Earlier this year, Mint founder Aaron Patzer’s newest venture, Vital Software Inc (Vital), came out of stealth mode with a $5.2M seed raise from First Round Capital and DFJ Ventures (now Threshold Ventures), as well as angel investors Vivek Garipalli, CEO of CloverHealth, and Nat Turner and Zach Weinberg, founders of Flatiron Health.
Started in 2017, Vital aims to bring the consumer approach to personal finance management championed by Mint to emergency departments (ED) by enhancing the electronic health record (EHR). According to the company’s website, Vital “sits on top of your existing EHR for a faster, easier view of the ED… We use artificial intelligence to predict admits hours in advance, reduce length-of-stay, and save millions with an improved flow.”
Vital’s solution consists of both patient and clinician-facing interfaces. Patients interact with a Vital web app at intake to capture necessary medical information and context regarding their visit to the ED. While the software does not handle billing, patients can also upload their insurance card. All this information is captured and presented through the clinician portal, which includes a risk level for the patient color-coded in red or green. As additional quantitative and qualitative information about the patient is captured during the visit, this information is documented through the Vital portal, which in turn updates the patient’s risk level. Throughout the visit, patients are kept abreast of what is going on with their care, a current gap identified by Patzer in an interview with mobihealthnews earlier this year. Vital is cloud-based and currently integrates with Cerner, Epic, and Allscripts using FHIR and HL7 standards.
Patzer, who sold Mint to Intuit in 2009 for $170M, brings a fresh perspective to tackling existing healthcare technology and workflow challenges. Bringing healthcare experience to the team is Patzer’s co-founder, brother-in-law, and doctor of emergency medicine at Emory University Hospital, Dr. Justin Schrager. The team is not afraid to take on the incumbents as Patzer stated in the same mobihealthnews interview, “There are no startups really that have gone after Epic and Cerner and Allscripts. All of these tools originated in the 1970s. They have really old code bases. But it’s such a complex area where you have to solve for so many things, that people really only chip away at the sides and they go after the core. But our view is you do really have to go after the core experience because that’s how you improve patient safety, that’s how you improve doctors and nurses’ lives.”
Vital was reported to be deploying its technology with four hospital clients though details on who is using Vital today and their experiences with the new platform are forthcoming.
Link: Vital Software Inc
