Staircase Ventures Announces Investment in SiftMed

We’re proud to announce that Staircase Ventures has led SiftMed’s latest funding round, bringing the company’s total capital raised to over $10 million. SiftMed, based in St. John’s, Newfoundland, is building the AI platform that is redefining how medical evidence is reviewed. We are thrilled to be working with the incredible team that is building SiftMed and alongside existing investors including Pelorus VC and a group of Verafin former founders and executives.  

SiftMed is driven by its mission to uncover facts that change lives. Its AI-powered software reduces medical claim turnaround and review times by 50–70%, enabling insurance carriers, independent medical experts, legal professionals, and life care planners to organize, review, extract, and generate outputs for every type of medical claim. Unlike its competitors, SiftMed’s solution enables professionals to make the right decisions without requiring humans in the loop to maintain AI accuracy and review every claim. The result: clear, accurate decisions made in hours rather than weeks – and better outcomes for the patients at the centre of every file.

Insurance claims are climbing — and going digital

Across North America, the number of insurance claims is escalating and each claim is being scrutinized more closely with a growing share now requiring expert medical review.  As a result, insurance carriers are strained more than ever before: more claims, more medical evidence per file, and more pressure to decide quickly and defensibly.

While carriers are increasingly looking to AI to solve these challenges, adoption has been limited due to the unique challenges involved in the medical claims review process. SiftMed is the first company to build a complete claims investigation workflow – not just an AI layer on top of documents – streamlining medical review from intake through AI-driven analysis and significantly reducing costs, with every finding traced to its source and every decision auditable. Carriers can standardize the entire review process without leaving the system, surfacing insights they can trust enough to defend to a regulator, a claimant, or a court.

The team behind it

SiftMed was founded by Holly Hill, an experienced technology leader with a strong track record of scaling early- and mid-stage technology companies. When we met Holly, we were struck by her dedication to the mission, her experience building world-class teams, and her deep customer empathy.

But SiftMed is far from a one-person story. Holly has assembled an exceptional leadership team, including COO Matthew Wells, VP of Engineering Zack Chaulk, VP of Sales & Marketing Mike Mensink, Head of Product Laura Fry, CFO Robert Webb, and their latest addition VP of Product Nitla Cooke,  alongside co-founder and medical advisor Jeremie Larouche. The roughly 30-person team includes six people who previously helped build a leading financial-crime software company. They bring hard-won experience scaling regulated, mission-critical software — exactly the rigor this space demands.

What’s next

We’re honoured to be working alongside Holly and the entire SiftMed team to transform the medical claims process and improve outcomes for the people it serves. If you want to help shape what comes next, explore open roles here.

Founder & CEO: Holly Hill.