AirStrip Expands Mobile EMR Development with Wellcome Trust Funding

AirStrip Technologies is based in San Antonio, TX, but the startup has been expanding its ties in San Diego since Alan Portela stepped in as CEO almost two years ago.

Portela, who was previously a longtime health IT executive with San Diego-based CliniComp International, says AirStrip has been moving from its origins in technology that enables mobile monitoring of patient vital signs to developing cloud-based technology that can provide patient data to caregivers anywhere. AirStrip recently closed on a substantial investment by the Wellcome Trust to advance technology that will enable caregivers to use their smartphones and other mobile devices to access patients’ electronic medical records (EHR) anywhere.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. But Portela told me in a recent phone interview the Wellcome investment amounted to more than $10 million.

"Alan Portela," AirStrip Technologies, CliniComp
Alan Portela

AirStrip was founded in San Antonio by W. Cameron Powell, an obstetrician, and Trey Moore, a software developer, to remotely track the vital signs of pregnant women and their near-term babies. The system has enabled doctors and other caregivers to track their patients’ vital signs on their smartphones and tablets while they’re away from the labor and delivery suites.

AirStrip certified its technology for use as a class II medical device in 2005, and the company subsequently developed additional monitoring capabilities for tracking the vital signs of heart patients and others, including acute care patients headed for a hospital emergency room. The company says its remote monitoring apps have also been designated with the CE mark for use in Europe.

“We are definitely making a huge impact in healthcare,” says Portela, explaining that AirStrip’s technology has enabled doctors to

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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.