Apella, a hospital technology company focused on operating room efficiency, has raised $80 million in new funding.
The infusion of new capital comes as health systems and ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) alike grapple with mounting capacity constraints and growing pressure to do more with leaner teams.
The Series B round, which combines equity and venture debt, underscores investor confidence in so-called ambient AI and computer vision tools that promise to automate some of the most manual and time-consuming parts of surgical operations. For facilities, the pitch is straightforward: unlock more surgical capacity without adding staff or physical space.
While Apella’s customer base today is weighted toward health systems, the company’s expansion comes as many of the same operational pressures are intensifying in the ASC market.
As higher-acuity procedures continue to migrate out of hospitals and into outpatient settings, ASCs are facing rising case volumes, tighter staffing models and increasing complexity – all while maintaining the efficiency that has long defined the sector. Technology that automates documentation, improves case scheduling and reduces operational friction is becoming critical.
“Ambient AI is transforming health care,” David Schummers, co-founder and CEO of Apella, said in a press release. “We have applied this technology to the most critical part of the health system: the operating room. Our customers have expanded beyond the pilot phase, bringing Apella’s product suite to enterprise scale. In doing so, health systems are unlocking additional capacity to serve more patients, faster.”
The funding round was led by HighlandX, with participation from returning investors Vensana Capital, Casdin Capital, PFM Health Sciences, Upside Partnership and Operator Partners. New investors include K2 HealthVentures, OpAmp Capital and Houston Methodist, which also uses Apella’s technology across its operating rooms.
Apella’s platform uses computer vision and machine learning to automatically identify and document up to 14 surgical case events, writing structured data directly back into the electronic health record. By reducing the need for manual documentation and improving real-time visibility into operating room workflows, the company says hospitals can increase surgical throughput while allowing clinicians and staff to focus on patient care.
To date, Apella’s technology has supported roughly 500,000 surgical cases, according to the company. It counts Houston Methodist, Tampa General Hospital and the Medical University of South Carolina among its partners.
“The depth at which hospital staff are adopting Apella and incorporating it in their everyday workflows is exciting,” Corey Mulloy of HighlandX, who has joined Apella’s board of directors, said in the release. “Health technology – even when it delivers hard ROI – rarely becomes such an integral part of providers’ day-to-day or a problem-solver for health systems.”
The company has also continued to broaden its scope beyond the operating room.
Apella recently launched Horizon, a product designed to improve case duration accuracy and utilization forecasting, helping providers optimize schedules. Its technology is now being used across procedural areas such as interventional radiology, cardiology and endoscopy, reflecting a wider push to standardize and automate perioperative operations.
For ASCs, Apella’s longer-term opportunity lies in adapting hospital-grade automation to outpatient environments.
As demand shifts from inpatient to outpatient settings, ASC operators are being asked to absorb more cases, manage more data and coordinate more tightly – often with small teams and limited administrative infrastructure. Processes that were once handled manually are becoming harder to sustain at scale.
Apella sees an opening to support those transitions by bringing ambient AI and computer vision into high-throughput outpatient settings, where even small gains in efficiency can have an outsized impact on margins, staff satisfaction and patient access, a spokesperson told ASC News.
Houston Methodist uses Apella’s technology in more than 200 operation rooms.
“We saw the technology’s impact on our clinical and operation systems during our initial 36-room pilot and have now scaled the technology enterprise-wide,” Roberta Schwartz, EVP and chief innovation officer at Houston Methodist, said in the release.
