Avizia, a telemedicine startup that works with integrated delivery networks, has closed an $11 million Series A round to expand its customer base and invest in product development. In a phone interview, Avizia CEO and Co-founder Mike Baird offered three examples of how its telemedcine technology is being put to work by providers.
“We expect to add 30 to our team — half of it in sales and half in engineering. What we offer has evolved quite a bit. We started with a cart and the goal was to build an end-to-end platform…helping to take hospitals from [telemedicine] pilots to execution.”
Another way the company is expanding its customer base is by adding Vidyo to its suite of products. The platform for the company, which is a spin-out from Cisco, was not compatible with Vidyo until now. “It effectively doubles our addressable market,” said Baird.
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.
He added: “The telemedicine market as a whole is significantly underpenetrated, but in the enterprise software market we’re seeing substantial growth.”
Baird noted that Avizia has developed new apps for mobile devices, secure messaging for doctors within hospitals and has expanded its services.
“As a company, our mission is to enable any provider to talk with any patient any place,” he said.
But despite its move to make its platform more flexible, Baird emphasized that its hospital cart products were still important. “The cart is still relevant. At the end of the day, telemedicine is being used everywhere and we need to have technology that complies with the environment.”
Baird also called attention to three ways its technology has been implemented. The Medical University of South Carolina is using Avizia’s technology to support healthcare outreach to three prisons in the state in a collaboration with South Carolina’s department of corrections. The idea is to use telemedicine to help conduct physical exams when a prison doctor is unavailable. That helps prisoners to move on to their assigned prisons and begin serving their sentences and reduces the cost of transporting prisoners to doctors and the security that entails. The goal is to expand the program to all 23 of the state’s prisons.
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.
The University of Virginia Health System has enlisted Avizia’s technology for nursing home monitoring and diabetes management, particularly to improve access to this care in rural parts of the state.
Children’s Medical Center of Dallas uses telemedicine to connect with 57 schools in urban and rural areas across North Texas. Baird said he has received several stories of how the collaborations have led to the discovery of previously undiagnosed cancer cases and the like that may have otherwise gone unnoticed.
Blue Heron Capital led the Series A round and Lavrock Ventures, NextGen Venture Partners, Middleland Capital, Waterline Capital, and Blu Ventures also participated.
Photo: Avizia
