Memora Health Investment Round Includes Two Health Systems
Memora Health, which helps health systems digitize and automate workflows, has received an investment of $30 million, led by General Catalyst and including participation by two health systems: New York-based Northwell Holdings, the venture investment arm of Northwell Health, and Chicago-based NorthShore – Edward-Elmhurst Health.
In a February interview with Healthcare Innovation, Manav Sevak, co-founder and CEO of San Francisco-based Memora Health, said his company helps healthcare organizations digitize and automate a lot of workflows with two really big goals in mind: “The first is to unburden the care team and allow them to focus on things that are top of license and allow them to really home in on what they're trained to do. Second, how do you much more proactively guide and engage a patient in understanding all the different steps that they have to follow and give them very high-touch experience in navigating their care? We work with over 50 healthcare organizations across the country, everything from large academic systems to large community-based health systems to federally qualified health centers.”
By digitizing and automating high-touch clinical workflows, Memora says, it provides patients with conversational, SMS-based care journeys that adapt to how they communicate. The company says its platform streamlines clinical workflows for care teams while also improving patient experience.
"Health systems have reached a critical juncture in an increasingly competitive and dynamic market," said Michael Dowling, CEO of Northwell Health, in a statement. "If we want to maintain our position as leaders in care delivery, we need innovative partners that can extend our clinical capacity, keep our patients engaged in their care, and deliver high-quality services to more people. We look forward to collaborating with the Memora team as we leverage novel technology to support our efforts."
Tarun Kapoor, M.D., M.B.A., senior vice president and chief digital transformation officer at New Jersey-based Virtua Health, told Healthcare Innovation in February that Virtua is starting its messaging work with Memora on colonoscopy, specialty pharmacy and congestive heart failure. Part of the work in easing communication challenges with patients is to reduce unnecessary variation within the health system, Kapoor said. “We can come up with 17 different variations of a colonoscopy prep, but all of that variation doesn't help anything,” he said, adding that if Virtua could get down to two variations in 80 percent of cases, that would be better for everyone. “We standardize where appropriate, and then allow the clinicians to vary as appropriate based on their clinical judgment. We picked GI because they're raring to go and we do a pretty significant volume of colonoscopies and endoscopies in our health system.”
In the first quarter, in addition to announcing its work with Virtua Health, Memora also announced it is working with Moffit Cancer Center.
The recent funding round also includes PagsGroup and follow-on investments from existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Transformation Capital, and Frist Cressey Ventures.
