Inno Madness runner-up: Fuse Oncology making radiation oncology more efficient

James Bauler was named CEO of Fuse Oncology in January.

Cone Health Ventures

By Lillian Johnson - Reporter

March 17, 2023, 07:25am EDT

Fuse Oncology, the first company spun off from Cone Health Ventures, wants to reduce the time it takes from a radiation oncology consultation to the initiation of treatment.

CEO James Bauler said that the average in the United States is about 21 days and Fuse wants to bring that down to 24 hours.

“People are having to wait – that’s the current state of things,” he said. “At Cone Health, we did focus group discussions with our patients and found the single most difficult part of their treatment was waiting to start radiation.”

With technology developed at Cone Health’s Radiation Oncology Center of Innovation, Fuse’s core SaaS product, S!GNAL, officially launched at the beginning of 2022.

S!GNAL helps radiation oncology practices close the gap between the clinical experience and coding/billing, automating the revenue cycle verification at each step and closely monitoring structured and unstructured data.

“On average, in the systems where we’ve gone live with our product, we’ve identified $30 million in revenues that are at risk,” Bauler said.

With its software on the market, Fuse Oncology is in growth mode, looking to expand its market share, team and fundraises.

Bauler told TBJ that Fuse has agreements with companies that represent about 17% of the nationwide radiation oncology market. The company is currently working to complete trials and stand up those commercial contracts.

Fuse also intends to hire soon to grow its employee count (currently 24) by 50% this year, with a need for tech talent as well as administrative employees and clinical consultants.

At the start of 2023, Bauler – who as a principal at Cone Health Ventures helped launch the company – took over as CEO from Dr. BJ Sintay, who founded Fuse with Chief Technology Officer David Wiant in 2021. Sintay, who is the executive director of radiation oncology and chief physicist at Cone Health, remains as Fuse’s chief innovation officer.

Benjamin "BJ" Sintay, co-founder of Fuse Oncology

Benjamin "BJ" Sintay is chief physicist and executive director of radiation oncology at Cone Health. He helped co-found Fuse Oncology in 2021 and served as its CEO until January.

Courtesy of Cone Health

Last May, Fuse raised $3 million after previously receiving an undisclosed investment from Greensboro’s First Launch Capital Fund. The company is in the process of closing an additional round of funding, which Bauler expects to announce in a few weeks.

With the success of S!GNAL, the company is also already working on a second product with an intended release date of later this year or early 2024.

“Those things fitting together really well will allow us to offer a suite of products that reduces the time to initiate treatment for all of our customers,” Bauler said.

Q&A with James Bauler

What do you think drove Fuse Oncology’s success in the competition?

We are a Greensboro-based company and have a lot of supporters in the region. Our products are live in several health systems here in North Carolina. There was a grassroots support for what we’re doing.

What does it mean to you and your company to have made it to the finals of Inno Madness?

We’re very grateful. There’s a lot of support in the community for what we’re doing. I’d point to First Launch [Capital Fund], the chamber here in Greensboro and obviously Cone Health. Everybody knows startups are hard. We’re tackling a tough industry, but knowing you’ve got champions in your corner rooting for you makes it a lot easier.