge on this journey, and I am honored to be joining H1’s board to be a meaningful partner in our shared mission to accelerate innovation in healthcare.