Attune Technologies which has developed a cloud-based healthcare platform that interfaces with over 800 medical devices is now raising its second round of funds to the tune of US$15 million for global expansion. The first round funding of US$6 million was mainly used to strengthen the technology platform and building the brand.
The company has developed a software that communicates with disparate medical equipment in diagnostic laboratories across geographies. The technology platform interfaces with over 800 devices like lab analysers and ICU machines to link labs into the health network.
“We are looking at investors including Norwest Venture Partners (NVP) and this 2nd round funding will be utilised for our global expansion. Besides we intend to connect primary healthcare centres and hospitals across tier-2 and tier-3 cities to establish a comprehensive health network in India,” Arvindkumar Alagarswamy, founding member & CEO, Attune Technology told Pharmabiz.
“We have a proprietary middleware that talks to these disparate medical devices. For instance, in the case of an international laboratory with multiple processing centres, the medical equipment analyses the sample and transmits in machine language to the middleware which displays it in a human understandable format. A patient sample can be processed at different centres for varied specialized tests. All this data is synchronized effortlessly and reports are generated on-time,” he added.
About 60 per cent of India’s organised diagnostic labs sector comprising Metropolis, Medall and Thyrocare use Attune’s platform. The company serves 100 hospitals and it has amassed data of nine million patient records. With plans to connect 10,000 different devices in the next 18 months, it is working to harness the first-hand clinical data it gathers to predict the onset of epidemics and allergic tendencies to a particular drug in a specific location, among others.
“The response from India is phenomenal. We are perhaps the only company providing an end-to-end solution in terms of software device interfacing and mobility solutions. Usually when a laboratory or hospital purchases any machine, the company which supplies the equipment depends on a 3rd party for integration with the lab information system (LIS). Now we have started to offer device interfacing as a service,” said Alagarswamy.
Attune offers its products on a monthly rental model to attract customers in tier 2/3 cities and plans to continue this strategy for some time.
With healthcare driven by clinical data, Attune is gearing up to maximise the use of its built-in MIS reporting functionality for early epidemic prediction and action. This is possible, if a district healthcare system is connected to Attune’s Kernel. It helps the district medical officer (DMO) to forecast an epidemic. There is a business intelligence (BI) tool to generate real-time statistics using advanced analytical and presentation tools.
Attune is keen to enter Africa, the biggest market outside Asia which poses similar challenges like India and known to quickly adopt technology. In addition, it would also view MENA, Europe and US too.