What You Should Know
- The Funding: Conduit Health, a consumer-oriented provider of insurance-covered medical supplies, has closed a $17M Series A led by Drive Capital, bringing its total funding to $22 million.
- The Problem: Roughly 50 million Americans rely on insurance-covered home medical supplies (Durable Medical Equipment or DME). However, navigating the shifting payer rules, physician documentation, and prior authorizations often turns a straightforward Medicare/Medicaid benefit into a weeks-long nightmare of delays and denials.
- The AI Engine: At the core of Conduit’s platform is CareOS, a proprietary, agentic AI model trained on over 50,000 patient interactions. The AI acts autonomously to predict approval likelihood, orchestrate documentation, and navigate hundreds of thousands of payer-specific rules in real time.
- Vertical Integration: Conduit does not just sell software; it acts as a fully consolidated operating model. It handles the clinical evaluation, the insurance authorization, and the physical medical supply fulfillment under one roof.
- The Traction & Future: Since launching 16 months ago, Conduit has delivered supplies to over 50,000 patients and expanded its payer network to cover nearly 90 million lives. The company plans to use the new capital to expand beyond DME into other covered benefits like medically-tailored meals, home modifications, and non-emergency medical transportation.
The ‘Agentic AI’ Fix for Medicare
Few areas of healthcare are as bureaucratically painful as the procurement of Durable Medical Equipment (DME). For the 50 million Americans who rely on insurance to cover essential medical supplies—ranging from continuous glucose monitors to mobility aids—the process is a labyrinth. Medicare and Medicaid patients are frequently forced to navigate a disjointed web of physician documentation, shifting prior authorization rules, and fragmented suppliers. What should be a seamless transaction usually devolves into weeks of phone calls, denials, and patients ultimately paying out-of-pocket for benefits they are already entitled to.
“Until now, the red tape in DME procurement—particularly in Medicare and Medicaid—has profoundly hindered access to these essentials,” said Natan Wise, Co-Founder and CEO of Conduit Health. “The status quo simply doesn’t work for them, and as a company that isn’t something we are willing to accept.”
When a patient needs equipment, Conduit acts as the single point of accountability with its CareOS (Conduit Authorization and Reimbursement Engine). Trained on over 50,000 patient interactions, CareOS actively interprets complex, state-specific Medicaid and managed care rules in real time. The AI predicts the likelihood of approval before a claim is filed, and autonomously deploys AI agents to manage the documentation and routing across various payer environments. CareOS codifyies hundreds of thousands of payer-specific rules into an automated workflow, Conduit is able to confidently take on denial risk that would bankrupt a traditional DME supplier. The steamlined workflow eliminates the weeks-long administrative handoffs between doctors, insurers, and third-party vendors.
The “Aging in Place” Infrastructure
As the “aging in place” movement accelerates and the Medicare Advantage population explodes, health plans are increasingly offering these supplemental benefits. However, a benefit is useless if a patient cannot figure out how to access it. Conduit is actively building the infrastructure to expand into other notoriously difficult insurance-covered services, including transportation to medical appointments, medically-tailored meals, and home modifications.
