New York City-based physician-specialist consult company RubiconMD has raised $4 million in a round led by Waterline Ventures. Dioko Health Ventures, a North Carolina based fund managed by Nashville-based FCA Venture Partners, and Alma Mundi Fund also contributed to the round. Existing investors from the company's seed round include athenahealth and former Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida CEO Bob Lufrano.
"Funding will be used to invest in our product and data analytics to support our growth and continue scaling operations," cofounder Carlos Reines told MobiHealthNews in an email. "We’ll release a product upgrade with a new set of features and interfaces to maintain workflow integration across all practice settings. Additionally, later this year, we’ll be unveiling a whole set of capabilities related to the insights generated through data analytics on RubiconMD eConsults, continuing to do more for the providers we serve."
RubiconMD provides asynchronous telemedicine services that connect primary care doctors to specialists. Via an app, primary care docs can upload pictures and radiological images and type in questions. The app will route the query to an appropriate specialist. The provider receives an answer within a few hours.
"Providers across the country are currently overloaded with high patient volumes and ever-increasing demands on their time, but current support tools are complex and poorly integrated into their workflow,” RubiconMD co-founder and CEO Gil Addo said in a statement. “Our goal is to empower primary care providers with seamless access to specialty expertise. We’re able to do this by organically fitting our eConsult platform into primary care providers’ current workflow.”
RubiconMD's system is currently rolled out in 26 states. A study of providers conducted by the company found that 97 percent found the consults helpful and 72 percent said they directly improved their care plans. Cofounder Carlos Reines told MobiHealthNews in an email that RubiconMD has a focus on fitting into providers' workflow, which includes integration with EHRs and practice management software.
"Clinicians are overloaded with patient care, charting, coding, and many other administrative tasks, and we wanted to differentiate ourselves with a workflow-appropriate solution that's extremely intuitive and fast," he wrote. "We've currently integrated RubiconMD with a variety of [EHRs] and practice management systems so that providers can send RubiconMD consults directly from the patient chart to make the process even simpler."
Reines stressed the importance of the mobile app to meeting the full potential of the system.
"As part of their practice, primary care providers and specialists switch rooms and locations often and we want to make sure they can access RubiconMD whenever they need it and wherever they are," he wrote. "Our mobile app allows primary care providers to take photos directly from their phone and upload them to RubiconMD along with the question they want to ask. Best, the photos are not stored locally on their phones so we remain fully HIPAA compliant. Similarly, specialists can review cases on their phone and respond to primary care providers from any location, making the process highly efficient."
