Meet Molly, a virtual nurse that could someday provide follow-up care to patients, assess their condition, and provide caregivers with the information they need. The company behind the technology, Sense.ly, just raised $1.25 million to take the product to the next level.


"Please state the nature of the medical emergency."

Okay, sure, she's not quite the holographic doctor from Star Trek: Voyager, but this technology could most certainly be seen as a precursor.


Molly has been around in various incarnations since 2011. The technology has also appeared in various healthcare facilities for testing purposes, including the San Mateo Medical Center in California where physical therapy patients interacted with Molly under the watchful eye of the facility's director of rehabilitation services.

Molly uses gesture capture based on Microsoft's Kinect as well as a Nuance-powered speech recognition engine. Together, this allows the platform to analyze a patient's condition and provide insights into what steps patients should improve their health.

Here's a video from Sense.ly that shows Molly in action:

You can also get a sense of what Molly is like here.

The San Francisco startup got the recent cash injection from accelerator Launchpad Digital Health, East Link Capital, and five angel investors. Sense.ly will now use the funds to scale their team and business.


Encouragingly, one of the company's goals is to reach low income populations (which speaks to the state of healthcare in the United States today). Sense.ly also wants to reach large insurers and providers.

More at Mobihealthnews.