Azalea Health raises $10.5m for rural telemedicine/EHR solution
Georgia-based health-software firm, Azalea Health, has secured $10.5m in funding to develop healthcare-management systems, including a patient portal and an electronic health-records system for small to medium-sized practices in rural areas. This extra funding will also help the firm in its growth strategy, beginning with its acquisition of SimplifyMD in 2014.

Atlanta, Georgia-based Azalea Health, a health IT software firm with a focus on rural practices and mobile tools, has raised $10.5 million in Series B funding in a round led by Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors. Previous investor Intersouth Partners also participated in the round, which brings the company's total funding to $12.5 million.

Azalea's software suite includes revenue cycle management tools, an electronic health record, telehealth tools, a patient portal, and a patient-facing mobile app which recently integrated with Apple HealthKit and with Fitbit. Because the company focuses on small-to-medium rural practices, a focus on mobile, which began in 2013, was a logical next step, CEO and cofounder Baha Zeidan told MobiHealthNews.

"Azalea Health actually started in a rural area, in rural Georgia," he said. "And with our focus on the rural market, one of the challenges is access to specialty care, so we wanted to develop a tool: not as a point solution but as a fully integrated solution within the scheduling of the patient, within the revenue cycle management of the physician office, and within the EHR documentation. So we developed a telehealth component that would help the physician and the patient extend their care and provide specialty care as well."

Through a patient-facing app called Azalea M, patients can share data with their provider via HealthKit, message their provider, view lab results and medication lists, pay their bill, and engage in video visits with their provider. There's also a physician-facing version of the app. Azalea's EHR is also fully accessible on both iOS and Android tablets.

Zeidan says that it's not just the collection of features that sets Azalea Health apart, it's the fact that the patient app and the telehealth visits are smoothly integrated into the EHR and revenue cycle management software. Integrating the HealthKit data with the EHR helps the company to create a good workflow for doctors.

"In healthcare there is a lot of data and we as a health IT company, our core mission is to filter that data from the noise and provide the physician with clear, accessible information," Zeidan said. "And it’s our responsibility to help him with those filters, help him see exactly what he needs to make his decision rather than clutter his screens with a lot of useless data. We understand that as a core part of our design philosophy."

In addition to continuing to grow organically, Zeidan said that the $10.5 million will allow the company to pursue an acquisition growth strategy that began with the company's 2014 acquisition of SimplifyMD, another health IT firm.

"We see a lot of fragmentation within the health IT industry with vendors that don’t have the full end-to-end solution to the physician practice," he said. "Because the MU stimulus money is no longer available, there are a lot of companies that are struggling to grow their customer base and grow their businesses, because they focused on stimulus money. We see some of those failing companies as a huge opportunity for us to consolidate their customer base to our platform."