A technology company that’s developed a way to convert paper documents into electronic data accurately is in expansion mode. Captricity, which has been working with the FDA to support its open data program has raised a $10 million Series B round.
Atlas Venture led the financing round with Social+Capital also participating. Chris Lynch, a partner at Atlas, will join Captricity’s board, according to a company statement. The company previously raised $4.5 million with backing from The Knight Foundation and angel investors including Dave Goldberg, Reid Hoffmann and Mitch Kapor.
“We are applying the technology to crack the trifecta of healthcare/insurance/government — the three pillars of our health system,” CEO and founder Kuang Chen said in an emailed statement. “Our thesis is that our technology can make the movement of data much more efficient between these domains, without having to enact the typical IT overhaul upheaval. We will become Salesforce.com for national health systems, starting with the US.”
Here’s how it works. Users take pictures of the forms using a camera, smartphone, scanner, or copy machine. Captricity will capture the writing and export it to the tool of their choice.
Captricity worked with the FDA to digitize paper reports submitted to MedWatch, the FDA’s Safety Information and Adverse Event Reporting Program as part of its OpenFDA program.
One challenge with big data is that it’s often restricted to new data or data that’s already digital. Lynch pointed out that Captricity helps businesses to bring legacy documents and workflows into the world of big data analytics without having to make big changes to their business processes.
It will be interesting to see if the company’s healthcare client base continues to diversify given the amount of legacy documents the healthcare industry has.
