PatientSafe raises $20 million Series C

Company is dedicated to improving hospital safety with its PatientTouch platform

Healthcare solutions company PatientSafe has raised a $20 million Series C round of financing it was announced Monday.

The round was led by the Merck Global Health Innovation (GHI) fund, with participation from investors including Camden Partners, TPG Capital, and Psilos Group. $13.3 million had previously been disclosed in a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission in December. The total amount offered in the round was $25.7 million.

PatientSafe had previously raised a $30 million Series B in February 2010, from TPG Biotech, Camden Partners, Psilos Group, Valhalla Capital, Menlo Ventures, American River Ventures , Integral Capital Partners, and Shea Ventures. 

The latest money raised will go toward driving adoption of PatientSafe’s mobile solutions, including its PatientTouch platform, which are designed to enhance patient safety, optimize EMR investment, and increase clinician efficiency and satisfaction, in hospitals.

In addition to the funding news, PatientSafe also announced that Max Kahn, an investment principal at Merck GHI, has joined the Board of Directors at the company.

Founded in 2002 as Intellidot, the company rebranded itself as PatientSafe in 2009. The San Diego, California-based company is focused on the mobile transformation of healthcare institutions by leveraging handheld technologies to advance hospital safety, quality, productivity, and care coordination.

“PatientSafe is redefining point-of-care by fulfilling health information technology’s promise of delivering measurable value across safety, quality, and efficiency of care throughout the continuum,” Joe Condurso, President and CEO of the company, said in statement. “This Series C round is an affirmation of our vision and strategy to move healthcare forward by arming providers with real-time actionable data and making care team workflows easier and more productive. I am delighted to work with Max Kahn and the Merck GHI team to build an open ecosystem of partners to continue to serve our current and future clients across all settings.”

The company's product offering, the PatientTouch platform, was introduced in 2010. A clinical app for the iPod Touch, it is meant to assist nurses with documenting information for their patients with features such as barcode positive patient identification (PPID), patient centric care interventions, clinical communications, and collaboration.

With the app, nurses can document patient information, include temperatures, vital signs and pain assessments, and communicate with other nurses and physicians through text and phone.

The company's future planned mobile products will focus on delivering more value for hospitals under Meaningful Use guidelines, Value-Based Purchasing programs, and cost removal for health care systems.

“PatientSafe Solutions has the potential to deliver value for hospitals and health systems, with a focus on improving patient outcomes and lowering costs,” Max Kahn said in statement. “Merck Global Health Innovation fund continues to establish a portfolio of investments in companies with synergistic capabilities that align well with Merck’s vision for the future of healthcare.”

The mobile health space

There are a number of other companies also dedicated to optimizing the healthcare industry through mobile solutions.

There is HealthTap, which allows users create their own patient profiles and get their questions answered by real doctors in the HealthTap network. The company purchased Avvo Health, the health division of expert-only Q&A site Avvo, in November.

Another website, Healthy Labs, is designed to set up social networks specifically for people with certain diseases to come together, while Mango Health allows users to log their activities, set a schedule for taking their medication, compare their habits with others taking the same medication and get rewards and discounts for following their doctor's orders.

Other websites incclude MyHealthTeams, which focuses bringing together parents of autistic children, and PatientsLikeMe, which also seeks to bring support groups of people with similar illness together.

Bigevidence seeks to "improve the way clinicians and healthcare providers find, evaluate, and apply medical evidence to patients, thereby saving costs and lives,” while Cake Health helps people keep track of their healthcare paperwork and spending.

Vator reached out to PatientSafe for further details, but it was unavailable for comment.

Find out more about PatientTouch in the video below: