Mendel, a startup that uses artificial intelligence to clean unstructured clinical data, announced Thursday it had raised $40 million in Series B funding. 

The round was led by Oak HC/FT with participation from existing investor DCM. The Series B comes less than a year after the startup announced an $18 million raise in June. 

WHAT IT DOES

Mendel offers AI products that make sense of unstructured clinical information, like EHR data, so it can be used for research and analysis. 

Some of Mendel's products include Retina, which can pull text from scanned images like faxes, Redact, which de-identifies patient health information, and Recruit, which screens records for potential clinical trial participants. 

WHAT IT'S FOR

The startup said it plans to use the capital to hire for its AI and engineering teams. It will also support its upcoming product, Resolve, which Mendel said will consolidate clinical data so users can see a longitudinal view of patient journeys. 

"The capital we have raised is a testament to the strong market fit and demand," cofounder and CEO Karim Galil said in a statement. "Our vision is to weave Mendel into the fabric of every healthcare data platform. It's exciting to partner with Oak HC/FT as we enable the healthcare ecosystem to provide better care for every patient."

MARKET SNAPSHOT

Google has also been working to make unstructured medical information more useful and help clinicians navigate EHRs. In 2020, Google Cloud unveiled two AI-backed tools to analyze medical records, the Healthcare Natural Language API and AutoML Entity Extraction for Healthcare.

The tech giant has been doubling down on its EHR-focused products too. Its Care Studio search tool aims to organize patient data for providers. Meanwhile, its recently announced Conditions product aims to push the most important information to the forefront before a clinician needs to search, highlighting relevant metrics and identifying missing information. 

In 2020, insurer Centene acquired Apixio, which offers a platform that pulls patient data from sources like EHRs and claims so its payer and provider customers can analyze that information to make changes to their business.