A Denver-based startup focused on automating the retrieval of patient medical records has raised $3 million from a group of funds led by FirstMile Ventures.
Credo Founder and CEO Carm Huntress and his Denver-based team plan to use the funding to roll out their digital service, which takes aim at a process that still generates billions of faxed pages annually, slows the delivery of care and creates gaps in the information flow between providers. They have a prominent name in their corner to help them: Aneesh Chopra, the country’s first chief technology officer during the Obama administration and now president of data and analytics platform CareJourney is an advisor to Credo.
Huntress told Healthcare Innovation he isn’t looking for Credo to become a big data aggregator. The company’s goal, he said, is to use various “digital on-ramps” and be more efficient than hospital and physician group staffers or traditional vendors in “chart chasing” and filling out providers’ pictures of their patients. Credo will focus especially on Medicare Advantage and other value-based care providers, charging a flat fee for successful placements of data and then a subscription fee for keeping current those records.
“We’re really looking at the last mile of the problem,” said Huntress, who previously founded and led prescription decision support company RxRevu. “We want to get the right data to the people who need it when they need it […] The aggregators can be our partners in that.”
Joining FirstMile in Credo’s seed round were fellow early-stage investors Hannah Grey Ventures, SpringTime Ventures – both are at least partly based in Colorado – and Headwater Ventures out of Minneapolis. The company today has about a half dozen employees, a number Huntress hopes to double by year’s end. In the long run, Huntress said, Credo can help connect dots in patients’ care and become a key player in helping patients and providers develop whole-person care models. Pointing to the growth of personal finance company Credit Karma, he said he’d like Credo to touch 100 million people in the next 10 years.
“That would be a huge success and would make a huge difference in American healthcare,” said Huntress, who is formally launching Credo at the 2022 ViVE Conference in Miami early this week.
