Moichor, the AI-powered animal diagnostics company, announced today that it raised $4 million in seed capital after completing the 2021 Winter Y Combinator program.
The team of biologists, data scientists, and veterinarians have developed deep learning models that can provide a complete blood count diagnostic result for birds and reptiles faster and more accurately.
With the new funding, the tech-centered, animal diagnostic company will expand automated pathology services and develop a point-of-care device.
Moichor’s AI and ML software leverages data-driven image learning to classify cells, reducing the subjectivity of manual complete blood counts.
Moichor CEO Shevy Karbasiafshar said more accurate and faster diagnostics will help improve clinical outcomes and save animals’ lives.
“Our goal is to improve health outcomes for pets,” he said. “And in many cases, the most impactful way to do that is by improving the most commonly needed diagnostics by making them more accurate, providing results in the clinic.”
Veterinarians recommend annual complete blood count tests for most pets. The diagnostic is used to ensure the animal has not contracted any diseases or infections including anything from inflammation to Leukemia.
Board-certified veterinary clinical pathologist Kyle Webb said she’s excited about what the company is doing with computational tools and artificial intelligence.
“This has the opportunity to really change the face of avian and reptile hematology, and that’s really exciting to me,” Dr. Webb said. “I love this marriage of clinical pathology with newer technology.”
“In avian and reptile veterinary medicine we haven’t had great automated methods for quantifying blood cells in birds and reptiles. The analyzers that we use for mammals can’t do it accurately.”
But, by using computational tools and AI, we can actually train programs to recognize bird and reptile red and white blood cells, and thrombocytes that other automated analyzers can’t.”
Compared to current manual complete blood count techniques, Moichor is able to achieve ten times less variability in its results.
The software enables clinics to process blood work twice as fast as the current technology.
Menlo Park-based Neotribe Ventures led the investment along with the participation from existing investors.
Karbasiafshar and his co-founders started Moichor at Penn State University and pursued the commercialization of their AI-powered diagnostic company through some of the opportunities available through the university.
