No matter how America’s great healthcare debate finally ends (if it ever does), one thing’s for sure: regulations that are forcing health records to go electronic should yield an almost total transformation of electronic health records (EHR) within about five years. With organizations looking to EHR to cut costs and improve the coordination of patient care, as well as a recent Supreme Court decision that upholds the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the path is clear for more investments in healthcare IT. As a result, healthcare IT is booming. The latest indication is a statistic showing healthcare IT raised $268 million in 29 venture capital deals during the second quarter - an increase in both funding and deals over the same period a year ago. U.S. venture capital investments, overall, didn't perform as well and posted a decline in the quarter, says Dow Jones VentureSource. Healthcare IT also garnered more investments than all other subsectors in the healthcare industry. By the end of the year, there could be a total of about $700 million in new investments in healthcare IT companies, the most since 2001. Job seekers would be wise to key into the companies who've been receiving funding.
Show Me the Money
Who has attracted the biggest investments?
- Castlight Health, a San Francisco-based company that provides tools to help employees of self-insured companies compare prices for tests and procedures based on cost and quality, has raised $100 million.
- Epizyme Inc., a Cambridge, Mass.-based company that uses software and informatics to evaluate therapies for patients with genetically defined cancers, received $90 million.
- Practice Fusion, a San Francisco vendor that provides an online electronic medical record platform, raised a new $34 million round of funding.
Other large healthcare IT providers should also be on your radar:
- McKesson Technology Solutions
- Dell
- Cerner Corp.
- CSC
- Siemens Healthcare
- Emdeon
- Cognizant
- Philips Healthcare
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