By Kathleen Gallagher of the Journal Sentinel
Forward Health Group Inc., a Madison data and analytics software provider, said Tuesday that it has raised $5.7 million of venture capital.
The money will be used for product development and to fund some of the company’s staff expansion, said Michael Barbouche, founder and chief executive officer. Forward Health has about 30 employees, he said.
“We have established an early lead in the population health space. As this market emerges, we want to continue to lead,” Barbouche said. “That translates to the development of new tools and functionality in our platform, PopulationManager.”
PopulationManager, the company’s software, harvests data from electronic medical records, lab tests and other sources to give insight into areas that need improvement and gaps in care. Users might learn, for example, which women are overdue for mammograms or which men with high blood pressure aren’t using the right medications.
Triple Tree Capital Partners, a Minneapolis investment group that focuses exclusively on health care companies, invested $5 million in Forward Health. Wisconsin Investment Partners and BrightStar Wisconsin Foundation Inc., also participated.
Forward Health has a “purebred investor” in Triple Tree, whose partners know the health care space well, said Tom Shannon, who heads BrightStar, a nonprofit that raises donations to make venture capital investments in state companies.
All of the investors took minority positions, so the company “remains independent and has total control,” Barbouche said. “I want this to be a very strong and successful Wisconsin-based company,” he said.
Forward Health was founded in 2009 by Barbouche, a mathematician and health care economist. Before that, he helped the Wisconsin Collaborative for Healthcare Quality launch its public reporting of health care quality measures. It has operated since inception with no debt, Barbouche said.
“They’ve got a team that knows what they’re doing and the revenues are ramping,” Shannon said.
Forward Health’s customers are hospitals, health systems, health plans and large organizations like the American Heart Association, American Cancer Society, American Diabetes Association and American Medical Association, which use the company’s software to run national programs. They pay an annual fee to use the company’s software.
