In a healthcare system where cancer patients often wait days—and even weeks—for life-saving treatments attributable to administrative red tape, RISA Labs is stepping in with a strong, AI-native solution designed to eliminate one of the persistent bottlenecks in oncology: prior authorization delays. Today, the Palo Alto-based startup announced a $3.5 million seed round led by Binny Bansal, co-founder of Flipkart, with support from Oncology Ventures, General Catalyst, z21 Ventures, ODD BIRD VC, and Ashish Gupta.
RISA Labs’ mission is urgent: use AI to radically simplify and speed up the manual workflows that stand between cancer patients and timely treatment. In line with data from ASTRO surveys, 92% of cancer patients face delays attributable to prior authorization, and one-third of the doctors (33%) said prior authorization has led to their patients abandoning radiation treatment, with a median of 1 in 10 patients leaving treatment.
On the core of RISA’s solution is BOSS (Business Operating System as a Service), a full-stack orchestration platform that reimagines how healthcare workflows operate. Unlike typical AI assistants or robotic process automation (RPA) tools that break easily with system changes, BOSS decomposes institutional workflows into micro-tasks and delegates them to an intelligent network of AI agents, including LLMs (Large Language Models), digital twins, and reinforcement learning models.
Consider BOSS as an operating system not for individual users, but for entire institutions. It operates across a healthcare organization’s software ecosystem, enabling a parallel digital workforce that enhances human teams.
As Kshitij Jaggi, RISA’s co-founder and CEO, states: “
In real-world deployments, BOSS has already demonstrated its value. At a number one U.S. cancer center, it cut prior authorization times from half-hour to under five, processed over $1 million in medications, reduced administrative costs by 66%, and freed up 80% of staff time.
This isn’t nearly saving time—it’s about saving lives. As Dr. Jeffrey Vacirca, CEO of Latest York Cancer and Blood Specialists, noted:
The Technical Heart: An AI OS Built for Complexity
RISA’s BOSS is built for “low-entropy system design”, in line with co-founder and CTO Kumar Shivang. In practice, this implies creating environments where AI agents can function efficiently even within the face of high system complexity. Inspired by cognitive science principles like System 2 pondering (which involves slow, deliberate, and logical decision-making), BOSS is designed to bring a state of “flow” to artificial agents—enabling them to operate with precision across highly regulated and multifaceted domains like healthcare.
By tightly integrating with systems of record comparable to Flatiron Health’s EMR, BOSS moves beyond data evaluation to enable real-time orchestration. This positions RISA as greater than a tool provider—it becomes a platform for AI-native institutions, where intelligent agents dynamically collaborate with human teams.
Founders with Domain Depth
RISA Labs was founded by IIT Kanpur alumni and longtime collaborators Kshitij Jaggi and Kumar Shivang, who previously scaled the healthcare startup Urban Health. Their firsthand experience with slow, error-prone healthcare workflows motivated them to rethink the whole system from the bottom up. Their early research into digital twins and operational modeling—culminating within the co-authored whitepaper “Digital Twin Ecosystem in Oncology Clinical Operations”—laid the inspiration for what would grow to be BOSS.
Now, their work is resonating with top investors and clinical leaders alike. Binny Bansal, the lead investor, framed it as a part of a much larger trend:
What’s Next
With fresh funding in hand, RISA goals to deploy BOSS in 100 additional cancer centers over the following two years. But the corporate’s ambitions don’t stop at prior authorizations. Its long-term vision is to grow to be the AI transformation partner across the oncology ecosystem—from operational coordination to clinical decision support—ultimately constructing a unified orchestration layer for AI in healthcare.
Because the healthcare industry continues to grapple with rising costs and workforce shortages, RISA Labs stands out as an organization not only constructing AI tools, but reengineering how institutions function. By letting AI agents handle the operational grind, RISA is giving time—and focus—back to those that need it most: the doctors, nurses, and staff on the frontlines of cancer care.
