Portfolio Companies

Cambia Health Solutions Leads New Round of Investment in lifeIMAGE

lifeIMAGE
Information Technology & Services
Update: Friday, 05 June 2015
 

NEWTON, Mass.—May 28, 2015—lifeIMAGE announced today that it has closed a $17.5 million round of financing led by Cambia Health Solutions (Portland, Ore.), a nonprofit total health solutions company dedicated to transforming health care by creating a person-focused and economically sustainable system. lifeIMAGE, the nation’s largest and most utilized network for exchanging medical imaging, will use this financing to expand resources for its growing customer base, increase the breadth of its network capabilities and implement the next phases of its go-to-market strategy.

Cambia and lifeIMAGE share a common goal: improving the quality of care while lowering its cost. Lack of access to imaging exams is the primary cause of unnecessary, duplicative procedures that delay care, frustrate clinicians and patients, and cost the country’s health system about $30 billion each year. lifeIMAGE helps providers improve care coordination for patient consultations, referrals and transfers by making medical imaging exams from unaffiliated hospitals, physicians and patients accessible worldwide. It interoperates with the electronic medical record systems from Cerner Corporation and Epic Systems Corporation to ensure every member of a patient’s care team has fast, electronic access to a complete imaging history.

“Cambia is committed to investing in companies that transform the health care system into one that is person-focused and economically sustainable,” said Rob Coppedge, Senior Vice President of Strategic Investment and Corporate Development at Cambia Health Solutions. ”We are excited to partner with lifeIMAGE as they work towards their goal of providing universal and seamless access to medical images for both clinicians and patients.”

“Image sharing has reached a critical inflection point. Our customers have validated its correlation to quality and cost of care, and it’s now considered part of the standard of care,” said Hamid Tabatabaie, CEO and co-founder of lifeIMAGE. “We’re excited to work with Cambia to increase the mainstream focus and adoption of medical imaging interoperability. With the added capital and Cambia’s support, lifeIMAGE will scale up and demonstrate how innovative health plans can take advantage of our network to bring value to their providers as they adopt a value-based approach to managing the health of their patient populations.”

Cambia’s strategic investment in lifeIMAGE is part of a new round of equity that also includes participation by existing lifeIMAGE investors Cardinal Partners, Galen Partners, Long River Ventures, Mass Ventures, and Partners Innovation Fund. Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. acted as exclusive placement agent for lifeIMAGE.

The lifeIMAGE network consists of more than 120 multi-site health systems that include academic medical centers, pediatric facilities, certified trauma centers, oncology centers of excellence and imaging providers. Recent additions to the network include Cedars-Sinai Medical Center (Calif.), Emory Healthcare (Ga.), University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (Tex.), Children’s Hospital of Orange County (Calif.), Baptist Health Jacksonville (Fla.), University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics (Iowa), City of Hope (Calif.), and Bayfront Medical Center (Fla.). These organizations join existing clients such as UCLA Health System (Calif.), Ohio State University Medical Center (Ohio), Lurie Children’s Hospital (Ill.), Stony Brook University Medical Center (N.Y.), Yale New Haven Health System (Conn.), University of Maryland Medical System (Md.), UMass Memorial Health Care (Mass.), University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics (Wis.), University of New Mexico (N.M.), University of Rochester (N.Y.), Northwestern Memorial Hospital (Ill.), University of Missouri Healthcare (Mo.), MD Anderson Cancer Center (Tex.), Mount Sinai Medical Center (N.Y.), Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare (Tenn.), Geisinger Health System (Pa.), Boston Children’s Hospital (Mass.), University of Washington Medical Center (Wash.), Baylor Health Care System (Tex.), Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (Pa.) and University of Michigan Hospital (Mich.).

