The Stanford-StartX has filed a lawsuit against its portfolio company MedWhat in California.
The Stanford-StartX Fund, an investment vehicle backed by Stanford University, revealed on Tuesday it has filed a lawsuit against one of its portfolio companies, US-based virtual medical assistant developer MedWhat.
The lawsuit was filed in the Superior Court of California in the County of San Francisco on April 9, though Stanford-StartX has not yet publicly stated why it is pursuing the company.
MedWhat is using artificial intelligence to provide a virtual medical assistant, with long-term plans to create a platform that boasts human-level intelligence in medicine.
The company is currently focusing on aspects such as medical conversations, diagnosis and treatment, answering medical questions, image recognition and personalised medicine.
MedWhat participated in the 2013 cohort of the StartX accelerator. The company was co-founded by Arturo Devesa, a research scholar at Stanford University School of Medicine, and Oliver Aalami, a clinical assistant professor of surgery at Stanford University.
The team also includes Mark Musen, director of biomedical informatics research in the School of Medicine, and Sasidhar Madugula, a third-year doctoral student in neuroscience in the School of Medicine.
The Stanford-StartX Fund first invested in 2014, when it contributed to a $560,000 seed round alongside Stanford Hospital, Startcaps Ventures and assorted angel investors.
The fund then returned to provide additional funding in 2015 and 2017, with regulatory filings indicating MedWhat obtained at least $2.64m in funding last year.
