Hike Medical — a San Francisco-based artificial intelligence (AI) platform and device lab for orthotics, prosthetics, podiatry and durable medical equipment (DME) — has announced that it’s raised $22.5 million in seed and series A funding “to reimagine the entire supply chain for orthotics and prosthetics (O&P) and durable medical equipment so more people can access the care that keeps them moving.”
The round of fundraising, the company said in an Aug. 25 announcement, “was led by Max Altman at Saga Ventures, with additional participation from Indicator Ventures, Fifth Down Capital, RiverPark Ventures and other funds, strategic investor and commercial partner Orthofeet Inc., and angel investors such as Monaco CEO Sam Blond and Super Bowl champion and former head coach of the New England Patriots Jerod Mayo.”
In its social media posts, Hike Medical describes itself as a platform for orthotics, prosthetics, podiatry and DME from the time a referral is received to the time the device is dispensed.
The announcement noted that Hike Medical cofounder and CEO Aadi Bhanti “had a courtside view of how cumbersome the process of ordering and delivering a custom insole really was. Every year, tens of millions of Americans spend approximately $100 billion on devices that aid in independence and healthy living, including diabetic inserts, braces, prosthetic limbs, wheelchairs and cranial helmets.”
In a Hike Medical white paper — Why the Money Never Reaches the Patient — the company contended that 60 cents of every dollar “is lost to waste, remakes and fraud, leading to an excess of paperwork and dense payer requirements to get people the care they need. It’s easier, in practice, to prescribe opioids than to order a diabetic patient a pair of custom insoles.”
The company said it got its start “in the lab, modernizing how custom insoles were made — by a mobile foot scan and 3D printer — greatly reducing wait times from weeks to days and remake rates from one in 15 to just one in 400.”
Next, Hike said it’s taking on “the other half of the problem” by “quickly expanding to manage the entire supply chain, starting at the point of referral.” Its platform “connects back-office, point-of-care and device fabrication for O&P, podiatry and DME providers, serving as an all-in-one solution for device-based care.”
That process would include “AI agents that process a referral automatically and fight to get it approved and paid, before a doctor ever sees the patient — freeing clinicians to spend that time on patient care instead of paperwork.” Hike Medical’s clinical component “lets clinicians scan, document and order devices in one workflow at the point of care; a scan from any mobile device is enough to produce a highly accurate custom insole, replacing legacy foam boxes and stand-alone lidar scanners.”
The Hike Medical lab “manufactures custom devices in house at the largest orthotic 3D print farm in the country, based in Peoria, Ill., with turnaround in about five business days.”
Ahead of the fundraising round, Hike Medical announced it hired Jerry Tang as its chief operating officer.
“The next generation of category-defining companies won’t just build software on top of broken industries,” said Max Altman, co‐founder and managing partner at Saga Ventures. “They’ll own the entire value chain, end to end, like Hike does. Full vertical integration is what it takes to recreate a business at scale in healthcare. We’re backing Hike to do this across the entire device market. Aadi and the team have the ability to own the entire category.”
