Soma Lab, backed by Y Combinator, tackles bottlenecks in education and hiring, making hands-on training scalable, cost-effective, and accessible.
Traditional techniques of healthcare training, such as role-playing, in-person evaluations, and one-on-one interviews, are time-consuming, expensive, and impractical for scaling. These outdated methods cause bottlenecks in education and hiring, costing institutions significant resources.
While governments strive for workforce expansion by increasing schools and seats, the main issue is scaling hands-on training, which is required to achieve accreditation criteria such as CACREP. Furthermore, legal limits prohibit students from practicing without certified supervision, emphasizing the need for costly alternatives.
Enter Soma Lab, founded by Vrishank Saini and Tigran Bdoyan.
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The startup backed by Y Combinator tackles these challenges with AI-simulated conversations that allow healthcare students and providers to practice and be evaluated anytime, anywhere. By replacing traditional methods with scalable AI simulations, it cuts cost and enables institutions to meet accreditation requirements efficiently.
Soma Lab supports therapy schools, teletherapy companies, medical programs, and social work training. For instance, therapy schools use AI patients to replace role-playing exercises, allowing students to simulate therapy sessions and receive instant evaluations.
Companies screen job applicants and onboard hires using AI patients, ensuring cost-effective and quality-focused recruitment. Medical schools and social work programs also leverage these tools to prepare students for real-world scenarios without resource-heavy supervision. These are just some ways in which Soma Lab saves valuable time and resources.
“Our system provides a legal, scalable solution for hands-on training, enabling schools to bypass these restrictions, meet accreditation requirements, and expand rapidly without sacrificing quality,” Saini wrote on the company website.
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In just three weeks, Soma Lab secured 30 pilot programs with institutions like Virginia Tech, John Carroll University, and Western Carolina University. The platform already boasts $5,000 in monthly recurring revenue and 2,500 users, demonstrating its market potential.The team’s inspiration stems from personal experiences. After Saini struggled with a costly clinical communications test, they built an AI coaching tool, achieving impressive results. With backgrounds in healthcare education and machine learning, the founders are building the infrastructure to revolutionize healthcare training.
In a message posted on LinkedIn, Y Combinator congratulated Saini and Bdoyan, saying “By addressing the bottlenecks in education and hiring, Soma Lab is making healthcare training scalable and cost-effective.”