TORONTO, ON (Jan. 25, 2011) —Doctors, nurses and administrators can now access electronic health applications on mobile, hand-held technology through VitalHub Corp..
The unique start-up company was spun-off from mobile health technologies developed Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital, thanks in part to $300,000 in seed financing from MaRS Innovation that will give it a crucial head start in the fiercely competitive mobile IT health sector.
MaRS Innovation invests in the most commercially promising discoveries emerging from its member institutions, which include 16 of Toronto’s leading universities, hospitals (such as Mount Sinai) and research institutions. This funding commitment rounds out a sizeable seed round of financing for VitalHub.
“Some of Canada’s most innovative medical discoveries are in the area of e-health. The mobile IT health sector in particular is white hot,” said Dr. Raphael Hofstein, president and CEO of MaRS Innovation. “MaRS Innovation is very active in identifying, funding and then supporting those with the greatest commercial potential. We are excited to have made this investment in a leader like VitalHub Corp.”
Mount Sinai health care providers, much like those at most other hospitals, are forced to access multiple, PC-based, electronic health applications to gain a comprehensive view of any given patient’s status.
But when dealing with patient’s health, time is crucial. Staff needed rapid access to vital information, but often this meant memorizing multiple passwords, locating a computer, and learning to interact with multiple applications each with different interfaces.
Mount Sinai’s IT department set out to reduce complexity, permitting clinicians to spend more time with patients and less time struggling with technology.
The result is a highly-intuitive mobile solution, which gives clinicians unified access to all electronic patient record systems on Apple iPhones® and iPads®.
To enable other hospitals facing similar challenges to benefit from this made-at-Mount-Sinai technology, the hospital spun out VitalHub Corp. to commercialize the system.
“This creates the best of both worlds; not only does the VitalHub technology make us more efficient and let our clinicians spend more time on their patients, we hope it will create a new revenue stream for the hospital by making our health information technology available to other hospitals around the world,” said Mount Sinai President and CEO Joseph Mapa.
Closing the seed financing round is an important step in VitalHub’s growth and development.
“We are thrilled to have an astute investor like MaRS Innovation recognize the opportunity that VitalHub presents. This funding will enable us to complete our roll-out at Mount Sinai and will support further product development and deployment to more hospitals,” said Neil Closner, CEO of VitalHub Corp.
About VitalHub Corp.
VitalHub Corp. was born out of frustration with traditional health care IT complexity. The company’s technology was originally conceived and piloted at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital as a way to provide efficient access to its many clinical applications. VitalHub’s mission is to bring intuitive and cost effective access to hospital patient information for the thousands of physicians, nurses and other care providers who are tired of having technology distract from their time available for treating patients. The VitalHub system has been designed to interface with any and all existing or legacy clinical systems within a hospital in order to provide clinicians with a single, comprehensive view of their patients, made available on a mobile device. VitalHub allows for unparalleled accessibility and convenience.
About Mount Sinai Hospital
Mount Sinai Hospital is an internationally recognized, 472-bed acute care academic health sciences centre affiliated with the University of Toronto. It is known for excellence in the provision of compassionate patient care, innovative education, and leading-edge research. Mount Sinai’s Centres of Excellence include: Daryl A. Katz Centre for Urgent & Critical Care; Lawrence and Frances Bloomberg Centre for Women’s & Infants’ Health; Christopher Sharp Centre for Surgery & Oncology; Centre for Inflammatory Bowel Disease; Centre for Musculoskeletal Disease and the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute.
About MaRS Innovation
MaRS Innovation (MI) is the commercialization agent for the exceptional discovery pipeline from 16 leading Ontario academic institutions. As a single-entry point to total member research activity of $1 billion in annual research and development, MI provides an easy gateway for investors and licensees who wish to access technology assets in Ontario. Supported by the Government of Canada through the Networks of Centres of Excellence, by the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Centres of Excellence, and by its member institutions, MI is a transformational partnership that turns research strengths into real commercial opportunities. MI’s portfolio includes the most promising assets and advances commercialization into global markets through industry partnerships, licensing and company creation.