Elation Health, a health IT startup that developed an electronic health record platform aimed at primary care physician-led practices and outpatient care, has closed a $15 million Series B round. It’s the largest financing round the company has raised to date, bringing its total funding to $18.5 million.
Kyna Fong, the CEO and co-founder, said in a phone interview that Elation Health, formerly known as ElationEMR, would use the new funding to double its 40-person business in the next 12 months. Fong added that the staff increase would be across the board, but particularly in product development.
Among the investors who took part in the series B were DFJ, which led the round, along with angel investors Martha Marsh, former president and CEO of Stanford Hospital and Clinics, and Charlie Cheever — co-founder of Quora and a former Facebook software engineering manager who was the architect of Facebook Connect and Facebook Platform. DFJ has invested in a variety of digital heath and life science companies from Livongo to Theranos.
“These investors represent really unique viewpoints in terms of what we’re trying to do,” Fong said.
She said the shift from fee-for-service to outcomes-based care required a rethink of electronic health records that can address the changing reimbursement environment.
“We developed technology solutions that are helping doctors to be successful in this changing environment,” Fong said. “A lot of vendors built their technology some time ago.”
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.
A news release described Elation Health’s platform as placing the patient’s longitudinal story at the center of care. The platform offers a “cockpit view” and pulls physician assessments, patient problems, lab results and other clinical data into a physician’s workflow during the patient visit. A patient’s care team can access this information, in real time, to get the most accurate and complete picture of their patient’s health, the release said.
Fong added that one new development on the product side is to develop and expand the company’s platform to help physicians follow patients beyond the four walls of their offices. The San Francisco-based company currently works with 200,000 providers.
“Specifically, we are connecting patients to other providers that their patients see and which enables them to exchange information. We’re helping physicians close a loop when they ask a patient to get a lab [test] done. We help physicians know those things have happened. It is very much a network around the patient and advancing our interoperability objective forward,” Fong said.
Fong previously worked as a health economics professor at Stanford University and co-founded Elation with her brother Conan Fong, a former healthcare consultant.
Image: Elation Health
