Proscia Appoints Dr. Monica Santamaria-Fries as Digital Transformation Officer to Guide Laboratories Amid Surge in Digital Pathology Adoption | Business Wire https://t.co/PBe6xRS3fs
Harmelin Promotes Davis To Chief Revenue Officer: Philadelphia-based Harmelin Media has promoted 28-year agency vet Scott Davis to Chief Revenue Officer, responsible for generating… https://t.co/zfba2c0Hei@mp_joemandese
Bridge Connector Raises $25.5 Million in Series B Funding to Advance Interoperability Layer for Health Care
Integration provider closes round as demand for integrated health data intensifies during COVID-19 pandemic
Nashville, Tenn. (August 18, 2020) – Bridge Connector, an interoperability company changing the way health care communicates, today announced it has raised $25.5 million in Series B financing. The latest round, led by Axioma Ventures, was joined by all existing investors, including veteran investor Jeff Vinick, and brings Bridge Connector’s total funding to over $45 million. After achieving over 1000% year-over-year growth in 2019, the investment will further support the company’s increasing market share in health care interoperability and growth of Destinations, a new integration-platform-as-a-service (iPaaS) that connects health data systems using use-case-based interoperability blueprints to speed integrations with major vendors.
Bridge Connector provides a suite of vendor-agnostic integration solutions and a full-service delivery model, helping health care vendors, providers, and payers more easily share data between disparate systems, such as electronic health records (EHRs) or patient engagement solutions. The company’s technology is designed to democratize health care by allowing organizations of any size to equitably connect data systems and empower care teams with the most accurate patient data in real-time. Unlike other health care interoperability vendors, Bridge Connector’s unique approach does not lock customers into a forced data model or proprietary APIs, instead employing a vendor-agnostic integration layer that works across data models without the need for standardization.
“The level of support we have received from our investors and key partners demonstrates the disruptive power of what we are doing,” said Bridge Connector Founder and CEO, David Wenger. “The lack of integration in health care has resulted in care teams relying on antiquated technology like fax machines to relay mission-critical information. In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has never been clearer that this inability to share patient data between health care technology vendors creates dangerous care gaps that can mean the difference between life and death for some patients. Bridge Connector is building an ecosystem of connected solutions that is solving this problem.”
The last decade has seen an explosion of digital health platforms and the U.S. health care system has taken incremental steps toward achieving interoperability between them. In March, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued new rules that force formerly closed vendor solutions to become interoperable. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the urgent need for data liquidity as health care providers across the country have struggled to share essential patient information and provide comprehensive care via remote delivery methods such as telehealth. In the face of the pandemic’s disproportionate effect on minority communities, the industry has also recognized the critically important role that social determinants of health — the environments in which we are born, live and work — play in our overall well-being and the need to make this information available to health care providers.
“We believed strongly in Bridge Connector’s mission to improve interoperability in health care when we made our seed investment, and they’ve exceeded all of our expectations along the way,” said Howard Jenkins, former CEO of Publix Super Markets, and co-founding partner of Axioma Ventures, which has participated in each of Bridge Connector’s funding rounds. “The company’s growth in the two years since has validated our belief in the technology and brightened the outlook for an interoperable health care system. With the company on track for 800 to 1000% growth in 2020, we are eager to see how our continued investment will help Bridge Connector impact the industry and create a health care system that works better for patients.”
The new funding comes shortly after Bridge Connector finalized various collaborations with some of the most influential stakeholders in health IT, including Epic, Allscripts and Salesforce, as well as other system integrators such as MuleSoft. Those collaborations represent calculated steps toward creating a centralized hub of integration solutions for all data platforms that any health care provider or payer can access. The average hospital today uses approximately 16 disparate electronic health records platforms that limit data sharing within the walls of a single hospital, let alone between separate hospitals.
To learn more about Bridge Connector’s solutions for achieving health care interoperability, please visit https://bridgeconnector.co/.
