New York-Presbyterian Hospital
Telemedicine service provider Avizia has closed its $17 million Series A funding round by landing an additional $6 million investment on top of the $11 million disclosed in July. What’s notable about this new cash infusion is that a major health system, New York-Presbyterian, participated.
“It’s the first time we’ve had a strategic healthcare investor,” Avizia CEO and Co-founder Mike Baird said. “We view them as being on the cutting edge of telehealth,” Baird said of the New York City hospital.
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New York-Presbyterian has turned to telemedicine for video consultations with patients, to reduce wait times in the emergency department and to bring in specialists for stroke care. The hospital has been an advisor to Avizia in the past.
“This investment represents an important step forward for New York-Presbyterian and our digital health offerings,” the institution’s president and CEO, Dr. Steven J. Corwin said in a statement from Avizia.
HealthQuest Capital led the add-on to the Series A round. As part of the funding, Silicon Valley Bank extended a previous agreement, giving Reston, Virginia-based Avizia a total of $3 million in debt financing and a $1.5 million line of credit, the telehealth company said.
Avizia will use the new money to expand its go-to-market capabilities and double the size of its engineering and software teams. Baird said that the new hires on the development side will allow the vendor to build new capabilities into its telehealth platform, including integration with electronic health records and the ability to monitor the battery life of remote diagnostic devices.
“That’s a lot of work, but it’s taking it to the next level,” Baird said. “We embrace the complexity” inherent in the healthcare industry.
“We’re trying to help telehealth become mainstream,” Baird added. He said that Avizia distinguishes itself from other telehealth companies by focusing on enterprise deployments.
To date, Avizia has signed up about 400 health systems, covering more than 1,000 hospitals, the CEO said.
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