Pharos

What do they actually do

Pharos builds software for hospital quality, patient‑safety, and risk teams. It connects to a hospital’s EHR and other data sources, pulls in both structured fields and clinical notes, and uses AI to extract the specific variables those teams need for registries and audits (diagnoses, timings, process‑adherence steps). The system shows each extracted value with a link back to the source note so reviewers can verify or correct it before producing submissions and reports (pharos.health YC).

Hospitals use Pharos to automate chart abstraction for registry reporting, speed up root‑cause analyses with faster timelines and facts, run audits against JCO/CMS metrics, track process‑improvement work daily, and surface near‑misses or safety issues. Deployments are offered with cloud or on‑prem options and integration connectors to major EHRs (pharos.health YC). Public materials and a recent seed announcement point to an early commercial product expanding registry coverage and integrations (PR Newswire TechCrunch).

Who are their target customer(s)

• Hospital quality director / quality improvement manager: Audits and improvement projects are delayed by slow, manual chart abstraction and registry reporting, making timely measurement hard. They need faster, verifiable extraction of variables and process metrics to shorten feedback loops (pharos.health YC).
• Patient‑safety / risk manager: Root‑cause analyses and near‑miss investigations take weeks because timelines and facts must be assembled by hand from notes, delaying interventions that could prevent harm. They need quicker surfacing of safety issues with links to source text (pharos.health YC).
• Clinical registry coordinator / chart abstractor: Manual abstraction for state and national registries is repetitive, error‑prone, and creates backlogs that risk missed deadlines. They want automated abstraction and export to reduce workload and speed submissions (pharos.health PR Newswire).
• IT / EHR integration and compliance lead: New reporting tools can mean lengthy integrations, on‑prem vs cloud tradeoffs, and HIPAA/security reviews. They prefer standard connectors and deployment options that minimize IT lift and address security concerns (pharos.health).
• Clinical service line lead (e.g., sepsis, infection control): They lack near‑real‑time, verifiable metrics on protocol adherence, so problems are caught late. They need daily tracking with links to source notes to measure and iterate faster (pharos.health YC).

How would they acquire their first 10, 50, and 100 customers

• First 10: Run tightly scoped, paid pilots with quality/risk teams at hospitals with ready EHR feeds; map one high‑value registry or process metric, deliver a verification workflow within days, and charge milestone‑based pilot fees. Leverage founders’ prior hospital deployment experience and offer on‑prem or cloud connectors to reduce IT pushback (pharos.health PR Newswire).
• First 50: Convert pilot wins into referenceable case studies and a repeatable playbook; add 1–2 enterprise sellers plus implementation engineers to target regional health systems and registry coordinators. Present at quality/registry conferences and prioritize top registries to keep integration friction low (pharos.health PR Newswire).
• First 100: Scale through partnerships with EHR integrators, registry vendors, and QI consultancies; standardize connectors, security attestations, and self‑serve onboarding for smaller hospitals. Launch a referral program, tiered pricing, and standardized contracts while engineering expands registry coverage to reduce bespoke work (pharos.health TechCrunch PR Newswire).

What is the rough total addressable market

Top-down context:

Pharos’s immediate market is within clinical documentation improvement (CDI), which multiple reports estimate at roughly USD 4–5.5B globally in 2023–24, with North America around 40–44% of spend—implying a U.S. CDI market roughly USD 1.8–2.5B today (GMInsights Precedence Research).

Bottom-up calculation:

There are ~5,112 U.S. community hospitals. Evenly spreading a USD ~2.0B U.S. CDI market suggests an average of ~USD 390k per hospital per year (2.0B / 5,112), though actual spend skews to large systems and spans software and services (AHA Fast Facts). Assuming registry/quality reporting plus safety/process‑metric automation is ~10–25% of U.S. CDI, the U.S. SAM is ~USD 180M–625M.

Assumptions:

• Registry/quality‑reporting and safety/process‑metric automation represent ~10–25% of U.S. CDI spend (coding/revenue cycle is the larger share).
• North America holds ~40–44% of global CDI spend; U.S. constitutes the majority of that regional share.
• Per‑hospital averages are only directional; spend concentrates in larger systems and mixes software, outsourcing, and services.

Who are some of their notable competitors

• Carta Healthcare: Offers AI‑powered registry abstraction and submission (Atlas) plus analytics and managed abstraction services—directly competing on clinical registry automation (Carta Healthcare).
• Q‑Centrix: Large clinical data management and abstraction provider combining a tech platform with 1,000+ experts; supports hospital registry reporting and analytics at scale (Q‑Centrix).
• symplr (Midas Quality Suite): Quality, safety, and risk management suite used by hospitals for event tracking, peer review, and regulatory reporting; overlaps with safety analytics and quality workflows (symplr Midas Quality Suite).
• Health Catalyst: Enterprise analytics platform with patient‑safety solutions for real‑time surveillance, root‑cause analysis, and predictive insights—competing on safety analytics and harm prevention (Health Catalyst).
• RLDatix: Widely used patient‑safety and risk platform for event reporting, RCA, and safety programs; relevant for incident workflow and safety monitoring alongside quality reporting (RLDatix Risk & Safety).