The Center for Innovative Technology GAP Fund has invested an undisclosed amount in Ostendio, a DC-based company that developed a software-as-a-service offering aimed at helping health IT companies better achieve and prove HIPAA compliance.

CIT GAP Fund, a group of seed and early-stage investment funds, invests in Virginia-based technology, life science, and cleantech startups.

Ostendio was founded by former COO and chief information security officer of Voxiva, Grant Elliot, last year. The company's first product, MyVirtualComplianceManager (myVCM), is aimed at small to medium businesses that might not have as many resources to devote to HIPAA compliance as larger enterprises. MyVCM helps organizations manage training, update policy documents, and complete risk assessments. It also keeps records documenting that all those steps have been taken. 

It’s priced competitively to appeal to those smaller businesses — it starts at $20 a month.

“[At Voxiva] I learned a huge amount about [HIPAA] itself, working with lawyers, specialists, and peers throughout the industry to develop that knowledge,” Elliott told MobiHealthNews last year when Ostendio launched the product. “What became clear to me during that process as I continued to evolve Voxiva’s information security system is we were not only developing a compliance managing program above and beyond most of the organizations in the space (and we got that feedback from many many customers of ours) but it seemed to be there weren’t very many tools in the marketplace that could help people like ourselves, and there were lots for larger enterprise companies.”

The company's website currently lists 31 customers, which include health provider MedStar Health, medication adherence app MediSafe, behavior change texting program developer Agile Health, and health app developer Curatio.

CIT Gap has previously invested in at least one other digital health startup, called Fitnet.