Vitalize Raises $31M Series A to Unlock Healthcare's Full Capacity
Vitalize, transforming how health systems optimize labor, led by Veeraj Shah and Sanketh Andhavarapu, has raised a $31M Series A led by Oak HC/FT, with participation from Norwest Ventures, Y Combinator, .406 Ventures, Constellation Ventures, and the MemorialCare Innovation Fund.
Healthcare staffing faces a real-time coordination challenge similar to air traffic control, yet hospitals lack a centralized system to manage it. Staffing coordinators often rely on spreadsheets, phone calls, and group chats to respond to sick leaves, shifting patient loads, and changing staffing needs.
Labor accounts for nearly $1 trillion in annual U.S. healthcare spending, with an estimated $50 billion spent on premium labor. The challenge is often not simply a shortage of workers, but the lack of an effective system to match qualified, available staff with the right departments at the right time.
In its early days, the Vitalize team traveled across the country, embedding themselves in hospitals to understand staffing challenges firsthand. By shadowing charge nurses, observing staffing huddles, and helping coordinators manage schedules and last-minute gaps, the team experienced the operational realities of hospital staffing.
This hands-on approach continues to shape product development, with a strong emphasis on customer needs and reliability. Since hospitals depend on Vitalize around the clock, the platform must operate seamlessly every minute of every day.
Vitalize is a labor operating system for healthcare that forecasts patient demand, models staffing supply, optimizes schedules, and manages real-time workforce changes through a unified platform. Unlike traditional systems of record, it helps clinical leaders make and execute staffing decisions while integrating with existing time, payroll, and EHR systems.
The platform serves healthcare facilities ranging from large academic medical centers to rural hospitals. Health systems using Vitalize have reported premium labor cost reductions of over 40%, while clinical leaders have reclaimed more than 10 hours each week. The platform addresses the needs of executives seeking cost savings, nursing leaders managing administrative workloads, and frontline staff prioritizing fairness, transparency, and scheduling flexibility.
Vitalize’s next phase focuses on three priorities: scaling its platform to support large health systems across hospitals and service lines, improving demand forecasting and AI-driven staffing recommendations, and integrating workforce management with patient flow and hospital capacity planning. The long-term vision is a unified system that coordinates staffing and patient movement in real time, helping hospitals optimize resources and care for more patients efficiently.