About lifeIMAGE

lifeIMAGE provides a medical image exchange platform that is deployed at hundreds of leading healthcare organizations to facilitate the secure, e-sharing of medical imaging information among hospitals, radiology groups, physicians and patients. Our services are helping providers improve the quality and timeliness of care, expand referral business, and eliminate wasteful spending. www.lifeimage.com

About Cambia

Cambia Health Solutions, headquartered in Portland, Ore., is a nonprofit total health solutions company dedicated to transforming health care by creating a person-focused and economically sustainable system. Cambia’s growing family of companies range from software and mobile applications, health care marketplaces, non-traditional health care delivery models, health insurance, life insurance, pharmacy benefit management, wellness and overall consumer engagement. Through bold thinking and innovative technology, we are delivering solutions that make quality health care more available, affordable and personally relevant for everyone. To learn more, visit cambiahealth.com or twitter.com/cambia.

PeriGen Congratulates Banner Health Instituting Successful Care Quality Initiative Reducing Unnecessary Early-Term Deliveries by 22 Percent

The Arizona Quality Alliance Award Recipient Used Perinatal Electronic Health Record Data to Facilitate Medical Practice Change Across 19 Facilities

PeriGen, Inc.
Information Technology & Services

 
Update: Monday, 29 April 2013
 

 PRINCETON, NJ - ( PeriGen, the global leader in applying real-time clinical decision support to perinatal systems, applauds Banner Health for successfully reducing elective deliveries of babies at less than 39 weeks and earning a Showcase in Excellence Award from the Arizona Quality Alliance. Banner Health is one of the largest nonprofit healthcare systems in the country.

Avoiding unnecessary early-term deliveries is a best practice advocated by obstetrical professional organizations and national quality organizations. Research demonstrates that elective deliveries before 39 weeks increase the risk of newborn respiratory problems and lengths of stay for mothers and babies.

Banner Health used both historical and real-time data gathered from PeriBirth®, PeriGen's electronic health record (EHR) designed specifically for obstetric (OB) care. The captured data helped the health system establish a baseline and monitor ongoing compliance of the new protocol across 19 hospitals. As a result of this quality initiative, the number of elective deliveries at less than 39 weeks decreased by 22 percent over the first six months, representing more than 2,600 more babies per year being delivered at term.  

"We are thrilled to play a part in Banner Health's success as they pioneer system-wide adherence to a widely endorsed obstetrics best practice," said PeriGen Chief Executive Officer Matthew Sappern. "Our company's mission is to deliver the most medically relevant information at the most relevant time to help clinicians make knowledge-driven decisions. We commend Banner Health for using this information to further its commitment to data-driven, evidence-based practice safeguarding the delivery of healthier infants."

Implementing Evidence-based Best Practice Enterprise-wide

An organization recognized nationally for using technology to improve care quality, Banner Health leveraged its established system of clinical performance groups (CPGs) to drive this initiative. Once the groups identified elective deliveries before 39 weeks as its target standard, clinicians and staff members developed a process that could be deployed enterprise-wide to evaluate the medical necessity of such a delivery before scheduling a patient for an early induction or cesarean section.

A key step in the protocol's implementation was to pull several years of historical data from the PeriBirth system into an enterprise data warehouse. From this data, the team was able to pinpoint each hospital's current and historical rate of elective deliveries before 39 weeks and gaps in documentation. The CPG was able to establish a baseline for measuring future performance and to identify which hospitals would require more education and attention.

As the health system implemented the new protocol, PeriBirth played a key role in helping the CPG track each facility's and provider's compliance.

"Data from PeriBirth was hugely instrumental in giving us a true reading of data rates to quickly determine who was following the protocol," said Barbara LaBranche, MBA, B.S.N., R.N., senior director of clinical informatics at Banner Health Corporate and co-leader of the initiative. "Up until now we've relied on coded data four to six weeks after the fact. With our new system, we're able to give physicians feedback in as near to real time as possible, which is much more effective for prompting practice change. It's hard to argue with numbers."

Banner Health has now developed a dashboard for monitoring this perinatal standard. The dashboard extracts data from PeriBirth and its reporting tool nightly to give care providers and administrators near real-time information. The data outcomes enable OB managers to review and compare compliance with quality measures at the system, facility, unit and physician level.