About Bridge Connector
Bridge Connector is an interoperability company changing the way health care communicates. With a suite of vendor-agnostic integration solutions and a full-service delivery model, Bridge Connector empowers digital health companies, providers and payers with the ability to easily integrate traditionally disparate, mission-critical platforms such as electronic health records (EHRs), patient engagement solutions and more. The company’s unique integration-as-a-service offering and predictable pricing model enables organizations of any size to transform how they share data, unlocking high-impact clinical and operational insights more rapidly and affordably.
Wirecard North America, a subsidiary of the ill-fated German company of the same name, says its for sale, free and clearnof any obstacles related to the parent company’s insolvency. I admit I don’t know German bankruptcy law, but in the US creditors would be putting in claims for every penny of identifiable assets. So its not quite clear how it can put itself up for sale so quickly.
Wirecard North America was formerly Citi Prepaid, and before that Ecount, a famed Conshohocken startup.
On Monday, a Munich court appointed a preliminary administrator for the parent company after it filed for insolvency last week. The company admitted $2.1 billion was missing and probable never existed.
Wirecard’s German employees have not been paid for June, according to reports.
Seth Brennan, Managing Director of Wirecard North America, said in a statement: “Wirecard North America continues to operate without any disruption to clients and cardholders. The strong, independent cash flow and financial position of Wirecard North America allow us to operate the business on a completely standalone basis. Our valued customers and partners remain our top priority, while the dedicated North America team continues to ensure that there is no interruption in our day-to-day processes.”
Brinker is a practitioner of “behavioral finance,” a growing field which uses investor psychology to help guide investment strategy. Daniel Crosby, Ph.D., is Chief Behavioral officer.
The combined firm, which will carry the Brinker name, has $40 billion under management. Brinker is known as a TAMP, a Turnkey Asset Management Program, competing under the same model as Oaks-based SEI, but smaller. Among other things, Orion brings an excellent technology platform to the party.
Brinker Capital was reported to be for sale in a Barron’s article back in January . Brinker was said to be seeking more than $750 million. Early reports on Orion had said it was on the market seeking $1.875 billion. Terms of the agreement announced today were not revealed.
Existing Orion backer TA Associates was joined by new investor Genstar, who each took equal shares of the combined business.
Nerd Street Gamers raised #10 million from Comcast Spectacor, Five Below, Elevate Capital and SeventySix Capital. Nerd Street’s expansion plans for on-premise gaming sites were slowed by Covid-19, but it found more potential for its online offering and that’s where much of this round will go towards.
Plymouth Meeting biotech firm developing Covid-19 vaccine gets $71M from DOD to support scale-up manufacturing of its delivery device. https://t.co/CLFhrF5cfa
— PHL Business Journal (@PHLBizJournal) June 28, 2020
A combination of self-aggrandizement and elitism has convinced American universities that our services are worth indebting generations of young people, and now risking becoming agents of spread.#nomercynomalicehttps://t.co/tie1pnJDMA
Apollo is repurposing its financial-crisis playbook for the coronavirus era. I sat down for a rare interview with @apolloglobal co-founder Josh Harris in my new "Front Row" series on @TheTerminal, and he explained how and why. Watch it here:https://t.co/55Wr8PMKUt
Constellation Research, R “Ray” Wang’s leading Silicon Valley research and advisory firm to corporate technology users, publishes its Business Transformation 150 (BT150) once per year.
Constellation says the BT150 “is an elite list that recognizes the top global executives leading business transformation efforts in their organizations. Nominations from peers, industry influencers, technology vendors and analysts power the selection process each year.”
One thing I like about the BT 150 is that its not an inward-looking list of Silicon Valley types.It covers a broad range of tech executives in a variety of industries across the nation and the globe..
Keep in mind that the list mostly covers CIOs who are responsible for technology users within an organization, as opposed to CTOs who developed customer facing products.
By offering a better customer experience for healthcare payments, Philadelphia-based InstaMed created a new market and was acquired by JPMorgan Chase a year ago for a reported $500 million-plus.
