Medical documentation startup Augmedix went public through a reverse merger with Malo Holdings. A subsidiary of the company merged with Augmedix on October 5, allowing it to begin trading over-the-counter on OTCQB.
The San Francisco-based startup was founded in 2013. To date, it has raised more than $107 million in funding, according to an SEC filing outlining the deal. As part of the deal, it closed $25 million in a private placement.
In a news release, CEO Emmanuel Krakaris said the financing would put the company on a path of accelerated expansion, and fuel its research and development.
The company builds software that works with smartphones or Google Glass to allow remotely-located documentation specialists to create a medical note for each visit within a clinician’s EHR. It captures conversations between physicians and patients to produce medial notes, which are then turned into medical documentation by workers in the U.S. or overseas. It currently charges $1,800 per doctor per month for this service.
So far, Augmedix works with several large health systems, including Sutter Health, Dignity Health and US Oncology. But less than 1% of its customers’ physicians currently use the service.
As of June 30, 2020, it has 510 clinicians using its service, a slight increase from 462 at the end of December. In total, the company brought in $14.11 million in revenue in 2019, up from $10.82 million in 2018. But it has also been operating in the red, reporting an $18.5 million net loss in 2019. This may be in part due to the cost of remote documentation services, which accounted for part of the company’s $10.86 million in general and administrative costs.
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.
The company also has some upcoming debt, with a loan taken out under Comerica Bank due and payable in December. As of June, it had $5.41 million in cash on hand, of which $2 million was restricted under the loan.
Augmedix said it plans to integrate machine learning into its note-building feature to automatically provide note suggestions to its remote documentation specialists. Other competitors, such as Saykara and Suki, are trying to make parts of documentation fully autonomous.
Suki, for example, uses a “wake word”, such as those used for voice assistants, while Saykara listens to the ambient conversation for charting.
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