For more than two decades, Breg has built and sold braces, splints, walking boots, and other devices designed to help rehabilitate injured patients. The Carlsbad, CA-based company has also developed software that it says can help healthcare providers and other organizations keep track of orthotic devices and bill patients for their use. On Tuesday, Breg announced it will be getting an assist on the software side from Redox, a healthtech startup based in Madison, WI.
Specific financial terms were not disclosed in a press release announcing the agreement.
Breg’s Vision Cloud Connect software is designed to help users get patient data into and out of electronic health records systems, which as of 2014 were being used at more than 75 percent of hospitals in the U.S. Brokering connections to health records systems is Redox’s specialty; the startup says its application programming interface (API) can be used to talk to software developed by a host of leading vendors, including Athenahealth (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ATHN]]), Cerner (NASDAQ: [[ticker:CERN]]), Epic Systems, and McKesson (NYSE: [[ticker:MCK]]).
Managing medical device inventory is paramount at healthcare organizations that help patients come back from injuries, many of which do not keep their entire stock of orthotic and prosthetic products on site. Breg’s software allows them to see whether a device is available, and then scan its barcode once it has arrived at a practice and is ready for a patient to start wearing. Scanning the barcode registers that the device is in use. And if clinicians use Breg’s Vision application to log information on patients and their devices, that documentation eventually flows into their health records, via Vision Cloud Connect.
Breg said its software that allows users to get information into and out of health records systems has been available for three years, and this functionality is currently in use at more than 100 medical practices. For Breg, adding Redox as a partner likely means that Breg can focus more on its own customers and software, rather than connecting to records systems.
With the help of Redox’s API, an organization that signs up to start using Breg’s Vision Cloud Connect will be able to set up a connection that allows data to flow back and forth between a health records system and Breg’s Vision application. Breg said it expects this process will now take about three to four weeks on average, compared with about 12 weeks before Redox entered the picture.
“The Redox team has demonstrated the power of their technology, proven in hundreds of real-world healthcare settings,” said Brad Lee, president and CEO of Breg. “We are delighted to include their services as part of our orthopedic practice management solutions we provide to our customers.”
Redox had said it was working with Breg prior to Tuesday’s announcements. In June, Breg was included on a select list of companies and health systems that were using or planned to use Redox’s digital tools. There is also a white paper on Redox’s website that explains how it only took 15 days to install Breg’s software at Essentia Health, a network of hospitals and clinics headquartered in Duluth, MN.
The partnership is the second Redox has announced in recent months. In August, it said it was teaming up with Boston-based Kinvey, which helps manage backend services for its customers’ software products.
“We got into this business to make integration an asset for companies like Breg,” said Devin Soelberg, chief customer officer of Redox. “We’re honored to be able to support the most innovative cloud-based applications moving the industry forward.”
