What You Should Know:
– Vitalis Ventures, an investment platform focused on AI-enabled care delivery has invested $15M in Drive Health to scale “Avery,” a Google-powered agentic AI platform designed to automate clinical workflows rather than just generate text.
– Unlike standard chatbots, Avery operates as a “clinical workflow engine,” handling defined tasks like discharge coordination and symptom monitoring under strict human oversight.
– The funding brings Drive Health’s total capital to over $26M as it prepares for a Series A in 2026 and expands real-world deployments, including a maternal health initiative in Illinois.
The Rise of “Agentic” Healthcare AI
The distinction between generative AI and agentic AI is central to Drive Health’s value proposition. While generative models predict text, agentic systems are designed to complete goals.
Elliot LaBreche, Founder and CEO of Vitalis, describes Avery as the “lowest latency, most comprehensive and clinically aligned workflow automation platform in the market”. The platform is built to automate “well-defined units of work,” such as:
- Discharge Orchestration: Managing the complex checklist required to send a patient home safely.
- Secure-Message Triage: Sorting and prioritizing incoming patient communications.
- Follow-Up Outreach: Proactively contacting patients for symptom checks or adherence monitoring.
Crucially, Avery is integrated directly into clinical workflows to draft education materials and route issues for review. The goal is to allow nurses and doctors to offload administrative burdens and focus on high-touch, in-person care.
Safety Rails and “Human-in-the-Loop”
In an industry wary of “hallucinations,” Drive Health is positioning Avery strictly as a support tool, not a replacement for medical judgment. The company explicitly states that the AI does not independently diagnose, treat, or prescribe.
Instead, the platform operates under “hospital-defined rules and risk caps”. Every workflow is subject to “human-in-the-loop controls, audit logging, and safety governance”. To ensure the system remains clinically grounded, Drive Health maintains a Clinical Safety Committee and develops the platform in collaboration with a Clinical Advisory Council of front-line nurses.
The Google Infrastructure Play
Avery’s capabilities are underpinned by a deep collaboration with Google. Built on Google Cloud’s healthcare-grade infrastructure, the platform can communicate in over 15 languages and scale to enterprise levels.
Since 2024, the two companies have partnered to enhance Avery’s “contextual reasoning” and cybersecurity. This partnership is already seeing real-world application. Drive Health and Google are currently supporting the State of Illinois’ “Healthy Baby” initiative, a program targeting maternal outcomes in underserved communities. The initiative combines Google Pixel devices and Fitbit technology with Avery’s AI, which delivers appointment reminders and symptom check-ins for over 56,000 families.
