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Key people at auggi.
Auggi is a New York City-based digital health company that develops an artificial intelligence-powered mobile application to track and analyze human gastrointestinal health. The software platform utilizes advanced computer vision technology to evaluate smartphone photographs of human stool, categorizing the visual data to assist patients and medical professionals in managing chronic digestive conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome. Initially incubated at Cornell Tech, the early-stage startup secured an undisclosed amount of pre-seed funding and successfully crowdsourced tens of thousands of user images to train its proprietary machine learning database. Following a collaborative public data collection campaign in 2020, the company and its core technology were acquired by the microbiome enterprise Seed Health in February 2021 to integrate the application into their broader digital health product ecosystem. Auggi was officially founded in 2018 by David Hachuel and Alfonso Martinez.
Key people at auggi.
Auggi (augmented gastroenterology) was a digital health startup that developed AI-powered tools for tracking and analyzing digestive health, including a mobile app for symptom logging, computer vision algorithms for real-time Bristol stool typing from smartphone photos, and the world's largest stool image database.[1][2][3] It served patients with gut issues, gastroenterologists, and clinical researchers by providing objective, accurate insights into stool consistency and symptoms, addressing the subjectivity and poor adherence of traditional self-assessment methods (75% accuracy vs. Auggi's 94% accuracy in predicting Bristol Stool Chart categories).[1][3] Founded in 2019, Auggi won Cornell Tech's Startup Awards and was acquired by Seed Health in February 2021, with its technology integrated into Seed's synbiotic products and clinical trials for IBS, constipation, and post-antibiotic gut health.[1][2][3]
Auggi was founded in 2019 (with incorporation as augGI Technologies, Inc. noted around 2018) by David Hachuel (Technion-Cornell Dual Master’s in Health Tech '19), Alfonso Martinez, and Cherry Gao during Cornell Tech's Startup Studio program.[1][2][4][5] Hachuel, supported by Cornell Tech and MIT, collaborated with gastroenterologists at Massachusetts General Hospital to build deep learning models trained on a massive stool imagery dataset from Seed Health's 2019 #GiveAShit initiative.[1][2] The idea emerged to create a personalized digital assistant for gut health, enabling patients to photo-document stool and symptoms for automated analysis via convolutional neural networks, improving patient-provider experiences.[2][5] Early traction included winning one of four Cornell Tech 2019 Startup Awards, validating its potential before the 2021 acquisition by Seed Health.[2]
Auggi rode the wave of AI-driven digital health personalization in gastroenterology, a field where gut health impacts 10-20% of populations via conditions like IBS, amid rising demand for remote monitoring post-COVID.[1][3] Its timing aligned with exploding interest in microbiome science and synbiotics, as companies like Seed Health pioneered bacteria-based therapies; Auggi's tools provided essential data layers for trials and consumer products.[1][3] Market forces favoring it included smartphone ubiquity enabling computer vision apps, regulatory nods to AI diagnostics, and investor focus on health tech (e.g., Cornell Tech backing).[2] By enriching clinical research and patient adherence, Auggi influenced the ecosystem, accelerating AI's shift from subjective logs to precise, scalable gut analytics now embedded in larger platforms.[2][3]
Auggi's technology, now under Seed Health since 2021, continues evolving to pair AI stool analysis with synbiotics, potentially expanding to broader microbiome apps and personalized nutrition.[1][3] Trends like multimodal AI (combining imaging, wearables, and genomics) and decentralized trials will amplify its impact, as gut health markets grow amid aging populations and post-pandemic wellness focus. Its legacy endures in objective digestive tracking, setting a benchmark for AI in underserved GI care—transforming subjective symptoms into actionable data that empowers users toward symptom-free lives.[2]
