Medical data management firm Explorys has raised an $11.5 million series C round of investment that the company plans to use to double its employment by the end of the year.
The round was led by Austin Ventures of Austin, Texas, and Foundation Medical Partners of Connecticut, Explorys CTO Charlie Lougheed said. Follow-on investments in the round came from Sante Ventures and Cleveland Clinic. A Cleveland Clinic spinoff, Explorys has raised $15 million since it was founded in 2009.
Explorys is “growing by leaps and bounds,” and now has 25 employees, a number it plans to double by the end of the year, Lougheed said. The company hopes to double the number yet again next year to arrive at 100 employees by the end of 2012.
Most of the new hires this year will be technology workers and clinical data analysts, Lougheed said.
Explorys acts as a repository and cleanser of data coming from many different clinics, hospitals, doctors offices and researchers, and puts all the data into a central research database. The idea is that healthcare organizations can mine that electronic medical records data to look for trends that could lead to improvements in patient safety and clinical effectiveness.
“We see 2011 as a watershed year for healthcare data,” CEO Stephen McHale said in a statement. “That’s why we have committed the necessary capital to rapidly support the needs of our healthcare partners who are serious about improving care and driving meaningful innovation; starting now.”
The company’s database contains medical records specific to 10 million patients, a figure Lougheed said could reach 15 million by the end of this year.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Current members of Explorys’ network are Cleveland Clinic, University Hospitals and MetroHealth System in Cleveland, Summa Health System in Akron, and MedStar Health in Maryland.
In addition to using the new capital to fund its hiring spree, Explorys plans to triple its server capacity and add a second data center, Lougheed said. The company, which is rapidly outgrowing its space on the Cleveland Clinic campus, is also in talks about acquiring new office space.
Lougheed and McHale sold the previous company they founded, Everstream, for $15 million to Concurrent Computer in 2005. Everstream sold software that provided video-on-demand reporting, analytics and statistics.
