Babylon Health raises further $60M to continue building out AI doctor app

Babylon Health, the U.K. startup that offers a digital healthcare app using a mixture of artificial intelligence (AI) and video and text consultations with doctors and specialists, has raised $60 million in new funding. The company says it plans to use the new capital to continue building out its AI capabilities, including offering diagnosis by AI (rather than a more simple triage functionality), which is pegged to roll out later this year. Babylon's previous investors also include Hoxton Ventures, Richard Reed, Adam Balon and Jon Wright (co-founders of Innocent Drinks), and, perhaps most notably, Demis Hassabis and Mustafa Suleyman, founders of Deepmind, the AI group bought by Google for $500m, who are also advising the digital health startup. Earlier this year, Babylon starting working with a number of health authorities in London to trial its AI-powered chatbot'triage' service as an alternative to the NHS's 111 telephone helpline that patients call to get healthcare advice and be directed to local and out-of-hours medical services. It built on top of the same AI-enabled symptom checker feature in the main Babylon app that was released last July and which the company says has provided medical advice to over 250,000 people to date.