This content is reprinted from a Baltimore Business Journal article written by Carley Milligan and published on May 15, 2020. Read the full article here.
Baltimore’s Tissue Analytics has been acquired by electronic health records software company Net Health in a deal aimed at helping medical providers better care for wounds.
The health IT startup was bought by Pittsburgh-based Net Health for an undisclosed amount, the companies announced Thursday.
Tissue Analytics was born out of Johns Hopkins in 2014 and offers a mobile platform to help doctors better analyze and track wound recovery among patients, including venous and diabetic ulcers, burns and surgical wounds.
Under the deal, Tissue Analytics’ platform will be integrated with Net Health’s cloud-based software to add new capabilities for hospital outpatient settings, and expand Net Health’s reach to include inpatient, clinical trials and more.
Currently, Net Health serves over 14,000 facilities, including 98% of the country’s largest hospital chains, and other skilled nursing companies, hospice organizations and private practices. It is a portfolio company of The Carlyle Group, Level Equity and Silversmith Capital Partners.
Net Health CEO Josh Pickus said in a call Thursday that the relationship between the two companies goes back to the founding of Tissue Analytics. Some of the company’s features were also already used by Net Health through an existing partnership.
“They were interested in our product because we have a substantial market share,” Pickus said. “We have been watching them grow for their entire history and are very impressed with what they accomplished. It got to the point where it made sense to have them become part of Net Health.”
Net Health already uses Tissue Analytics’ wound imaging feature, which allows patients to easily take photos of their wounds and send them to their health care providers. Pickus also said Tissue Analytics’ platform is able to capture “rich statistic data,” which the company uses to better predict the best and most cost-effective treatment for patients.
With the deal, Net Health will now be able to integrate the next piece of Tissue Analytics’ platform into its product, WoundExpert. The result is added capabilities for outpatient settings, including allowing clinicians to capture and upload wound images and other documents, such as automated measurements, to the WoundExpert platform. Pickus said that new functionality should be available by the end of June.
Tissue Analytics CEO and co-founder Kevin Keenahan said the acquisition helps the company reach its goal of a “fully-connected wound care continuum” and noted that Net Health was the “strongest possible partner” to realize the goal.
As part of the deal, all of Tissue Analytics’ roughly 30 employees will become Net Health employees, but will remain in the company’s Baltimore and Kansas City offices. Keenahan and co-founder and chief technology officer Joshua Budman will take on leadership roles in business development and predictive analysis at Net Health.
Tissue Analytics was previously backed by about $1.9 million in seed funding, and in 2018 raised a $5 million Series A round of financing, led by digital health-focused private equity firm DigiTx Partners.
