This Startup Raised $3 Million to Staff Hospitals With Robots…

Hello and happy Friday, readers!

The robot overlords may be coming to a hospital near you. Or, well, the medical robot assistants, at the very least.

Digital health firm Diligent Robotics has raised $3 million in a seed funding round for its A.I.-fueled health care assistant tech, Moxi, according to the Austin Business Journal.

The Texas-based startup raised the seed capital from investors such as True Ventures and Ubiquity Ventures, and has reportedly raised a total of about $5.8 million to date.

Diligent will soon begin deploying Moxi—a robot that can help physicians and nurses with menial tasks such as gathering and distributing supplies, lab samples, and dirty laundry to where they need to go—following pilot trials at a number of hospitals. It’s unclear where exactly the first commercial launch will occur.

This seems to be a more low-key use of robots in the medical space than some other ongoing initiatives. As readers know, computers have started joining certain types of doctors in making medical calls (especially in fields such as radiology), and personal assistant bots such as Catalia Health’s Mabu is designed to be a companion to the elderly that can remind them to take their medication.

Heck, robots are increasingly involved in the non-invasive surgery space, a competitive field that includes the likes of Intuitive Surgical and Johnson & Johnson.

Compared to all that, using bots as sophisticated messenger and delivery units may seem quaint. But it’s still firmly in the “wave of the future” camp.

Read on for the day’s news, and have a wonderful weekend.

Sy Mukherjee, @the_sy_guy, [email protected]

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