On Friday morning clinical data management company Smile CDR announced a $20 million Series A funding round. The new infusion of cash was led by 30 North Group and UPMC Enterprises. 

WHAT THEY DO

The Toronto-based company is focused on helping to close medical information gaps with a data and integration platform. Clinicians are able to use the company’s suite to securely store and transfer health information to other clinicians and to the patient. 

The company pitches itself as a way to help health systems meet US health information interoperability standards, specifically the 2020 CMS ruling that mandates health plans have patient access APIs. 

The company’s services include a clinical data repository “Health Level Seven (HL7) Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR).” 

Recently the company landed Drummond Group Payer and Patient Access FHIR API Certification. 

"Up until this point, we've succeeded by focusing our expertise on developing groundbreaking products that help payers and providers achieve successful interoperability of health information," Duncan Weatherston, Chief Executive Officer at Smile CDR, said in a statement.

"The broad and successful move towards interoperability has created new opportunities for innovation that simply didn't exist in a system where information was not securely connected or portable. We now have the ability to build on that progress to create new products that move beyond interoperability and bring even more value to the market."

WHAT IT’S FOR 

The company plans to use the new funds to develop more tools in the clinical data field. 

"Smile CDR has seen significant growth in our core clinical data repository offering around the FHIR standard in the past year and today we partner with some of the largest health systems and insurers in North America," Weatherston said in a statement.

"We have a bold vision for the future of healthcare and this new round of funding will allow us to explore new innovations that can continue to add value, improve care and save money." 

MARKET SNAPSHOT

At the beginning of 2020, the HHS Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) and the CMS named a number of new requirements laid out in the 21st Century Cures Act. Specifically, Medicare Advantage, Medicaid, CHIP and d plans on the federal Exchanges (that begin in 2021) were required to support a standardized API (HL7 FHIR version 4.0.1) that allows patients to access claims and various information related to their medical encounter

In 2019 CMS unveiled a new pilot program called “Data at the Point of Care”, which used an APU to help providers access their patient’s medical data.