HealthMyne, a healthcare IT startup based in Madison, WI, has named Arvind Subramanian as its new chief executive, the company said Monday. Subramanian’s first day at HealthMyne was Aug. 1, he said in a phone interview.
Subramanian replaces Praveen Sinha, who co-founded HealthMyne in 2013. Sinha will now be vice president of business development, the startup said in a press release.
Also joining HealthMyne, whose headcount currently stands at 24, is Linda Peitzman. She is a physician with extensive experience in healthtech, and will serve as the startup’s chief medical and informatics officer. Her first day at HealthMyne was Tuesday, she said, adding that she is the sole medical doctor at the company.
Peitzman and Subramanian share quite a bit of history. They have worked together for a total of 14 years, most recently at the Health Clinical Solutions business unit of Netherlands-based Wolters Kluwer. Before that, they were colleagues at ProVation Medical, a Minneapolis-based healthcare software company that Wolters Kluwer acquired in 2006. “We know each other well,” said Subramanian, who has also joined HealthMyne’s board of directors.
HealthMyne’s software integrates medical imaging data and information from patients’ electronic health records, and presents the results to radiologists and oncologists. The startup’s digital tools allow clinicians to track changes in a tumor or nodule’s size, which can have important implications for a patient’s treatment regime.
Two healthcare providers are currently serving as beta sites for HealthMyne’s software: the Tampa, FL-based Moffitt Cancer Center, and the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics, more commonly referred to as UW Health. The latter organization played a key role in helping HealthMyne configure its product to share data with health records software developed by Epic Systems, which is based a few miles southwest of Madison in Verona, WI. UW Health had been using Epic’s software long before HealthMyne entered the picture.
Peitzman said she sees healthtech and medical devices as strengths of the Madison area’s early-stage business community. It reminds her a little bit of the Twin Cities, where medtech giant Medtronic (NYSE: [[ticker:MDT]]) has its U.S. headquarters, she said.
“It has a very similar feel and energy as Minneapolis in terms of healthcare IT,” Peitzman said of Madison. “There’s a lot going on.”
HealthMyne is currently ramping up for its commercial launch, which Subramanian said will be on Jan. 1, 2017. One key event between now and then is the Annual Meeting of the Radiological Society of North America, which will take place in Chicago starting in November.
“[After] that, we’ll be attacking the market, starting in the U.S., and go from there,” Subramanian said.
The startup, which is still pre-revenue, received FDA clearance for its imaging informatics platform in August 2015, and for its imaging analytics software in January. Subramanian said HealthMyne might look at also obtaining a CE Mark, which is necessary in order to sell certain types of medical technologies in Europe.
HealthMyne, which earlier this year was selected as the “Most Promising Company” at the Personalized Medicine World Conference in Silicon Valley, previously told Xconomy it has raised about $6.5 million in equity funding, grants, and loans. A major portion of that came last year, in a $4.5 million Series A financing round.
Asked whether he was brought on to help lead HealthMyne toward an acquisition, as he did with ProVation, Subramanian said that tends to be the name of the game with high-growth startups.
“It’s a venture capital-backed company, so someday we’ll exit,” he said. “It’s certainly in the back of our minds, but we’re not talking about who or when.”
