Redox Gets $3M for Tools That Help Hospitals, App Makers Share Data

Redox, a Madison, WI-based startup that develops digital tools enabling healthcare applications to exchange data with patient health records systems, has raised $3 million in debt funding, according to a document filed with federal securities regulators.

Twelve investors participated in the financing round, according to the document. Redox has raised more than $15.8 million in equity and debt funding since launching in 2014, SEC filings show. Its backers include .406 Ventures, Flybridge Capital Partners, HealthX Ventures, and Intermountain Healthcare, according to previous company announcements.

Redox’s core product is an application programming interface (API) that lets healthcare applications move information into and out of patients’ electronic health records. The API is a set of software tools aimed in part at improving interoperability. That term refers to the seamless flow of patient data from one healthcare provider to another, and between providers and outside applications. In recent years, as electronic medical records systems have proliferated, interoperability has become a key goal for healthcare software companies, hospitals and clinics, and other industry stakeholders. It’s not always easy to achieve.

Redox has said its API can be used to talk to records software developed by a number of leading vendors, including Allscripts (NASDAQ: [[ticker:MDRX]]), Athenahealth (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ATHN]]), Cerner (NASDAQ: [[ticker:CERN]]), eClinicalWorks, Epic Systems, and McKesson (NYSE: [[ticker:MCK]]).

On its website, Redox lists nearly 300 healthcare organizations that it says share information through the startup’s network. Roughly half of them are hospitals and clinics that care for patients, including Massachusetts General Hospital, University of California San Francisco Health, and Mount Sinai Health System in New York.

Massachusetts General Hospital is a member of a Boston-based network of hospitals and clinics known as Partners HealthCare. Another member of the consortium is Brigham and Women’s Hospital; last year, the Boston hospital struck a multiyear agreement with Redox to use the startup’s tools to connect the Brigham’s electronic health records system with outside software applications.

Separately, Redox announced last week that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office awarded the startup a patent for its systems and methods for translating messages between healthcare providers and software applications.

The patent relates to a “series of reusable configuration records” developed by Redox that help standardize how medical record content is represented digitally.

According to a news release, Redox’s tools can take messages structured in a variety of ways and configure them so that the medical record content of the message is formatted in a consistent way. The software can also be set up to configure the message a second time based on the needs and settings of the system receiving the message, Redox says.

Author: Jeff Buchanan

Jeff formerly led Xconomy’s Seattle coverage since. Before that, he spent three years as editor of Xconomy Wisconsin, primarily covering software and biotech companies based in the Badger State. A graduate of Vanderbilt, he worked in health IT prior to being bit by the journalism bug.