Health IT

Modernizing Medicine expands into telemedicine, starting with dermatology

Modernizing Medicine will use some of the $38M it raised in a Series E round to add telemedicine to its services, starting with dermatology.

A health IT company that developed an image-led, electronic health record for iPads and services for specialty practices will use some of the $38M it raised in a Series E round to make a play for the telemedicine market through its Electronic Medical Assistant platform. Modernizing Medicine CEO Daniel Cane told MedCity News in a phone interview that its first telemedicine application is dermatology. He expects the app, currently in late beta, to be rolled out in the fourth quarter.

Pentland Group and funds affiliated with Summit Partners and Sands Capital Ventures took part in the fundraise. Modernizing Medicine, which took part in MedCity News’ Startup Showcase at its 2013 CONVERGE conference, has raised $87 million to date.

One of the biggest criticisms of telemedicine vendors is that most of them are not aligned to an EHR, which means there’s no easy way for that data to be assimilated into patients’ primary care physician records. It presents a major challenge at a time when de-siloing data and data liquidity are big priorities.

“A big pitfall of telemedicine is the idea that it can grow independently of EHRs,” Cane said. “We have thousands of dermatologists using our platform and they already have a rapport with their patients,” Cane said.

He said the way the teledermatology app is structured, patients use a smartphone to take images of what appear to them to be skin abnormalities and send it to their physician. The app requires users to take images of skin from around the body to get a “baseline” of their skin. Cane said the app is designed to facilitate a dialogue between patients and collaborate with other doctors.

It also plans to integrate telemedicine applications with Apple HealthKit and connected devices beyond the ones on HealthKit. Apart from dermatology, the idea is to add its seven other specialties to the telemedicine platform such as orthopedics, gastroenterology and ophthalmology.

The push into telemedicine is part of its long-term goal to integrate clinical data and expand its customer base beyond private practices to large hospitals.

Another portion of the funding will be used to support specialty services like revenue cycle management. Cane said it plans to ramp up staff from its current level of 430 employees to more than 500 over the next six months. It will be less about sales and marketing than client services, training and support and product development, with client services accounting for the biggest headcount.

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