Lemhi Ventures has made capital investments in a variety of companies working across the healthcare services market. For a brief snapshot of each firm, click on the links below.
Carol – Incubation and early-stage investment in a pre-revenue company developing a distribution platform and packaging format for the delivery of healthcare directly to consumers
DestinationRx – Series A investment
in the leading provider of consumer-facing drug comparison
and purchasing technologies, to fuel deployment of additional
consumer-empowering services to government, commercial
and consumer markets.
DNA Direct – Series
B investment in a pioneering company providing consumers
with clinically valid genetic testing and support services
Liazon – Seed
investment in a consumer-centric benefits solutions company
Recondo Technology – Early-stage investment in a pre-revenue software company developing innovative solutions for the pricing and billing of services to consumers and payers by hospitals
TriHealix – Series B investment in a pre-revenue technology infrastructure company developing a next generation processing platform for healthcare and financial transactions
VisionShare – Series A investment in a pre-profit technology infrastructure company that has created the only secure, internet-based data exchange service approved by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services for processing Medicare transactions
Carol
The push for greater transparency in the delivery of healthcare is opening the door to change by making more cost and service information available to consumers. Carol offers a fast and efficient way for healthcare providers to be proactive in marketing their services. “We want to enable consumers to shop for, compare and purchase healthcare services with the same kinds of information and tools they use to buy just about everything else,” says Tom Valdivia, MD, a leader of the retail development team at Carol. “We’re building an online shopping mall, and we’re inviting healthcare providers to be the anchor tenants and boutique stores that will reach consumers in ways that the providers wouldn’t be able to accomplish on their own.”
Carol’s disruptive focus is on changing the reimbursement system. According to Valdivia, “The current reimbursement model is focused on diagnostics and illness treatment. We need to create incentives that reward different kinds of healthcare distribution and patient interaction. Better informed consumers will ultimately drive these changes.”
Lemhi Ventures has provided significant incubation support to help develop Carol, and has made a $12 million financing commitment.
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DestinationRx
When the Centers for Medicare
and Medicaid Services (CMS) looked for a partner to help
beneficiaries learn about and compare the new Medicare
Part D benefit plans, DestinationRx (DRx) was the hands-down
choice. “Two of every three
Medicare beneficiaries used our tools to find, compare
and enroll in a Part D plan,” says company CEO, Michael
Cho. “Our platform gave consumers the tools they
needed to find the best plan based on their personal health
care needs and preferences.”
DestinationRx is out to change
consumers’ perception
that healthcare is something that happens to them.
The company enables consumers to take greater control over
their health care by providing independent, transparent
and actionable information and purchasing tools. As consumers
become more engaged in selecting their own therapies, they
are more likely to follow through on prescribed treatments
and achieve the therapeutic outcomes they and their physicians
intend.
Like many of Lemhi’s portfolio partners, DestinationRx
is pioneering new territory. “Half of the services
we provide did not exist until we created a market and
found partners to develop them,” says Cho. “Lemhi’s
investment of $10 million will help accelerate our growth
as we move into new services and markets. More important
than the financing, however, is how we will work together.
The Lemhi team is made up of like-minded lunatics, which
is to say they are entrepreneurs at heart. They’ve
been at the forefront of transparency and consumer empowerment
in healthcare and are an excellent partner for DRx.”
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DNA Direct
"One
of the drivers behind DNA Direct is the simple fact that
advances in scientific understanding and the technology
of genetic testing have far outpaced the availability of
qualified primary care providers to advise consumers,” says
CEO Ryan Phelan.
DNA Direct’s medical research
team and scientific advisory board track evidence-based,
peer-reviewed literature to validate the clinical utility
and medical actionability of new genetics tests. With
this information, the company has been a pioneer in the
delivery of online genetics information to consumers.
DNA Direct is building new partnerships with medical
service providers to streamline the delivery of
genetic information and better integrate genetic testing
into healthcare.
The partnership with Lemhi is
more about strategic alignment than pure finance. According
to Phelan: “We’re
located in San Francisco, where we’re surrounded
by VCs. We couldn’t find the right fit. The Lemhi
name kept coming up. As we got to know them, we found they
have an entrepreneurial energy that matches ours. They
understand healthcare, they understand how powerful the
consumer is and will be. In the end, it always comes down
to people. Whose advice and judgment will I trust? Who
can tell me things I don’t already know? Lemhi fit.”
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Liazon
"Companies are stuck between controlling rising benefit costs and needing to offer competitive benefits to attract and retain talent,” says Liazon co-founder, Tim Godzich. “While employers are funding most of the increasing costs of healthcare and other benefits, their employees continue to show an under-appreciation of the dollars employers fund on their behalf.”
Liazon provides a comprehensive defined-contribution solution that assists employers in controlling healthcare and other employee benefits costs, while enhancing employee recruitment and retention efforts. On the employee side, Liazon offers the personalized, consumer-friendly resources needed to help people make holistic health and wealth benefits decisions. Through its innovative online portal and consumer-focused services, Liazon changes the employee benefits game. “Our solution enables employers to predictably define benefits expenditures and empowers individual employees to make superior benefit allocation decisions for themselves and their families,” says co-founder, Ashok Subramanian. “Most importantly, the employees feel like they receive more value when they are given the opportunity to decide where to direct the resources.”
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Recondo Technology
The software used to process transactions between healthcare providers and payers are typically not flexible in keeping pace with contract changes governing reimbursement rates. The result is a cumbersome, labor-intensive system saddled with inaccuracies and unnecessary processing. Recondo Technology is developing a rules-based processing software that will bridge the gap between healthcare providers, payers and consumers.
“Lemhi’s $10 million investment has helped us focus on a specific set of problems in the healthcare marketplace. We can’t get to a more consumer-driven system until we have better tools for processing claims,” says Recondo Technology’s chairman, Rick Adam.
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TriHealix
TriHealix provides an integrated platform for healthcare and financial transaction processing and purse management of multiple consumer healthcare accounts. The TriHealix technology extends the functionality of health plan member ID cards, creating virtual “gateways” through which providers, payers and consumers gain real-time access to a variety of benefit, payment, and personalized healthcare information at the point of sale.
The result is a smarter, more efficient system that offers convenience, information and greater security to consumers; faster payments to providers; and substantial administrative cost savings to providers and health plans. “Our integrated health, financial and consumer marketing platform delivers the technology needed to advance consumerism, provide payment assurance, and bring value-based healthcare to all parties,” says Greg Morris, co-founder, President & CEO of TriHealix.
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VisionShare
With a series of investments from private backers, VisionShare had established a solid business providing secure, internet-based information exchange solutions for healthcare providers, Medicare, and a number of other players. “We were making good progress rolling out our product, but the Lemhi team challenged us to think ahead to how rapidly we could get this business to scale,” says John Feikema, VisionShare CEO.
It was a timely question. Changes as a result of the Medicare Modernization Act put VisionShare in the unique position of being the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ preferred provider of secure, internet-based data exchange services. The Lemhi investment of $5 million allowed Feikema to add programming, marketing and sales staff to meet a surge in interest and demand. “When we began our conversations with the Lemhi team, we had about 900 customers. We now expect to increase that number ten-fold over the next two years. This is truly a sea-change in the infrastructure of Medicare healthcare claims processing. If we hadn’t been ready, with the funding in place, we’d have missed it.”
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