Catalyze, a Madison, WI-based startup that provides cloud hosting and data integration services for healthcare organizations, says it has raised $6.5 million from investors.
Lewis and Clark Ventures of St. Louis led the Series B funding round, Catalyze says in a news release. Other participants included Arthur Ventures, Baird Venture Partners, and Chicago Ventures, all of whom invested in Catalyze previously.
The startup, founded in 2013, says it has now raised more than $12.5 million in total.
Marcia Noyes, Catalyze’s director of communications, declined to comment on the amount her company was valued at as part of the latest financing round.
Catalyze has more than 100 customers, and the new money will allow it to continue adding more, Noyes says. They include hospital systems like the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), insurers such as Blue Shield of California, and fellow healthtech startups.
Noyes says that Catalyze currently has two main products. One, called Stratum, is aimed at helping clients access servers and databases in a way that’s compliant with HIPAA, a federal law that regulates the use, disclosure, and transmission of protected patient health information.
The company’s other primary product, Redpoint, brokers connections so that healthcare software developers can get data into and out of electronic health records (EHR) systems at hospitals and clinics. Catalyze says it has worked with “all major EHRs,” including Allscripts (NASDAQ: [[ticker:MDRX]]), Cerner (NASDAQ: [[ticker:CERN]]), and Epic Systems, which is based just outside of Madison, in Verona, WI.
Redpoint, which Catalyze launched in December, fits into the category of EHR “integration,” which has become a more competitive area as some of the large vendors face pressure to configure their software so that patient records can flow freely between care sites. Two integration-focused startups within Madison’s healthtech cluster are Moxe Health and Redox. The latter company recently forged an agreement with Boston-based software startup Kinvey; like Catalyze, Kinvey has created “mobile backend as a service” software that’s designed to help developers progress from concept to product more quickly.
“As a leader in transformation, Catalyze has built practical solutions to drive healthcare interoperability,” says Bryan Hopcraft, managing director of Lewis and Clark Ventures, in a prepared statement.
Hopcraft has joined Catalyze’s board of directors, according to Wednesday’s news release.
Catalyze emphasizes in its company materials that its digital tools are HITRUST Common Security Framework (CSF) Certified. According HITRUST’s website, it’s an alliance that seeks to help those in the healthcare IT sector ensure they’re exchanging data securely, in part through the use of the CSF standards.
Last year, HITRUST said that “an increasing number of healthcare organizations will now require their business associates within the healthcare industry to obtain CSF Certification” by mid-2017.
Catalyze currently has 31 employees and two interns, Noyes says. The startup is looking to hire additional staff, according to its website.
