Vera Health

What do they actually do

Vera Health provides an AI‑assisted clinical decision-support search engine that helps clinicians find concise, evidence-linked answers at the point of care. The product searches large sources of medical literature and guidelines and returns a short summary with inline citations, along with practical tools like drug dosing checks and risk calculators, so clinicians can verify the primary evidence quickly (Vera Health).

Today, Vera is positioned for bedside and clinic use and is free for licensed clinicians and trainees. The team highlights initial focus on emergency medicine use cases, with expansion to other specialties (Vera Health; Y Combinator). Third‑party coverage also notes a verified drug database curated with pharmacy expertise as part of the product (Rippling; PromptLoop overview).

Who are their target customer(s)

• Emergency department physicians (attendings and residents): They need answers in seconds while managing multiple high‑acuity patients; the pain is pausing care to hunt through papers, guidelines, and drug references for safe, time‑sensitive decisions. Vera launched with ED use cases and early traction in this setting (Y Combinator; Rippling).
• Hospital-based specialists and hospitalists (e.g., oncology, endocrinology): They manage complex patients with rapidly changing guidelines; the pain is keeping current evidence, calculators, and baseline tests at hand for unusual or specialty‑specific cases. Vera’s examples include oncology and endocrinology questions suited for bedside or clinic workflows (Vera Health).
• Advanced practice providers and trainees (NPs, PAs, residents): Less clinical experience means frequent need to confirm dosing, contraindications, and cite sources to supervisors or in notes; the pain is uncertainty and slower decisions. The product is free for licensed clinicians and trainees and provides concise, evidence‑linked answers (Vera Health).
• Clinical pharmacists and pharmacy teams: They require authoritative, up‑to‑date dosing, interaction checks, and formulary guidance; the pain is fragmented or outdated drug info delaying medication decisions. Vera surfaces drug checks and integrates a verified drug database curated with pharmacy expertise per third‑party coverage (Vera Health; PromptLoop overview).
• Clinical researchers and biotech teams: They must synthesize large volumes of literature to design studies or make translational decisions; the pain is slow, manual reviews and keeping up with the latest trials and guidelines. YC notes a closed beta with specialty physicians and biotech researchers focused on fast, evidence‑based retrieval (Y Combinator).

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

• First 10: Direct outreach to ED chiefs, residency programs, and advisor networks to run time‑boxed pilots on real cases, plus hands‑on onboarding for attendings and residents to capture referenceable success stories (Y Combinator).
• First 50: Leverage the free clinician/trainee product to seed usage, then convert departments via small team plans; publish case studies in emergency medicine and hospital medicine communities and secure residency‑wide rollouts (Vera Health).
• First 100: Expand to hospitalist, pharmacy, and specialty services within health systems with enterprise pricing and admin controls; present outcomes at specialty societies (e.g., ACEP, SHM), and pursue EHR‑adjacent workflows to reduce switching costs.

What is the rough total addressable market

Top-down context:

The global clinical decision support systems (CDSS) market is sized in the low‑single‑digit billions and projected to reach roughly $3.9B by 2030, growing high single digits annually (MarketsandMarkets via PR Newswire; see similar ranges from other industry trackers).

Bottom-up calculation:

As a beachhead, if 300,000 hospital‑based clinicians in the U.S. (ED, hospitalists, key specialists, APPs, pharmacists) used a CDS tool at $200/year, that’s ~$60M in annual revenue; expanding to 500,000 similar users across the U.S./EU at the same ARPU would be ~$100M.

Assumptions:

• Per‑user pricing near $200/year for a lightweight, search‑centric CDS tool (below legacy reference pricing).
• Targetable hospital‑based users estimated from national physician counts plus APPs and pharmacists in acute care settings.
• Enterprise contracts may blend per‑user rates and site licenses; calculation uses a per‑user proxy for simplicity.

Who are some of their notable competitors

• UpToDate (Wolters Kluwer): The incumbent point‑of‑care reference used across hospitals and clinics; comprehensive topic reviews with citations and calculators. Vera competes on speed-to-answer and retrieval‑first AI.
• DynaMed (EBSCO): Evidence‑based clinical reference with graded recommendations and frequent updates; widely adopted by institutions seeking guideline‑driven summaries.
• Micromedex (Merative): Drug information and clinical decision support suite used by pharmacists and clinicians for dosing, interactions, and evidence reviews.
• VisualDx: Diagnostic decision support with image‑driven differentials, particularly strong in dermatology; complements or competes in differential generation at the point of care.
• Glass Health: An AI‑forward tool for clinicians that generates differentials and care plans; overlapping in AI‑assisted reasoning at the bedside.