PatientSafe Raises $20M to Push Market Adoption of Health IT Device

San Diego’s PatientSafe Solutions, which developed a handheld smart device to improve nursing care, says today it has raised $20 million in a Series C round of financing led by the Merck Global Health Innovation fund. Existing investors TPG Capital, Camden Partners, and Psilos Group joined in the round.

PatientSafe introduced its flagship health IT product, the wireless “PatientTouch” device, in 2011. The extensively modified Apple iTouch is intended to help nurses manage their clinical care workflow, guide patient care, coordinate tasks, and communicate with healthcare providers (using a hospital’s Wi-Fi network for text messaging or Internet-based calls). The device uses a barcode scanner to positively identify patients, and PatientSafe has developed integrated applications that make it easier to collect and record patient vital signs and other data.

In a statement today, PatientSafe says proceeds from the financing will be used to drive market adoption of its flagship product by hospitals and health systems. The company also plans to introduce other products designed to help hospitals reduce their costs and make better use of value-based purchasing programs. Among other things, PatientSafe says its future mobile products would help hospitals adopt electronic health records (EHR) systems that satisfy federal guidelines for “meaningful use” of health IT technologies, enabling facilities to earn federal incentive bonuses and avoid future penalties.

PatientSafe executives told me in 2011 the company had raised a total of $73 million since 2002, when the company was founded as IntelliDot. James Sweeney, who joined in 2009 to help overhaul the startup’s initial strategy, stepped down as CEO nearly a year ago, when former COO Joe Condurso was named president and CEO.

In the company’s statement, Condurso says, “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.”

PatientSafe also said Max Kahn, an investment principal at Merck Global Health Innovation, joined its board of directors.

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.