Lumeon raises $30M to expand its care pathway management platform

The company uses real-time data to help physicians make the right care decisions

Thanks to COVID-19, the way that healthcare is being delivered has been upended in a very short amount of time: while telehealth has long been a widely available, but underused, tool, suddenly it became the only option. And while there are certainly benefits for both patients and doctors who use these services, there are new problems that have emerged as to what care is right for that patient. 

That's a problem that care pathway management company Lumeon is looking to solve.

"In the course of the pandemic, new problems have appeared with telemedicine that go beyond simply ensuring patients show up. Now, organizations need help ensuring their patients are offered the right service at the right time, and determining whether it should be delivered in person or virtually. Those are the core challenges we help them address," Lumeon founder and CEO Robbie Hughes told me.

The company is "focused on issues caused by unwarranted variability in care delivery," he explained.

"While prior investments in healthcare have been around clinical decision support, helping physicians make the right care decisions, we focus on making sure those decisions are well executed across a wider care team."

Lumeon's platform uses real-time data to help guide patients and care teams, by automating care delivery across different settings. Its solutions allow health systems to be more efficient, delivering the best care to each patient.

On Tuesday, the company announced that it closed $30 million in Series D funding led by new investors Optum Ventures and Endeavour Vision. Current investors LSP, MTIP, IPF Partners, Gilde and Amadeus Capital Partners also participated, bringing the company's total funding to £55 million.

Founded in 2005, Lumeon’s CPM platform integrates with electronic health record (EHR) systems, while also incorporating clinical and administrative data from point solutions and devices. 

"We use a sophisticated clinical decision engine that allows us to work out the appropriate next step for each patient in their care journey," said Hughes.

"We connect that to our automation platform so each step is executed without delay and without added administrative burden on clinical staff. Only in cases where we can’t progress a patient automatically will the system flag the patient to a human on the care team to help."

A typical customer for Lumeon are large healthcare enterprises or networks, and it helps them manage transitions in care, both within and outside the walls of the hospital. A typical use case might include managing care transitions through things like surgical optimization, helping the enterprise manage the hybridization of in-person versus virtual care, improving patient access to help drive revenue, and improving care quality across the organization.

More than 70 progressive health systems, across 12 countries, have deployed Lumeon's platform so far and, on average, they have seen an 80 percent improvement in patient satisfaction scores, a 60 percent increase in care team capacity, and a 30 percent reduction in cost of care delivery. In one particular case, Lumeon was able to safely virtualize 89 percent of a customer's face-to-face visits.

"It is worth emphasizing that this system is driven by automation, so it can repeat these cost savings at scale. While these types of outcomes are often only seen in pilots, we’ve been able to continually see them repeated at scale, even when deployed at the largest customer organizations," Hughes told me.

The new funding will allow the company to extend the reach of its Care Pathway Management platform, which it will do by investing primarily in its sales, marketing and delivery teams in the continental U.S. in order to "drive as much volume as we can and acquire as many new customers as we can manage."

Lumeon's ultimate goal, Hughes told me, "is relatively simple: we want to remove variability in care delivery to ensure each patient receives the right care for them."

"Success to us is accomplishing that at scale. We think this is the most unexplored and underdeveloped opportunity in healthcare today and that we can build a substantial business on this model. We’re excited to continue our growth, and extremely excited to have such leaders in healthcare such as Optum supporting us to drive meaningful value and cut enormous cost out of the U.S. healthcare ecosystem."

(Image source: lumeon.com)