Catalia Health Gets $1.25 Million Seed Funding For Its Healthcare Robot

Catalia Health chief executive Cory Kidd's dream of improving personal health through robotics is fast becoming a reality as his company raises $1.25 million in seed funding led by investor Khosla Ventures.

Kidd has been working on integrating robotics and personal health for 20 years. After conducting work at MIT's Media Lab in the Robotic Life Groups with its head Cynthia Breazeal. He has been working with the Media Lab along with the Boston University Medical Center for four years, developing robots that can coach overweight patients into losing weight efficiently.

The earlier robots Kidd developed in that work were the basis for Intuitive Automata, which is a company he founded in Hong Kong back in 2008 along with Erica Young. The first robot they developed called Autom was too early and too expensive to sustain.

But that didn't stop Kidd from pushing through with his invention. He moved to San Fransisco in 2013 and launched Catalia Health. With the groundwork he made in his Hong Kong-based company, he pitched Catalia to healthcare providers, pharmaceutical companies, and various markets.

The major idea Kidd pitched was a robot that will help patients manage their chronic disease. His latest creation called "Mabu" is a robot that provides support and other vital information for patients who suffers from diabetes, arthritis, heart disease, cancer, and other chronic diseases. Catalia Health has an alpha prototype and will use the funding to pump up its business operations. Kidd targets to release the robot in the market by the end of 2015.

According to Kidd, his invention aims to augment and help doctors manage a larger group of patients efficiently. He wants to help all the sufferers of non-communicable diseases in the world by equipping them with Mabu. Psychology of interaction is very important in treating these diseases more efficiently, and Kidd believes that Mabu can do the job.