But by no means is the market closed to competition. In fact, new investments are springing up all over the place. New York-based Cedar just scored a $102M series C funding round, led by Andreessen Horowitz, which has also been active in Philly lately. Cedar describes itself as having payment systems similar to InstaMed. I’ve found no information as to how much in payments Cedar is processing.
Also, Atlanta-based Patientco seems to be offering similar services. And San Francisco-based Alpha Heath just raised $29 million, led by Andreesson Horowitz again.
Total US healthcare expenditures are just under $4 trillion per year. Out of pocket consumer payments are about 10% of that, or $400 billion. That’s the primary market InstaMed serves. The market has grown faster than total expenditures, largely due to higher deductibles..
InstaMed is currently processing about $100 billion per year.
Some time before the JPMorgan acquisition, I had discussed with InstaMed management whether its product would become”smarter”, perhaps offering consumers more benefits and options.. I was told that InstaMed had operated to that point with a single objective of growing payment volume in a highly secure environment. That focus payed off. But I still think more intelligence could be built into its product.
Covid-19 has added complexities, but it could convert more consumers to online payments. InstaMed.now has just shy of 300 employees between Philadelphia and its Newport Beach data center according to LinkedIn (sometimes not a perfect indicator). It had 258 employees at the time of its acquisition.
The pandemic shut down Hollywood, but it is giving NBCUniversal’s new chief license to rewrite the script for how we watch movies and TV. https://t.co/H9f2Dl7Ce1 via @WSJ
Matt Wallach, the Delaware County native who “retired” from te Presidency of Veeva Systems, a company he cofounded, last year, has returned as planned at the beginning of the year to the Board of Veeva as a non-executive member. Wallach, who designed much of Veeva’s product/market fit, is also active in the community and is on board of Philly startup HealthVerity.
Technology Veteran Brent Bowman to Become Veeva Chief Financial Officer | Business Wire https://t.co/nKe40HGwRe
Mattel named a new finance chief after the toy maker admitted to an accounting error last year and restated past earnings https://t.co/iQSEMntnNE via @WSJ
Equisoft Onboards Industry Veteran, David Nicolai, as Vice President, Insurance Solutions USA – InsuranceNewsNet https://t.co/l5Rf5fNZ0t via @insnewsnet
Tom Spann’s Act II, Brightside, raises $35.1 million from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) with participation from existing investors Comcast Ventures and Trinity Ventures http://bit.ly/30U3rzg
"New York ecosystem will continue to thrive. It's become a very full and rich tech ecosystem, and real-world network effects have been building for a while." – FirstMark's @MattTurck on our home city's resilience amidst Covid-19.https://t.co/tiAMw8Bwwn
Four episodes of "30 Rock" in which characters used blackface are being removed from streaming platforms and TV syndication at the request of co-creator Tina Fey. https://t.co/IconFGGGR7
Philly (Plymouth Meeting) & Seattle-based Accolade, which filed for an IPO back in February, announced its pricing this morning. The IPO’s timing was likely slowed down by Covid-19.
Accolade provides healthcare navigation assistance to client companies’ employees.. It combines the use of smart technology with human assistance. Comcast is its largest customer.
Accolade will price 8.75 million shares at between $19 and $21. raising $175 million at the midpoint and valuing the company at nearly $1 billion. Investors include Accretive at 26.9%, Andreessen Horowitz at 16.2%, Carrick Capital at 9.9%, and Comcast Ventures at 6.9%
Andreessen Horowitz also led a recent round in another Tom Spann-founded startup, Brightside. .Spann has no formal ties to Acccolade since stepping down from its. board late last year.
Accolade showed a $51.3 million net loss on $132.5 million in revenue for its fiscal year ending Feb. 29. I don’t think its unit ecconomics have been proven out to the point where they are projectible yet.
But it will probably draw a great deal of interest as a new concept in the hot digital health sector.
The company has applied to list on Nasdaq, under the ticker “ACCD.”
