Photo: Doron Letzer
Many family doctors in the United States are currently missing many critical diagnoses due to the inability to absorb and understand the enormous amount of patient data and find themselves among many documents and among dozens of doctors who are not always coordinated with each other. The Israeli startup company Navina has developed a system for family doctors that shows the doctor, in one centralized interface, the patient’s medical profile and provides insights for optimal overall care. The system increases the number of medical diagnoses by tens of percent and helps doctors refer to preventive treatments, delay the development of diseases, reduce hospitalizations, prevent suffering and save lives.
The people behind Navina are Ronen Lavi, who served for 24 years in 8200 and in the Prime Minister’s Office, and Shay Ferrera, who together founded the AI laboratory in the Intelligence Corps, developed decision support systems for commanders in the field and even won the Israel Defense Prize. In a new episode of “Boud Podcast for Startups” we spoke with Lavi and Lotan Levkovic, one of the founders of Grove and N’Tsers and an investor in the company.
Lavi Parshat from the IDF four years ago and immediately after the end of the military service you were a co-founder of the company. Explain in fact why Navina is important?
“I took the world of medicine, which has endless information, the number of patients is increasing, and I help summarize. There is a database that I attach and connect to a medical dimension. In a conversation of a few minutes, you have to gather information first and thus you actually become part of the interaction. Navina helps the doctor to provide accurate treatment. We did not know In the beginning, what exactly do we want to do? We wanted to integrate a human being into a machine. We were looking for a problem that needed a solution. We were looking for less trivial places, for example green energy, and we would shoot in other directions. We were at a chemical manufacturing plant, and we saw what data they keep and how they keep it. What are the advantages, disadvantages, and what should be done With the information, we saw that we have the ability to help, that there is a situation where a lot of information needs to be brought and it is possible to make better decisions.
We saw that we arrived at exactly the right time when there is a change in the medical system in the United States. The health system tries to be for the entire population. The system is becoming a preventive system while in the past doctors were paid according to the number of patients they examined. Now the goal is to give the best treatment in as short a time as possible. In order to give a quick answer, you need to see information from several doctors at the same time and this is exactly the essence of our system. The day the system changes and says let’s also check efficiency”.
How do you come to a player who is not technological. How do you tell them, why would they even use your services?
“You need to build the right team. A team with business value, individuals who want to work with you and also a medical team. We didn’t study medicine. But we had to build a team, a core. We now have a leading doctor, who is an important and integral part. At first we said we didn’t know Let’s work together. We all slept in the same room and it started to explode together. In addition, we were very humble, attentive. We didn’t make big promises. We found groups of doctors who fell in love with us. Some of them even invested in Navina. Step by step how to build the product, from the first doctor who would want to invest. We passed Case by case, we wrote a summary, we did it manually. Then we did automatic summaries. The doctors are not the customers. The customers are the healthcare companies. The doctors are actually the end users, but we sat with them for hours, days and nights in order to get to the bottom of the problems and know as much information as possible. We had A case where a doctor cried. Suddenly he saw that he was able to know all the information in 3 minutes and not in half an hour. We specified the treatment, they understood why it was worth paying for it. Medical treatment is human treatment, we don’t want to take that away. And personal relationships are important but When a doctor has information and feels that there is real treatment, this is something Navina can do.”
Lotan Lebkovitch is one of the founders of Grove and N’Tsers. He has been an early-stage investor in startups for over a decade, and was an early partner in the investment and accelerated growth of the companies ActiveFence, Navina, 3dSignals, env0, lumigo, ContinueAI and Rapid. Lotan invests in and accompanies the companies in which he is closely involved from the idea stage. It is focused on investments in a variety of areas including tools for developers, DevOps, SaaS for enterprises, Vertical AI, IoT and digital health. Before joining Grove Ventures as a partner, Lotan completed a bachelor’s degree in law and business administration from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, served as a commander in an elite intelligence unit in the Air Force and worked as a strategic consultant.
Levkovic says that: “The cracking work they did is a school, they looked for what they could contribute and do better with the tools and knowledge they have.” Levkovic testifies and says: “Today we manage a little over half a billion dollars. We have invested in 30 companies. Like every fund in the world, we think we are special. We started 7 years ago with the desire to be the best entrepreneurs and partners and I am happy to be a part of the Navina company.”
When in your opinion should you enter the company and start investing?
“We invest as early as possible, Sid, Prisid. Deb Moran, the person I go to Oro and believe in very much is the inventor of the disk-on-key. He was like Steve Jobs to me as a child. After 15 years when I was growing up, someone told me he knew him and I thought How will I get five minutes of his time? After persuasion, he agreed, and today I am with him in the investment fund. I realized that maybe I could be a bit different. I looked from afar. I wanted to be the best student of the profession. I work very closely with people and I work with a lot of curiosity. Investors The world is divided into two. Those who think they are experts and those who realize that they are not. I think that those who define themselves as experts are either tired or are engaged and specialize in only one field. We want to go deeper but not perceive ourselves as experts.”
Why invest in Navina?
“One day in 2018, someone told me you’d meet a runner-up guy, ginger with the energy of an 18-year-old boy. The guy told me he had another partner. I said to myself, let’s try. We met again, and since then I decided to invest in Navina. Have you seen Karte Kid? That’s how they were at the beginning. WAX ON AND WAX OFF, a lot of field work and classrooms. They started from the problem, from the need and slowly the product was built.”
How do you measure success?
“In the end, they started from production. They did a reconstruction of all this information. They were able to generate value for the doctor and were able to duplicate it. It was clear that if what they were seeing was true, there was something big there.”