About Banner Health
Headquartered in Phoenix, Banner Health is one of the largest, nonprofit health care systems in the country. The system manages 23 acute-care hospitals, the Banner Health Network and Banner Medical Group, long-term care centers, outpatient surgery centers and an array of other services including family clinics, home care and hospice services, and a nursing registry. Banner Health is in seven states: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Nebraska, Nevada and Wyoming. For more information, visit www.bannerhealth.com.

About PeriGen, Inc.
PeriGen, Inc., is an innovative provider of fetal surveillance systems employing patented, pattern-recognition and obstetrics technologies that empower perinatal clinicians to make confident, real-time decisions about the mothers and babies in their care. PeriGen's customer-centric team of clinicians and technologists builds the most advanced systems available to augment obstetric decision-making and improve communications among the clinical team at the point of care, while supporting data flow between healthcare IT systems.

PeriGen's unique fetal surveillance products provide dynamic visual cues that direct clinicians to the most essential patient information displayed on the screen. Unlike legacy fetal monitoring devices and software from non-specialist companies, PeriGen Visual Cueing™ provides an instant view of the mother's and baby's current status and trends over time to avoid errors, increasing patient safety and reducing risk for clinicians and hospitals. For more information, please visit us at www.PeriGen.com.

lifeIMAGE Completes $15 Million Series C Round

The leading medical image and information exchange network closed a new round of capital to fund growth and operations.

lifeIMAGE
Information Technology & Services

 
Update: Monday, 22 April 2013
 

Newton, MA - lifeIMAGE, the leading network for securely sharing medical images and related health information, announced today that it recently closed a $15 million Series C round of financing. Continuing to support lifeIMAGE, Cardinal Partners (Princeton, N.J.) and Galen Partners (Stamford, Conn.), the company’s largest existing investors, led the round with participation from all other existing venture funds and strategic investors. The proceeds will be used to fund growth and operations.

“lifeIMAGE is a great example of how electronic exchange of patients’ health records contribute to better care, while reducing unnecessary expenses,” said Thomas McKinley, partner at Cardinal Partners. “As the leader in image sharing, lifeIMAGE is well-positioned to make significant and innovative contributions to the e-health and patient engagement movements.”

lifeIMAGE, recently featured in a Wall Street Journal article, has been used by more than 29,000 people in 68 countries to share over 410 million medical images. Approximately 180 of the largest hospitals in the US have engaged lifeIMAGE to facilitate the secure, electronic exchange of x-ray, computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), nuclear medicine, echocardiography, ultrasound, and other types of diagnostic imaging exams in and out of their health care enterprise. Physicians use its simple workflow to provide remote consultations and second opinions to other physicians and patients anywhere, and also conveniently import the information into their local electronic medical record (EMR) systems.

“lifeIMAGE has consistently delivered on an ambitious blueprint for technology development and marquis customer acquisition,” said David Jahns, Managing Partner at Galen Partners. “As a nation, we cannot sustain spending nearly 18 percent of our GDP on healthcare. We have to wring out inefficiencies, and lifeIMAGE has very effectively demonstrated the role of technology and innovation in accomplishing that goal.”

At $120 billion per year, medical imaging is the second highest healthcare cost element in our nation. Its utilization is expected to grow as technological advances continue to make it a strategic clinical tool in expanding areas of care, and as our population ages. To address concerns over the cost, inefficiency and harmful radiation associated with unnecessary, duplicative procedures, accountable care organizations (ACO), health information exchange (HIE) projects, and other risk-based entities are increasingly adopting medical image sharing capabilities. Some estimate this can deliver as much as 30 percent savings by providing access to patients’ histories, facilitating virtual consultations, and making referral processes more efficient.

About lifeIMAGE
lifeIMAGE provides a broad set of solutions for universal e-sharing of diagnostic imaging information. These products securely connect hospitals, radiology groups and physicians to their patients everywhere and are currently deployed at many of the nation’s leading healthcare institutions and academic medical centers. The goal of the lifeIMAGE platform is to help avoid duplicate exams and eliminate unnecessary patient exposure to excessive radiation.

