Google-backed PatientPing raises $9.6m to tell doctors when patients are readmitted
Boston-based start-up PatientPing has received $9.6m in funding to date to alert doctors when their patients are admitted to hospitals and emergency rooms elsewhere. The startup has just announced the completion of a $8m funding round, led by Google Ventures and FPrime Capital. Many care providers will be interested in when and why their patient has either decided, or been forced to be admitted elsewhere, and PatientPing provides these alerts. This kind of coordinated care between hospitals is rare in a fee-for-service such as the US, and PatientPing has sucessfully rolled out its offering in four states, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Michigan. The latest round of funding is earmarked for offering the service nationwide. 

A group of entrepreneurs developing a network so that different healthcare facilities can more easily share patient information has completed $9.6 million fundraise in a two part Series A round led by Google Ventures and FPrime Capital. PatientPing will use the funding to increase the number of states where it has a presence and to add staff

Other investors that contributed to the round include First Round Capital and SV Angel.

Providers receive “Pings,” real-time notifications, whenever their patients receive care at any facility that is a part of the national PatientPing network. At the facility where patients are getting care, providers receive guidelines that include contact information for others on the patient’s care team, helpful instructions from the care team, and patient visit histories. The idea is that by sharing this information when it is needed, providers will seamlessly coordinate their patient’s care.

“We are building a national network, so we are envisioning this to work with any provider no matter where [the patient] goes,” said CEO Jay Desai in a phone interview.

So far the Boston-based company’s network includes facilities in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Connecticut s well as Massachusetts, where it has seven of the eight largest health systems. It expects to make more announcements of additional partners in the coming weeks.

Desai added that is has a very ambitious hiring plan. It is looking for staff across sales and marketing, engineering, operations, products and community development.

“You can think of [the platform] as a beautiful, clean, skinny layer and we have a lot of mechanisms to make it a seamless process. Most of the feedback we get is how easy it is to use our product,” Desai said. “A lot of technology companies in digital health are building great solutions, but they are heavy. We have focused on utility that is a major pain point. We are the first national network that we’re going to make work at scale.”

He broke down users into two categories. Those really interested in uploading patient roster such as an ACO or hospital –that wants to know where discharged patients go. It could be a primary care group working on care transition codes

or it could be a skilled nursing facility that wants to track when patients are readmitted into hospital. Desai added that a lot of organizations see data liquidity as an asset.

“We have worked hard to design something that is not cost prohibitive and not intrusive,” said Desai. “Access at any one institution is unlimited and based on what customers want. It is really a function of workflow design rather than anything else.”