Will Modernizing Medicine Introduce PaaS?

According to a P&S Market Research report, the Global electronic health record (EHR) market is estimated to grow to $30.4 billion by 2023 driven by the increasing need for advanced healthcare information systems, growing investments by healthcare IT players, rising demand for better healthcare facilities, and increasing government initiatives. Boca Raton-based Modernizing Medicine is one of the leading EHR vendors in the country.

Modernizing Medicine’s Offerings

Modernizing Medicine was founded in 2010 by serial tech entrepreneur Dan Cane and Dr. Michael Sherling with the objective of providing the healthcare sector with the ability to leverage emerging technology trends such as cloud computing, touchscreen capabilities, personalization, and adaptive learning. It began by building a system for clinical documentation in the surgical specialty market. But today, its services are focused on several other practices such as Dermatology, Gastroentology, Ophthalmology, Orthopedics, Pain Management, Plastic Surgery, Urology, and Otolaryngology.

Its cloud-based flagship product, the Electronic Medical Assistant (EMA), uses advanced solutions to adapt to each individual doctor’s style of practice and customizes offerings based on their focus areas and preferences. Not only can doctors take notes while examining patients, but the EMA also helps generate billing codes automatically. It also acts as a vast repository of medical content by providing access to data around structured treatment and outcomes from millions of patient encounters.

More recently, Modernizing Medicine is improving the patient experience through its tie-ups with other strategic vendors. For instance, recently it announced a tie-up with GoodRx, a leading service provider for prescription and healthcare savings. GoodRx helps provide patients with access to pricing intelligence to help them save on their prescription medicines. By tying up with Modernizing Medicine, now doctors will have access to real-time pricing data on thousands of drugs. It will help provide pricing information at the point of prescribing so that patients will have better access to affordable prescription medications and a better understanding of their overall out-of-pocket expenses.

It is because of its innovative products that Black Book ranked six of its EHR products as leading products available in the market today. It received awards for its dermatology, gastroenterology, ophthalmology, orthopedic, otolaryngology, and plastic and cosmetic surgery products. It was also ranked as the leader in the single practice category.

Modernizing Medicine’s Financials

Modernizing Medicine operates on a subscription-based model. It is privately held and does not disclose its financials. When I spoke with its CEO in 2013, he had mentioned that the company was trending at annual revenues of $20 million and was targeting to turn in a profitable year. In 2017, it was booking annual revenues of more than $100 million. More recent financials are not known, but last year the company announced that it delivered a revenue growth of 264%, winning a spot on Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500, a ranking of the 500 fastest growing technology companies in North America. That translates to revenues of more than $350 million for 2018.

Modernizing Medicine has been venture funded so far with $332.6 million in investments from investors including Warburg Pincus, IBM, Pentland Group, Sands Capital Ventures, Silicon Valley Bank, and Summit Partners. Its last round of funding was held in May 2017 when it raised $231 million in private equity investment from Warburg Pincus at an undisclosed valuation.

Modernizing Medicine’s product line-up is enabling specialty providers access mobile, cloud-based electronic health record (EHR), and practice management (PM) systems. The company has not yet published plans of going public. But its investors, and the market, are surely waiting for it to list.

Modernizing Medicine also has an interesting platform. It currently has partnered with more than 150 pathology and clinical labs and more than a hundred practice management systems. I think it should be opening up its app to the specialty providers to allow them to build other modules and apps that strengthen the services offered for these specialties. If Modernizing Medicine is looking to grow through acquisitions, it will need to launch a PaaS offering to ensure that adjacent products built on compatible stacks are growing in their ecosystems, without taxing their P&Ls. As I said before, when the time comes, acquiring and integrating such companies will be relatively easier and seamless.