To solve these issues, elea is providing an AI powered Pathology Operating System. On Wednesday, the company announced a €4 million funding round from Fly Ventures and Giant Ventures to turn that into a reality, as well as a new partnership with Medizinische Versorgungszentrum (MVZ), one of Germany’s largest hospital groups.
“Imagine a pathology lab where workflows are seamless, results are faster, and precision drives every step,” the company says on its website. “It redefines what’s possible — doubling throughput while cutting case processing times in half. With deeply integrated custom LLM technologies, elea not just enhances labs, it revolutionizes them. The future of pathology starts here.”
The Hamburg, Germany-based elea’s AI manages lab hardware and workflows, allowing pathologists to command their lab with their voice while elea handles everything else, from microscopes to printers and staining machines. This allows the pathologist to focus on diagnosing microscopy and assessments while elea automatically extracts and organizes all relevant data from their dictation in a structured format.
By automating workflows and reducing processing times, elea allows for quicker diagnostics, and by automating the entire sample workflow, it minimizes errors and ensures standardized. Finally, by handling documentation, sample management, and other administrative tasks, elea frees up healthcare professionals to spend more time directly with patients.
Launched in 2024, elea says that its operating system has already been able to take testing and diagnosis down from two to three weeks to just hours.
Pathology is just the beginning for elea; the company says that it is taking a department-by-department approach to scaling to maximise the impact of its platform; the new funding round will be used to expand into new departments.
Company founders have more than a decade of experience in AI: CEO Dr. Christoph Schröder led early AI and autonomous driving projects at Luminar, Mercedes and Bosch, while CMO Dr, Sebastian Casu spent more than a decade working in intensive care, anaesthesiology and across emergency departments.
“elea’s founders combine unparalleled medical expertise and technical experience: with Christoph Schroeder’s pioneering engineering efforts in autonomous driving, at companies like Wayve, Mercedes-Benz AG and Bosch and Sebastian Casu’s having spent more than a decade working in intensive care, anaesthesiology, and across emergency departments, as well as previously being a medical director for a large hospital chain,” Giant Ventures wrote in a LinkedIn post.
“Today, professionals spend 40% of their time on admin. elea shifts this balance; freeing clinicians to focus on what matters most – and why they went into this profession in the first place – their patients.”
(Image source: elea.health)
