You’ve probably heard of the many healthcare startups using artificial intelligence (AI) for things like automating clinician workflows and making clinical documentation easier. But health tech company Shyld AI is using the technology for something a little different: cleaning.
The seed-stage startup, created in 2021 and based in Sunnyvale, California, developed a device that uses bacteria-killing ultraviolet (UV) light in hopes of reducing hospital-acquired infections. Such infections cost the US healthcare system up to $45 billion per year to treat, according to a Columbia University study. And they’re quite common: CDC data from 2023 shows that one in 31 hospital patients have at least one such infection at any given time.
“When a human is involved during cleaning processes and procedures, they are prone to making errors,” co-founder and CEO Mohammad Noshad told Healthcare Brew. “We saw an opportunity to bring AI into that space to make it much more efficient and basically automate everything so that you have consistency and efficiency in applying day-to-day disinfection in those hospital areas.”
How it works. The device is mounted in a corner of a room’s ceiling and uses UV light with a specific wavelength that damages the RNA and DNA of bacteria and viruses; this deactivates them so they can’t multiply or make anyone that enters the room sick, Noshad said.
The device scans the room and sees if there are areas at high risk for bacteria, such as a computer keyboard since clinicians come into contact with it frequently. Using AI, the device assigns each area a score that indicates the likelihood it contains pathogens, and prioritizes which should be targeted with the UV light, he said.
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Shyld AI is pending FDA approval, and the company expects a decision by early Q2 2025, according to Noshad.
The device is in trials at a number of hospitals, including Stanford Health Care and Loma Linda University Medical Center, both in California, and the startup hopes to have it in use at 40 hospitals across the US and internationally within the next year, Noshad said.
The perks. Shyld AI is intended to be cheaper than the UV towers some healthcare facilities use for infection control, which can cost up to five figures, according to Will Gerard, Shyld’s chief commercial officer.
The startup doesn’t charge providers for the device itself, he said. Instead, it operates on a monthly subscription model, charging a couple hundred dollars per device with “volume-based and length-based tiers.” Shyld AI hopes the device will save hospitals money by reducing the number of hospital-acquired infections they’d treat otherwise, according to Gerard.
Plus, the device is autonomous, so hospitals don’t need extra staff to operate the units.
Behind the scenes. Shyld AI has about 15 employees at the time of publication, including technical and engineering teams, Gerard said. In addition to Gerard and Noshad, the C-suite consists of Noshad’s brother and co-founder, Morteza, who serves as chief technical officer.
Up to this point, Noshad said he and his co-founder have bootstrapped Shyld. But the startup is about halfway through raising its first fundraising round, which Noshad hopes will close at $3 million by early Q1 2025. The startup also plans to raise a Series A round “probably in the next six to nine months,” provided that the device gets FDA approval, he added.