A startup with growing Cincinnati ties has landed its first venture capital dollars as it looks to staff up in the Queen City. The raise comes a little more than a year after a new CEO took the helm.
Healent Health, a health tech firm that helps pain practices more easily implement remote patient monitoring – allowing them to better care for those with chronic conditions – recently raised a seed round from Over-the-Rhine’s Cintrifuse Capital.
The total amount was not disclosed, but the funds represent the firm's first foray into the venture capital world. Healent has raised about $3 million to date, including from friends and family.
The company, led by Cincinnati-based CEO Mike Palackdharry, is now looking to hire in the Queen City. He said Healent also will rely heavily on Cintrifuse to segue the current round into a larger Series A in the months ahead. Healent made a massive business transformation starting in 2023 and has seen “tremendous” growth over the past year, Palackdharry said. It currently has nine practices on its platform, a key driver when it came to the investment, Cintrifuse Capital said.
“We're one of the very few companies that has taken an agnostic approach to remote health technologies,” Palackdharry told me. “It’s really about clinical intelligence. The big part of our platform is using the clinical intelligence we get from patients to allow the doctor to proactively intervene in your treatment, and hopefully accelerate your recovery.”
Palackdharry’s past experience includes time both as an entrepreneur and corporate executive. The Chicago native landed in the Queen City thanks to Convergys Corp., a former Cincinnati-based publicly traded company. He then jumped to Columbus for a role at Nationwide Energy Partners.
He later joined Vora Ventures, a Blue Ash-based private equity firm led by Mahendra Vora, as a consultant, eventually spinning out a procurement solutions company, Vinimaya, in 2015.
Vinimaya, rebranded to Aquiire, was acquired by Coupa in 2018.
Following that deal, Palackdharry joined Limelight Networks – while also taking on a partner role at Refinery Ventures, another OTR venture firm.
Palackdharry said he felt a personal pull to the health care sector – one of Refinery’s target markets. His wife and two of his daughters all have a very rare genetic disease.
“I’d always been interested in how we can connect the physician and the rare and chronically ill patient more effectively,” he said.
It was at Refinery that he came across Healent. He liked the platform, so he left Limelight and invested in the company. He first joined the team as chief strategy officer – the startup, he said, needed to completely shift its go-to-market strategy – before taking over as CEO at the beginning of the 2023.
Healent had done some work in the orthopedic space. But Palackdharry saw an opportunity to apply the same platform to pain management.
The use of remote patient monitoring surged during the pandemic, but third parties entering the space took away from the patient-doctor experience, he said. Healent’s platform allows a more custom, individual experience.
It enables all codes required to treat patients, both remote therapeutic monitoring and remote physiologic monitoring, which drives reimbursements for doctors.
Bigger picture, he sees Healent’s use of data as a way to reduce opioid dependence.
“It’s a pretty big vision and pretty big platform we wanted to go to market with,” he said.
The Healent platform is white labeled: Using an app, which is branded for each practice, patients can complete intake and registration forms, modify appointments and more.
Healent can also track and monitor vitals, serve up patient education information and answer questions using a built-in artificial intelligence virtual care concierge.
Following a visit, a patient can also view their diagnosis and treatment protocol. “Once you leave the doctor's office, your app becomes individualized for you,” Palackdharry said.
A patient will also, for example, fill out a daily pain score, which the physician is able to track. If that number goes up, for instance, it could trigger a change in the treatment plan.
“It's a very individual experience for you, basically a 24/7 real-time connection to your physician that allows them to monitor your health status around the clock,” he said. “These things also happen to be reimbursable protocols for that doctor.”
Healent currently has nine pain practices on the platform, including Louisville-based Commonwealth Pain and Spine, one of the largest pain practices in the country with roughly 140 providers in seven states.
The app is now live across all 23 of its locations.
The company also recently inked a partnership with California-based Custom Health, an owner of specialty pharmacies that specialize in opioid distribution.
The deal gives Healent access to even more data points. The goal is to move to a more value-based care model for pain management. Under a value-based care model, providers are paid based on patient health outcomes, versus traditional fee-for-service model, where they are paid based on the number of services they deliver.
“The big goal is, can we de-prescribe opioid-using patients, especially those on higher doses, can we get them onto a different treatment protocol and keep them out of hospitals and ambulatory care,” Palackdharry said.
Healent to hire in Cincinnati, CEO says
Healent is currently headquartered in Chicago, but it will look to bulk up its team in the Queen City. It’s currently a super lean operation, Palackdharry said.
Founder Anoop Adya, who is now serving as the company’s chief technology officer, has since relocated from the Windy City to the Dallas area. Palackdharry lives in Anderson Township.
Healent needs to fill customer success, engineering, finance and sales and marketing roles. Its relationship with Cintrifuse will also be key there.
“The connections, even before they made an investment, have been incredibly helpful,” he said.
He will also look to Cintrifuse to help lead its Series A process. He’s hoping to start that raise in early 2025.
“Mike is working with one of the largest pain clinics in the country, which demonstrates there is a real problem they are solving,” said J.B. Kropp, managing director of Cintrifuse Capital. “With his background, Healent is well positioned to become a market leader.”
Sign up for The Beat, Cincy Inno’s free weekly tech newsletter.
