A health IT business that developed a mobile platform and analytics tool to give care managers a clearer window on patients’ responsiveness to their care plan has raised $8.5 million. In a phone interview with MedCity News, Wellframe CEO Jacob Sattelmair said it would use some of the funding to create data scientist and computer engineering jobs on its technology team with engineers and data scientists to support the platform and extend the reach of care managers.
The goal of the Rock Health graduate’s care management platform is to not only give care managers a more informed understanding of each patient and how they are managing their care plans, but also create more meaningful interactions between care managers and patients. It is designed to support the shift in financial and clinical risk as the model changes from fee-for-service to one tied to better outcomes.
Asked if it has been tough to recruit the IT staff it needs because of competition with other businesses, Sattelmair pointed out that the nice thing about the company is that engineers can have a tangible sense of how they are improving people’s lives on a daily basis in a way that other positions wouldn’t necessarily provide. He added that Wellframe has worked hard to build a strong core team that has made the business more attractive.
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Since April, the company has more than doubled in size from eight to 20, but Sattelmair declined to clarify how many new staff positions it’s seeking to fill.
Draper Fisher Jurvetson led the financing round with participation from Formation 8, Waterline Ventures and Queensbridge Venture Partners. It follows the $1.5 million it raised earlier this year from athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush, Tim Draper of DFJ, Accenture managing director Russ Nash, Fidelity Biosciences partner Carl Byers, and Sabaratnam Arulkumaran, the president of the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics.
Sattelmair said that among some of the applications it plans to add to the platform are a program for patients recovering from an organ transplant. It’s also interested in including cancer treatment. Earlier this year, Wellframe said it had been working with Harvard-affiliated psychiatric hospital McLean Hospital to apply its platform to patients with schizophrenia, clinical depression and bipolar disorders, particularly when they are discharged to help people reintegrate into employment and social life.
It has also deployed a version of its platform for Spanish-speaking patients with heart disease and diabetes in collaboration with a health plan partner. It’s also working with a healthcare technology channel partner to customize its platform for ACOs.