Healthcare big data company Explorys has added venture capital firm the Heritage Group as its latest strategic investor.
The dollar amount of the investment from Nashville-based Heritage is unclear, but Explorys said it will use the funding to accelerate product development, sales and customer deployments, according to a statement.
Cleveland-based Explorys’ other investors include Austin Ventures, Foundation Medical Partners, Santé Ventures, Cleveland Clinic and 23Bell. The company raised an $11.5 million series C round of investment last year.
The Explorys investment comes out of Heritage’s $157 million Healthcare Innovation Fund, which was launched in January 2011.
Heritage touts the fund’s “unique investment structure,” with limited partners that include a number of hospitals and healthcare companies such as Cardinal Health, Amedisys, Vanguard Health Systems and Iowa Health System.
“The fund’s mix of limited partners, which include some of the nation’s leading hospital systems and healthcare companies across many sectors, reflects where healthcare is headed: towards a more collaborative approach to the delivery of care,” said Paul Wallace, managing director with the Heritage Group.
An Explorys official didn’t respond to a request for comment.
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.
Explorys has developed what it calls a Google-like network that contains troves of clinical and financial data from hospitals, and allows health providers to analyze that data in real time.
The idea is that doctors and medical researchers can mine the vast amounts of data to learn how variations in treatment can affect outcomes and uncover best practices to enhance patient care and lower costs.
