AVIA, a Chicago-based digital healthcare consulting company, raised a new round funding from a dozen health systems across the U.S. to help traditional healthcare organizations as they face increased competition from the likes of Amazon and Apple.
AVIA announced Wednesday that it raised $22 million in a round of funding led by First Trust Capital Partners. Other backers include Sumitomo Corporation of Americas and investment bank Ziegler.
The round also included strategic investments from 12 healthcare organizations: Cedars-Sinai Health System, ChristianaCare, Inception Health (Froedtert and the Medical College of Wisconsin), MemorialCare, Memorial Hermann Health System, OSF HealthCare, Providence, Rush University Medical Center, Silver Cross Hospital, St Luke’s University Health Network, the University of Kansas Health System and the University of Virginia Health System.
AVIA, founded in 2013, has raised more than $50 million to date. Now at more than 100 employees, the company said it will use the new funds to grow its business and expand its offerings to healthcare companies.
AVIA has created an innovation network that provides digital health insights, strategic guidance and consulting services to the healthcare industry. As big, deep-pocketed tech companies like Amazon and Apple enter the healthcare space with new digital health solutions, AVIA is helping traditional hospital systems like Cedars-Sinai and Rush with their digital strategy. AVIA says it works with more than 50 healthcare organizations nationwide.
Along with the new funding, AVIA named two new people to its board of directors: Jon Phillips, managing director and head of private equity at First Trust Capital Partners, and Darren Dworkin, senior VP of enterprise information services and CIO at Cedars-Sinai.
“Digital technologies have transformed nearly every other industry, resulting in massive value creation, increased competitive intensity, and greater disparity between winners and losers," Eric Langshur, co-founder and CEO of AVIA, said in a statement. "The installation of electronic medical record systems over the last decade represents just the first step in digital’s impact on healthcare. As the digital disruption of healthcare accelerates over the coming decade, we see big opportunities but equally big risks for incumbent healthcare providers."
