The U.S. healthcare system is at a critical breaking point: 

By 2030, every Baby Boomer will be over 65, making older adults comprise one in five Americans. Age is directly tied to increased healthcare spending, with annual per-person health expenditures averaging $22,356 for those 65 and older – nearly 2.5 times higher than for working-age adults. Additionally, approximately 90% of the annual $4.5 trillion US healthcare spend is dedicated to managing chronic diseases, which now affect 129 million Americans and continue to rise steadily. 

At the same time, demand for healthcare professionals far exceeds supply. As of March 2025, the industry faced 1.37 million job openings  but only 740,000 hires, resulting in 1.8 vacancies for every filled position. Hospitals report nearly 10% RN vacancy rates, and within the next decade, the U.S. anticipates a shortage of up to 86,000 physicians, exacerbated by an aging workforce nearing retirement. 

Compounding this issue is clinician burnout: Over 50% of physicians and 56% of nurses report burnout, primarily driven by overwhelming administrative duties that detract from patient care. 

These challenges culminate in a severe financial squeeze for healthcare organizations, with 40% of hospitals operating at negative margins in 2023 and an additional 20% seeing margins below 5%. Financial stress is forcing health systems to consolidate: 28% of hospital mergers in 2023 involved distressed institutions. This underscores a fundamental truth: You need to deliver clear, bottom-line impact to be prioritized in healthcare procurement. 

With all of this in mind, we’ve been focusing our healthcare investing efforts recently in two main areas: 

1. Preventative Care: Solutions aimed at keeping patients healthier to reduce long-term healthcare strain. For instance, our recent investment in Cleerly* aids early detection of heart disease, addressing a condition that drives $254 billion annually in U.S. healthcare expenditures. Preventative solutions like Cleerly help mitigate the downstream impact of chronic illnesses.  
2. Administrative Efficiency: Solutions reducing bureaucratic burdens via automation, AI, and computer vision to alleviate workforce shortages, clinician burnout, and margin pressures.

Announcing our investment in AssistIQ 

Today, we’re thrilled to announce our investment in a company in that second “administrative efficiency” bucket: AssistIQ*, an AI company revolutionizing the management of supplies and implants in operating rooms and procedural areas through computer vision. 

The Broken Process of Charge Capture 

Expensive surgical supplies typically come from surgeon-specific “preference cards.” These physician preference items alone account for 40-60% of hospital supply costs. Stale preference cards are a notorious problem across healthcare: They lead to unnecessary supplies entering operating rooms (OR), creating substantial financial and physical waste.  

Currently, nurses manually enter supply and implant details into Electronic Health Records (EHR) to track them, an error-prone method with accuracy rates as shockingly low as 50-60%.

Some hospitals have tried barcode and RFID solutions to manage supplies and keep costs down, but many have seen minimal adoption when it comes to accurately tracking usage at the point of care due to technical limitations (for example, many implants are not in a hospital item master), forcing nurses to turn back to manual methods like paper sheets and manual EHR entry, leading to lost revenue and inaccurate supply tracking.  

Everyone with whom we speak – from nurses and perioperative leaders to professionals in supply chain and finance – are aware of revenue leakage and savings opportunities in charge capture, but they’ve lacked effective solutions. 

Enter AssistIQ 

Imagine having a dedicated team member in every OR and procedural area whose sole responsibility is ensuring the accurate capture of supplies used. 

Imagine that team member can instantly recognize millions of supplies with ~98% accuracy (even for implants and ‘trunk stock’ not listed in a standard hospital item master).They automatically document what is used in real-time, provide cost discrepancy analyses by surgeon, identifies opportunities to reduce waste and calls out cost-effective alternatives. With reliable capture, patient records are accurate and chargeable items flow through to the EHR for instant billing. 

That employee is AssistIQ. 

AssistIQ’s product leverages computer vision and machine learning, identifying supplies and implants in real-time without barcodes, RFID, or specialized hardware. Nurses simply place supply items under a tablet camera, and AssistIQ references the AIQ Supply Cloud database containing over four million products. It seamlessly records case-costing data in the EHR and updates inventory in the ERP. 

This innovative approach raises capture rates from 50%-60% to over 98%, dramatically increasing revenue capture and reducing costs. 

Gone are the days of manual entry in the operating room and tracking down documentation inaccuracies following a procedure. AssistIQ allows nurses to focus on what they’re trained to do: provide patient care. 

AssistIQ aligns perfectly with macro trends we are focused on: addressing workforce shortages, reducing administrative burden, and – crucially – providing tangible, measurable ROI improvements to hospital margins. Operating rooms generate 60-70% of hospital revenues but represent approximately 40% of total expenses, making them prime areas for efficiency and cost-reduction interventions. 

We are incredibly excited to partner with the AssistIQ team as they reshape operational efficiency in healthcare. If you’re innovating in this space, we’d love to connect.