San Francisco-based Practice Fusion, maker of a free, web-based EHR, has raised $70 million in a round led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB). OrbiMed Advisors, Deerfield Management Company, and Industry Ventures also contributed to the round, as did previous investors Artis Ventures, Morgenthaler Ventures, Felicis Ventures, Glynn Capital Management, Band of Angels Acorn Fund, H Barton Co-Invest Fund, and Goldcrest Investments.
The round more than doubles the company's funding, which was at $64 million, for a new total funding of $134 million. As part of the raise, Dr. Beth Seidenberg, general partner at Kleiner Perkins and former senior vice president and chief medical officer of Amgen, will join the Practice Fusion Board of Directors, as will Michael Harden, partner at Artis Ventures.
The company is growing rapidly, and many entrepreneurs in digital health suggested it was ripe for an IPO last November. Since then, the company has made several big moves. It acquired consumer app startup 100Plus in February for an undisclosed sum. Then, using 100Plus technology, it launched Practice Fusion Insight, an analytics platform meant to give physicians, insurers, researchers, pharmaceutical companies and industry analysts highly granular intelligence about populations of patients. Owing to a user base of 100,000 medical professionals, the company says it has a clinical dataset four times larger than the Kaiser Permanente and Veterans Administration systems combined, which Insight will tap into.
"We’re not selling data. We’re selling de-identified, aggregated insights," Practice Fusion vice president of data told MobiHealthNews at the time. He said the data will help providers learn how they're doing managing particular populations and help pharma companies learn how much their products are being used relative to the competition.
About a month before launching Insight, Practice Fusion launched its patient-facing initiative Patient Fusion. Patient Fusion is an appointment booking and physician review website, which puts the company in direct competition with ZocDoc, another highly funded company that's been floated as a likely IPO. Patient Fusion also offers a secure means of communication between doctors and patients, including patient access to medical records and cost tools. Patient Fusion is in some ways an extension of Practice Fusion's free EHR -- all doctors listed on the doctor finder are also users of the Practice Fusion EHR. The reviews are verified, meaning only patients who have actually seen a doctor can review that doctor. Like the EHR, Patient Fusion is free for patients and doctors.
Round leader KPCB has been a prolific digital health investor. Its portfolio includes Teladoc, Noom, Jawbone, Affectiva, and Awarepoint.
