McKesson Ventures, the corporate venture arm of pharmaceutical distributor and health IT vendor McKesson, made a strategic investment in PokitDok in a move that could lead to PokitDok joining the CommonWell Health Alliance.
In a phone interview with McKesson Ventures managing director Tom Rodgers, he said the decision to invest in PokitDok wasn’t necessarily driven by an interest in making PokitDok’s API platform available to McKesson clients. Like the investment strategy of his previous company Cambia Health Solutions, Rodgers said its investment was driven by a wider interest in how the technology could benefit hospitals and health systems and the speed they integrate payment, billing and scheduling services. But he added that its API platform would likely appeal to many of them.
PokitDok and CommonWell, an alliance of health IT vendors, such as electronic medical record providers, medical image sharing businesses, as well as companies like CVS Health,with the goal of interoperability, would be a good match because their interests are aligned, Rodgers said. He noted that CommonWell members are more focused on clinical data transactions but PokitDok’s platform can leverage APIs for several tasks that can help support financial and administrative transactions, among other tasks.
“What will be really interesting is PokitDok could decide to join the alliance,” he said.
Among PokitDok’s other investors are New Atlantic Ventures, Lemhi Ventures, Rogers Venture Partners, Subtraction Capital, and New Ground Ventures.
Rodgers also observed the hot digital health investment deal flow will begin to simmer down in 2016.
He noted that depending on the perspective of entrepreneurs and investors, these changes will be met in very different ways from the perspective of healthcare industry veterans and players that have come into healthcare from other industries seeking to disrupt it.
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.
“A lot of these people were excited to see a big market that has many areas appearing ripe for disruption and excited to apply business models seen in other areas such as FinTech and Tech like Software as a Service. Unfortunately, they are realizing the slow pace of healthcare and the long sales cycle. But for folks that have been in healthcare for a long time, they’re excited by the transformation taking shape,” Rodgers said.
Photo: Flickr user Wirawat Lian-udom
