This post has been updated from an earlier version following an interview with the co-founders.
Protenus, a health IT startup that works with health facilities to track, analyze and prevent data security breaches has raised a Series A to support the expansion of sales, marketing and implementation teams, according to a company statement.
North Dakota-based Arthur Ventures led the funding round with participation from LionBird Venture Capital, DreamIt Ventures, Cognosante, TEDCO, and the Baltimore Angels.
Behavioral Health, Interoperability and eConsent: Meeting the Demands of CMS Final Rule Compliance
In a webinar on April 16 at 1pm ET, Aneesh Chopra will moderate a discussion with executives from DocuSign, Velatura, and behavioral health providers on eConsent, health information exchange and compliance with the CMS Final Rule on interoperability.
Protenus counts Johns Hopkins Health System as a customer. Protenus co-founders Robert Lord and Nick Robertson went to Johns Hopkins Medical School. It is also carrying out pilots with Inova Health System in Virginia, and Maryland’s regional health information exchange, Chesapeake Regional Information System or CRISP, covering interchanges of data between health systems in the Maryland and Washington, D.C. area.
Although preventing unwarranted access to medical records has always been an issue for hospitals, even when those records were paper, the transformation to digital health records has forced healthcare facilities to be more vigilant since these records can be accessed more easily by a wider variety of people.
The reputational damage from external and internal data breaches for payers like Anthem to retail clinics such as Walgreens, only adds to the sense of urgency to do something to minimize the threat these breaches pose, which has helped cybersecurity companies like Protenus.
In a phone interview, Lord said: “We have had tremendous success with existing customers, but the next step is to scale up the company to deliver solutions throughout the U.S. This is something every hospital needs and every patient deserves.”
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.
He and Robertson noted that the company has grown from two to 14 people in the past year with another 10 in 2016 — mostly sales and marketing, but some engineers as well. It’s also talking to a number of hospitals across the country as it seeks to push its geographic footprint beyond Maryland.
“In 2016, we see leaders of hospitals focused on two things: implementation of better privacy controls and insider threat and enabling data analytics, making more effective use of big data solutions. Those are two trends working tremendously in our favor,” Lord added.
Photo: Free Digital Photos user Pong
