Berlin-based HealthTech startup, Recare closed a €37 million funding round led by DNV to accelerate its AI agent deployment in hospitals and care facilities. This matters because European healthcare is hemorrhaging qualified staff while administrative burden keeps growing.
The investment makes DNV Recare’s largest shareholder. CIBC Innovation Banking also participated.
Why This Matters:
Healthcare administrative tasks are crushing hospital capacity. The European Commission estimates Europe already faces a shortage of roughly one million doctors and nurses. That gap’s projected to widen significantly by 2030.
Recare’s response is an AI agent that handles the grunt work medical professionals spend hours on each day.
Maximilian Greschke, CEO of Recare, commented: “Hospitals are under enormous operational pressure because medical staff are spending more and more time on administrative tasks. This leaves less time for what matters most: patient care. Our AI agent takes over a large portion of these administrative tasks by using unstructured data to quickly coordinate workflows. With this new capital, we will accelerate the rollout of the AI agent in Germany and internationally, helping healthcare facilities to significantly reduce the workload of their teams.”
What Recare’s AI Actually Does:
Think of it as middleware between hospital systems. The AI agent:
- Coordinates clinical and administrative workflows across departments
- Automates documentation like medical letters and handover protocols
- Extracts structured data from PDFs, scans, and free text
- Converts unstructured content into interoperable formats (HL7v2 and FHIR standards)
It doesn’t replace doctors. It handles the tedious coordination and documentation work that pulls them away from patients.
Recare currently connects two-thirds of German hospitals, over 650 rehab clinics, and 26,000 nursing and homecare providers.
The Technical Architecture:
The system sits on top of existing hospital IT infrastructure. It processes unstructured data – transcripts, documents, scanned forms – and standardizes them into formats other systems can read.
Key technical details:
- Client-specific AI processing (no data mixing between hospitals)
- Customer data isn’t used for model training
- Human-in-the-loop architecture for review and approval
- Encryption, role-based access, audit trails for regulatory compliance
This isn’t experimental tech. It’s production-ready infrastructure targeting a massive operational pain point.
Investor’s Strategic Play:
DNV operates in 100+ countries and has nearly 40 years in healthcare through accreditation and certification. This investment expands their digital health portfolio, which already includes DNV Imatis (real-time data integration), MBI Health (productivity tools), and Patients Know Best (patient-controlled records).
Daniel Holth Larsen, Managing Director, Digital Health, DNV, said: “Recare demonstrates that smarter workflows can lead to measurable improvements in the German healthcare system. With our investment, we want to make this contribution available internationally. Recare’s market position and the company’s ambitious AI plans perfectly align with DNV’s focus on solutions that increase efficiency and reliability in healthcare through secure, accurate, and interoperable data.”
Charlotte Goggin, Director of CIBC Innovation Banking, says: “We are delighted to support Recare in its latest funding round. For healthcare providers, administrative tasks are time-consuming and take up valuable time that could be spent caring for patients. Recare addresses this problem with its platform, which offers maximum choice to patients who need follow-up solutions and streamlines discharge and follow-up processes.”
Market Context:
Healthcare AI agents are having a moment in early 2026. BCG projects the healthcare AI market will expand rapidly as autonomous agents that can plan and execute tasks with minimal oversight become standard.
Epic just released its AI Charting tool nationwide after Wisconsin pilots. Multiple vendors are pushing ambient documentation and workflow automation.
The difference with Recare: they’re not starting from scratch. They’ve already got two-thirds of German hospitals using their discharge management platform. The AI agent builds on existing relationships and infrastructure.
What’s Next:
Recare’s using the €37M to:
- Accelerate AI agent rollout across German hospitals and care facilities
- Expand internationally beyond Germany
- Deepen product capabilities around administrative automation
Hot take: this funding signals investors believe healthcare workflow automation is past the pilot stage. The real question isn’t whether AI handles administrative tasks – it’s which platforms become the standard layer hospitals build on.
Takeaways for Operators:
If you’re building healthcare infrastructure:
- Focus on integration with existing systems rather than replacement
- Prioritize data security and compliance from day one
- Target specific, measurable pain points (like documentation burden)
- Build for European regulatory requirements if you want healthcare sales
For hospital operators evaluating AI tools:
- Look for vendors with production deployments at scale
- Verify human review mechanisms are built in, not bolted on
- Check interoperability standards (HL7v2, FHIR) are native
- Ask about data residency and training policies upfront
The administrative burden in healthcare isn’t getting lighter. Tools like Recare’s AI agent show how automation can reclaim capacity without replacing clinical judgment.
