Nursing shortages were a problem long before our hospitals were rocked by a pandemic. Two years and overloaded systems have further contributed to burnout, stress, and other factors that plague the people we rely on for our own well-being. We’ve seen robotics applied to almost every other field lately, so why not nursing – a field that will need a million new faces to meet demand in the United States alone?
Diligent has been leading this specific charge for some time now. Late last year, we sat down with Georgia Tech associate professor Andrea Thomaz, who co-founded the company in 2017 with Vivian Chu, to specifically discuss the profound impact the past two years have had. had on the business. She noted, in part:
This is really just a dramatic shift in labor markets across many different industries. It seems to be related to both people having great resignation, where people decide they want to do different things. And a lot of people change jobs. We see this in all technology work, much of it in our industry and in healthcare. Many people simply decide to do something else. There were already labor issues before the pandemic, and now they are reaching crisis levels.
Diligent timed its latest funding round perfectly, scoring $10 million in March 2020, just before many US hospitals were inundated. This week, the robotics company announced it was tripling that amount for a Series N of “plus” $30 million. Tiger Global, which seems to have streaky feet in all things robotic finance, led the round. Joining us are existing investors True Ventures, DNX Venture, Ubiquity Ventures, E14 Fund, Next Coast Ventures, Boom Capital and Gaingels, along with a new entrant, Cedars-Sinai Health Ventures.
“This new round of funding will help us scale the business to meet the incredible demand for our healthcare service robot,” Thomaz said in a statement linked to today’s news. With the support of our investors and the Diligent team, we are focused on expanding automated support for clinical teams so that nurses and clinicians can focus on the tasks that matter most, patient care.
Diligent says it will use the funding to help address some supply chain issues while continuing to roll out its nurse assistant robot, Moxie. This new round brings the startup’s funding to just under $50 million.
