Informatics Execs Get Funding to Launch Care Coordination Startup
ACT.md, a Boston-based startup led by several high-profile healthcare informatics executives, has created a team-based care coordination platform for the management of complex patients. The company reached an $8.4 million series A funding agreement led by investment firm Rose Park Advisors to accelerate product development and manage growth.
One of the company’s founders, Isaac Kohane, M.D., is director of the Boston Children’s Hospital Informatics Program and the co-director of the Harvard Medical School Center for Biomedical Informatics. He has developed several computer systems to allow multiple hospital systems to be used as “living laboratories” to study the genetic basis of disease while preserving patient privacy. Among these, the i2b2 (Informatics for Integrating Biology and the Bedside) National Computing Center has been deployed at over 52 academic health centers internationally.
Another co-founder is Kenneth Mandl, M.D., M.P.H., a professor at Harvard Medical School and the Boston Children's Hospital Chair in Biomedical Informatics and Population Health. He leads the SMART Platforms initiative to design the “app store for health" and is principal investigator of the Scalable Collaborative Infrastructure for a Learning Health System across Boston hospitals and nationally.
On the company’s advisory board is Clayton Christensen is the Kim B. Clark Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, who is regarded as a top expert on innovation and growth.
Using cloud-based technology, ACT.md is designed to connect all members of a care team and enables collaborative care planning and reliable execution of the plan through a "project management-like" approach, the company said. With ACT.md healthcare organizations scale best practice workflows, reduce duplication, and gain efficiencies.
"At ACT.md we are patients, caregivers, physicians, nurses, public health professionals, engineers, and operational leaders. We have experienced the significant challenges associated with managing complex care and are working to make life better for patients and everyone supporting them," said CEO Ted Quinn, in a prepared statement.
