Among several major digital health investments announced Thursday, ratings and business reputation management website Reputation.com scored a $20 million investment, led by Ascension Ventures, the venture capital arm of Ascension Health. Other participants included previous investors August Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Icon Ventures, Kleiner Perkins and Focus Ventures.
Why would an 11-year old, established company that is profitable and had raised more than $115 million previously need to go back to the VC market?
When Investment Rhymes with Canada
Canada has a proud history of achievement in the areas of science and technology, and the field of biomanufacturing and life sciences is no exception.
“We didn’t want just regular venture capital. We wanted strategic capital,” specifically in healthcare, CEO Shrey Bhatia explained.
Reputation.com, of Redwood City, California, already counts about 150 healthcare clients, covering 60,000 physicians and 25,000 facilities, according to Bhatia. Those customers want to be able to monitor and manage their online public images as consumerism takes hold in healthcare, Bhatia said.
“How they are rated has everything to do with where they show up in search,” said Reputation.com Chief Marketing Officer Mark Lange. He noted that Google has publicly said that it gives preference in search results to those with fresher content.
St. Louis-based Ascension Health actually is not among Reputation.com’s clientele. But the Catholic health system’s VC affiliate was interested in backing a company that has an increasingly important role to play in the industry.
“Our health system partners are seeing a shift in the ways patients decide where and from whom they receive care and are turning to the same channels they rely on for other consumer purchasing decisions to share their experiences — online reviews and social media,” Matt Hermann, senior managing director of Ascension Ventures, said in a prepared statement.
““Reputation.com offers a comprehensive set of data automation and workflow tools that enable any healthcare organization to effectively and efficiently engage patients in these online interactions at scale, as well as deliver the analytics tools to uncover leading indicators of the patient experience in order to improve clinical and operational performance,” Hermann continued.
Reputation.com tries to be “absolutely unbiased” in its ratings of companies that serve the public, Bhatia said. It can be hard to find truly objective information in healthcare. “This space needs a Switzerland, and we are that Switzerland,” he explained.
With the new money, Reputation.com — formerly called Reputation Defender — will, according to Bhatia, be adding more data science and analytics capabilities to its services and expanding its reach in the U.S. and abroad. The company already serves healthcare clients in Canada, Mexico and parts of Europe, and plans on adding Asia-Pacific customers by the end of the year, Bhatia said.
Photo: Flickr user somegeekintn
