When British doctor Ahmed Kirwan began working as a doctor, the burden of paperwork shocked him. On one day he only spent three hours actually caring for patients, and the rest of his time dealing with insurance claims and more.
Dozens of startups already have already been dozens, perhaps hundreds, to use AI to ease the infamous management burden of healthcare. From note-taking experts like Abridge to AI assistant startup Ambience, these startups compete to streamline efficiency. Kirwan, now an entrepreneur, is the founder and CEO of one such company. Taxo. His startup offers apps for doctors and others to use for tasks such as patient intake and medical billing, where doctors and others get prior approval from insurance companies.
According to Kerwan, what sets Taxo apart is the AI ​​”inference engine,” which transparently explains the process behind user decisions and helps build trust with doctors. Inference models became mainstream in the AI ​​world by embodying logic to users at the end of last year. At Taxo, the technology helps reduce hallucinations while increasing the pre-approval approval rate to 98% compared to the industry average According to Kerwan, about 80%.
Taxo has built a “inference engine” by adding healthcare-specific layers over existing models like Openai and Anthropic. The system is trained on inaccessible healthcare data, making it difficult for others to scrape it overnight. “Every time Openai launched a new model, I didn’t want to steam it,” Kerwan told TechCrunch.
AI reasoning trends remained fast, and the rise of Chinese startup DeepSeek has actually gained traction. However, investors’ interest in taxo suggests that the technology has the opportunity to gain wider adoption beyond basic AI companies. The startup recently shut down a $5 million seed round led by Y Combinator, General Catalyst and Character Capital.
San Francisco-based Taxow, founded last year, tells TechCrunch that it passed $1 million six months after its launch. Currently, it serves around 15 customers, ranging from clinics to government providers.
When ChatGpt was released, doctors were naturally cautious about using it. Because it couldn’t track why and how it created certain recommendations, Kerwan told TechCrunch. He hopes Taxo will change it. “You can see exactly where we got information and why we’re given it,” he said.