Contact:
Jackie Walsh
lifeIMAGE
(617) 990-2262

Tactile Systems Technology Appoints New Board Chair, Expands Medical Leadership

Industry thought leaders add momentum to company’s growth plans

Tactile Systems Technology Inc.
Medical Devices & Technology

 Update: Thursday, 03 January 2013

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Minneapolis – Jan. 3, 2013 – Tactile Systems Technology Inc., a Minneapolis-based developer of chronic swelling and vascular disease therapies, is adding veteran leadership and top medical talent as it prepares to enter new markets and broaden its treatment portfolio. The appointments include a new chairman of the board of directors, a scientific advisory board and a chief medical officer.

“Attracting this level of business and clinical experience prepares us to accelerate our growth in new markets,” said Jerry Mattys, CEO of Tactile Systems Technology. “Having the full support of these key industry thought leaders speaks to the potential of our products. Tactile will leverage their expertise for its expansion plan in 2013.”

Chairman of the Board
Seasoned med-tech business leader Peter H. Soderberg has been elected by the company’s board of directors to serve as its chairman. As former President & CEO of medical device manufacturers Hill Rom and Welch Allyn, Soderberg will provide strategic direction as Tactile Systems Technology plans to expand existing and develop new products and markets for treatment of chronic swelling.

“Tactile continues to hone its therapies and develop products that dramatically impact patients’ well-being,” Soderberg said. “I’m excited to work with the company to help them advance the standard of care in treating chronic diseases at home.”

Scientific Advisory Board
Tactile has formed a new scientific advisory board to strengthen the company’s clinical development strategic direction and oversight.  The scientific advisory board consists of top international medical experts and will assist the company in planning, designing and implementing clinical trials. In addition, the board’s research will fuel further therapy exploration. The advisory board includes:

  • Thomas F. O’Donnell, Jr., MD (panel chairman): Senior vascular surgeon at Tufts New England and the Benjamin Andrews Professor of Surgery Emeritus at Tufts University School of Medicine.
  • Hugo Partsch, MD: Professor Emeritus of Dermatology at University of Vienna, Past - President of the International Union of Phlebology and founder, International Compression Club.
  • Anthony J. Comerota, MD: Director of the Jobst Vascular Institute at The Toledo Hospital in Toledo, Ohio, and adjunct professor of surgery at the University of Michigan.
  • Steven M. Dean, DO: Director of the vascular medicine program, director of cardiovascular medicine’s noninvasive peripheral vascular laboratory and associate professor of clinical medicine at The Ohio State University Medical Center.

Chief Medical Officer
Alan T. Hirsch, MD, will serve as Tactile’s new chief medical officer, overseeing protocol design, safety reviews of new therapies and clinical education programs. He is Professor of Medicine and the current director of the University of Minnesota Medical School’s vascular medicine program.

About Tactile Systems Technology Inc.  
Tactile Systems Technology Inc., headquartered in Minneapolis, is a medical device company dedicated to advancing the standard of care for the at-home treatment of chronic diseases. The company’s Flexitouch® system is a programmable pneumatic compression device designed to help patients with edema and vascular disease improve their overall health and enjoy a higher quality of life. As a leader in lymphedema treatment, and serving tens of thousands of patients throughout the U.S., the mission of Tactile Systems is to establish Flexitouch® system as a standard in the treatment and care of lymphedema and chronic wound patients at home. Galen Partners of Stamford, CT, Radius Ventures of New York, NY and individual investors (including board chairman Peter Soderberg) have provided funding to Tactile Systems. Visit www.tactilesystems.com for more information.

Contacts:

Tactile Systems Technology: Jerry Mattys, CEO, (612) 355-5100, jmattys@tactilesystems.com

Padilla Speer Beardsley: Janet Stacey, (612) 455-1760, jstacey@padillaspeer.com