Phreesia raises $11.6M to make waiting-room clipboards obsolete
Phreesia, maker of electronic tablets to replace those pesky intake clipboards at doctors’ offices, announced today that it brought in $11.6 million in a round led by BlueCross BlueShield Venture Partners and Sandbox Industries. This brings the New York company’s total capital raised to $25 million — which it plans to use to enlist more doctors to use the product in the U.S. According to Phreesia, thousands already do.
It also says it should be greatly helped in this pursuit by the Obama administration’s new commitment to digital medical records and general healthcare information technology. The tablet itself consists of a wireless touchscreen and swipe-card technology that automatically beams the information to your doctor’s record software (and even that of other doctors you see who use Phreesia). At face value, it looks like this could significantly cut down on the time needed to process payment and insurance and take patient histories.
VentureBeat has covered Phreesia several times in the past, including a complaint that the company brings in revenue by showing patients sponsored “educational material” as they fill out the requisite electronic forms — basically ads. The ads allow Phreesia to provide its tablets free of charge, but have raised a few eyebrows. Regardless, the tablet garnered honors at DEMO in the fall of 2007 and still seems to be doing quite well despite the economic downturn. It benefits from a lack of competitors, facing only a partial rival in Harmonex’s digital questionnaire CliniCom. But the CliniCom unit is specialized for psychiatric surveys and sends data to a central database where it’s used for diagnostic purposes.
Other participants in the recent investment round include Polaris Venture Partners, HLM Venture Partners and Long River Ventures. Below is a video of Phreesia’s winning presentation at Demo two years ago.
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About the Author, Camille Ricketts
Camille is the lead writer for GreenBeat. She came to VentureBeat from Google where she worked on its traditional platforms team, particularly in TV. Before that, she was a reporter for the Wall Street Journal in New York and London. Follow her on Twitter at @camillericketts, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.
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