A colonoscopy isn’t one of those appointments that you can just show up for.
As anyone who’s had the pleasure of undergoing the procedure will certainly tell you, there’s a lot of preparation involved to make sure the bowel is empty enough for your doctor to see what’s going on.
Now imagine running through that mini-marathon of dieting and laxatives just to have the hospital realize you’ve got a health condition—a prescription for blood-thinners, or a breathing disorder like sleep apnea—that could complicate the procedure.
And that could mean it’s time to reschedule the whole thing.
“That happens, believe it or not, a lot across the country,” says Mike Doyle, CEO of Boston startup QPID Health.
But one place it doesn’t happen, he adds, is Massachusetts General Hospital.
Instead of conducing last-minute checks with a patient, doctors and nurses there can rely on QPID Health’s software, which analyzes medical records and extracts important data about possible complications.
So now, a couple of weeks before a patient’s colonoscopy, Massachusetts General staff can check for any conflicts that could scuttle the procedure. “We’ve essentially eliminated canceled procedures around colonoscopies because of risk factors that are unknown,” Doyle says.
Those kind of results didn’t come overnight, but QPID’s software is starting to show some momentum in the healthcare market. And venture investors are betting that there’s more growth ahead.
Today, QPID Health is announcing a $12.3 million Series B investment, led by New York-based New Leaf Venture Partners. Returning as investors are Cardinal Partners, Matrix Partners, Partners Innovation Fund, and the Massachusetts General Physicians Organization.
The new cash is intended to help QPID Health grow significantly on both the technical and sales sides of its business as it expands beyond the company’s home base of Massachusetts General and its partner hospitals.
Development of the QPID software began in 2005 as a project inside MGH, led by radiologist Michael Zalis (the name is an acronym for Queriable Patient Inference Dossier). It eventually spread throughout MGH and into other branches of the hospital’s healthcare system, Partners HealthCare.
Massachusetts General spun QPID Health out as a separate company in late 2012, with venture investors and experienced healthcare CEO Doyle coming on board to help it grow.
The company’s software employs natural language processing technologies to examine electronic health records and pull relevant information from the volumes of files. On top of helping to avoid complications, the data that gets extracted from those records can also potentially save time and money in insurance billing, Doyle says.
For example, a hospital the size of Massachusetts General employs hundreds of people who work to get insurance company approval for procedures that doctors are planning for their patients. Some insurers, however, are less stringent about requiring those prior authorizations if a doctor is using QPID, since the software can load up accepted national health guidelines for treating certain conditions. That not only helps inform the doctor’s decision, but it gives the insurers higher confidence the procedures are necessary, Doyle says.
Hospitals outside of the Partners system are now starting to buy the QPID Health software, with a pair of new clients recently starting to implement the program—a big milestone that helped convince investors the company could grow, Doyle says.
QPID has about 30 full-time employees now, and intends to finish the year with about 45, Doyle says, with plans to double that headcount in 2015. The company also has a West Coast office on its horizon—Doyle lives in San Diego, and flies into Boston weekly.
“We did 3 million clinical encounters last year. The product works,” he says. “It’s just about letting the rest of the world know about what we’re doing.”
