Layer Health

🎉 Huge congratulations to Hyro and Layer Health for making CB Insights' Digital Health 50 for 2025! Hyro, led by CEO Israel Krush , is transforming healthcare communication with AI-powered voice agents that automate patient interactions—from appointment scheduling to billing inquiries—freeing up staff to focus on patient care. Layer Health , under CEO David Sontag , is solving healthcare's information problem with AI that extracts clinical insights from medical records, turning time-intensive chart reviews into automated, scalable solutions. Both companies are tackling critical challenges—workforce shortages, patient experience, and unlocking healthcare data. Needless to say, we are bullish on AI's potential to bring much-needed efficiency to healthcare while improving outcomes for patients and providers alike. 🚀

We are excited that CB Insights has named Layer Health to its seventh annual Digital Health 50, showcasing the 50 most promising private digital health companies in the world.  Great to see recognition for the strides our team has made in helping leading health systems tackle the chart review problem in healthcare. From making clinical registry submission frictionless to enabling rapid, high quality data abstraction for research, our team is excited to keep creating impact for the sector.   In the words of CB Insights: “The 2025 Digital Health 50 winners are high-momentum companies poised to define the next era of healthcare,” said Ellen Knapp, Principal Analyst at CB Insights. “This year’s cohort is advancing the shift from reactive to proactive care, developing AI solutions tailored to healthcare's unique regulatory environment, and addressing critical sector-wide challenges from care access to provider burnout and workforce shortages.”

Meet Onur Aydin, Software Engineer at Layer Health! Before joining Layer, Onur was a tech lead and senior engineer at Google. His work spanned from Ads to Cloud, including contributions to Google Compare, Programmable Search Engine, Display & Video 360, and Area120 (Tables and AppSheet), developing expertise in building high-performing and scalable services. Earlier in his career, Onur was an engineer at Microsoft, working on Visual Studio. “After nearly two decades with large corporations, I had planned to retire,” said Onur. "However, a sabbatical made it clear I couldn't abandon coding so, after a little over a year of relaxation, I chose to return to the industry. My decision to join a startup was driven by a desire to avoid the bureaucracy and slow pace often found in larger companies.” “I chose Layer because I wanted to contribute to healthcare, an industry where newcomers often struggle to make a significant impact. I believe that LLM-based systems have immense potential to revolutionize this field, and Layer is uniquely positioned to drive this transformation. Our strong ML team is adept at leveraging cutting-edge research, and our highly capable engineers quickly build effective products that leverage those ML advancements.” “The past six months have been a fast-paced, coding-intensive, and exhilarating experience. I've thoroughly enjoyed being closer to the product, making impactful changes across the entire tech stack, and leveraging AI whenever possible.”

Meet Caeley Harihara, Head of Special Projects at Layer Health! Prior to joining Layer, Caeley was a graduate student at MIT, where she pursued an MBA and a Master's in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Always interested in business, AI, and healthcare, she had the opportunity to work at the intersection of the three fields at McKinsey & Company and the Gates Foundation. Most recently, she completed her Master's thesis with Johnson and Johnson, where she wrote optimization and advanced analytics software to improve hospital inventory management. “I've been following Layer Health's journey since I was a student," she says, “and jumped at the chance to join. It sounds cliché, but my favorite part of my job is working with our amazing team. In addition to being a group of truly wonderful people, they are also experts in their field who help me learn new things every day. This group is curious, passionate, and excited to work to improve the healthcare system.” Caeley says her favorite recent Layer Health memory was the homemade waffle breakfast at our July on-site: “I think it perfectly reflects our company culture. Even when things are busy, people still go out of their way to spread a bit of sweetness (literally!) and joy (shoutout to our waffle chefs, KT, Kelly, and Steve!).”

Meet Rupasri Chalavadi, a data scientist at Layer Health! Prior to joining Layer, Rupa conducted research at Johns Hopkins, applying machine learning to medical imaging to help improve care for stroke patients - specifically using AI to extract MRI-level insights from CT scans to help support clinical decision making. “Layer’s focus on both cutting-edge research and real-world impact is what drew me in,” she says. ”I’m excited to be part of a team that’s not just building cool methods but also making sure that they actually get used in healthcare settings. My experiences working in clinical settings have helped me understand how much information is actually stored in medical charts, and it’s been so much fun to dig in and explore how we can extract insights from this really rich data.” Another thing that really drew Rupa to Layer was the team. “Not only do we have great researchers on the team, but everyone is really passionate about improving healthcare and having direct impact - it’s been great to work with and learn from this team. I really enjoyed our launch at White Plains Hospital and seeing the focus on the quick delivery time so that we’re able to make actual impacts. I also really appreciate how collaborative the team is - I’ve definitely learned so much from them since joining.”

Our new AI in Healthcare Thesis explores how we view where are the large platforms to be built, what are ingredients for success, and companies already showing what real adoption looks like including: Cohere Health streamlining prior authorization and payer–provider collaboration. Layer Health unlocking value from unstructured clinical data. Luminai automating complex operational workflows. Solara Health tackling workforce shortages with AI-driven clinical copilots. Together, they illustrate the future we believe in: AI not bolted on, but rearchitecting the healthcare system itself. Read our thesis here: https://lnkd.in/gei5nRnX

Layer Health had another fantastic onsite last week -- we’ve grown to 28 employees and it was great to spend time together again!  The three days included a duck boat tour, a fireside chat with our investor Parth Desai of Flare Capital and CEO David Sontag, homemade waffles, and lots of time for collaboration.

Check out Mara Alexeev, Layer Health's Director of Clinical Informatics, who was a recent guest on the High Dimensional Health Data podcast to talk about the messiness of clinical data and her wish to host a "Data Talk" radio show where she solves listeners' data problems. https://lnkd.in/e5phMb9T

Meet Anugya S., a data scientist at Layer Health! Anugya’s journey before Layer took her to various startups across the world as well as Amazon. "What drew me to Layer," she says, "is the brilliant team and their mission-oriented approach towards solving complex problems in healthcare. With technology and AI evolving faster than ever, working on problems that can help make healthcare more focused on care is the kind of impactful work that I was yearning for and working with the kind and driven folks at Layer has made it more so exciting!" "What I’ve absolutely loved about my time here so far is the principled approach to solving any kind of big or small problem, as well as the space for research exploration whilst grounded in real time product development. Healthcare data is complex and messy but the solution oriented approach that the company fosters enables me in my role as a Data Scientist to be very tactical and continually strive for creating a positive impact." Beyond the work, Anugya says that collaboration with the team has been fun and inspiring and the Boston office is an environment that she looks forward to coming into every day.

Meet Faraaz Nadeem, a data scientist at Layer Health! Before joining Layer Health, Faraaz graduated from MIT and spent several years building machine learning systems at Google and ASAPP. At Layer Health he is developing the next generation of LLM methods and is collaborating with the American Cancer Society on scalable abstraction of patients' medical records to drive cancer research. "In the scary and exciting world that is rapidly evolving with advancements in AI, I was hooked by Layer Health's mission-driven approach to transform how we do healthcare." Although Faraaz did not have any healthcare experience in his previous endeavors, he has enjoyed putting his feet to the fire and diving into the complex world of healthcare data. "It has been really eye-opening for me to see all of the complex processes that go on behind the scenes, and equally inspiring to see how we have a chance to improve upon them." Beyond the exciting and impactful work, Faraaz is also motivated by the people he is surrounded with. “I get to work with such a genuinely nice, hardworking, and smart group of people every day. That combination is hard to find.” Faraaz enjoys going out for lunch with the New York team and trying a new spot every week from a wide range of options available in FiDi.