Vocca Raises $20M to Automate Patient Calls

The big picture: Vocca, a Paris and New York startup, has raised a $20M Series A round led by Norrsken VC to automate patient phone calls for healthcare businesses. The company’s AI phone assistant aims to resolve 70% of conversations without human intervention. Vocca’s total funding now stands at $25M. Vocca currently serves 15,000 medical practitioners.

Why it matters:

• Administrative burden: US healthcare employs an estimated quarter of a million people to answer patient calls, contributing to administrative costs that made up 25% of total US health spending from 1999 to 2019.
• Staff burnout and missed calls: High burnout rates among US health workers (45.6% in 2022) contribute to a significant number of unanswered calls, with one analysis finding 42% of calls to US practices went unanswered during business hours.
• Second wave of AI: Vocca positions itself as part of the ‘second wave’ of healthcare AI, focusing on conversational automation after the initial wave of documentation tools like ambient scribes.

How it works:

• AI phone assistant: Vocca’s core product is an AI phone assistant that handles patient calls, books appointments, explains exams, and manages administrative requests, freeing up human staff.
• Specialty-specific intelligence: The system is built on a library of models tailored to specific medical specialties, ensuring it follows precise booking rules for fields like dentistry and ophthalmology, and integrates with existing practice software.
• Rapid growth and high resolution: Vocca has expanded its reach to 15,000 practitioners across 1,500 practices, handling over 1 million inbound calls monthly with an average 70% end-to-end resolution rate, exceeding 85% for top customers.

The catch: Vocca operates in an increasingly crowded market. Competitors like New York’s Prosper AI, which raised a $30M Series A and serves over 150,000 providers, and San Francisco’s Vapi, a voice AI infrastructure company with $72M in total funding, offer broader or more established solutions. While Vocca’s niche focus on patient access and specialty-specific booking rules is a strength, the challenge will be to consistently scale its 70% average resolution rate towards the 85% reported by its best customers as it expands into more complex scenarios and deeper into the competitive US market.

Key Facts

• Company: Vocca
• Amount: $20M
• Round: Series A
• Investors: Norrsken VC (lead), Heal Capital, Speedinvest, Firstminute Capital, founders of Alan, founders of Datadog
• Founders: Eliott Hoffenberg, Hugo Danet
• Sector: Healthcare AI for Patient Access
• Headquarters: Paris, France; New York, US