Ambient Clinical Analytics Receives Funding

In late June 2019, according to the Form D filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Rochester, Minnesota-based, Ambient Clinical Analytics, Inc., a spin-off from the Mayo Clinic, secured an additional $600k in debt financing. This brings the total external amount raised by the company to over $7M since it was founded in 2013.…

Funding Report Graphic

In late June 2019, according to the Form D filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Rochester, Minnesota-based, Ambient Clinical Analytics, Inc., a spin-off from the Mayo Clinic, secured an additional $600k in debt financing. This brings the total external amount raised by the company to over $7M since it was founded in 2013. Mayo Clinic Ventures, Massachusetts-based Waterline Ventures and South Dakota Private equity firm, Bluestem who have previously invested in Ambient also participated in this round of funding that will likely be used to support recently established national and international strategic partnerships.

Founder and current CEO of Ambient Clinical Analytics, Allen Berning received his MBA and BS in industrial engineering from St. Cloud State University in St. Cloud, Minnesota. He worked for IBM for fifteen years in various engineering and managerial roles prior to his success over the last two decades leading technology startups. As CEO, he led the electronic manufacturing services company, PEMSTAR, that he co-founded in 1994, to an IPO on NASDAQ in 2000, later selling it to Benchmark Electronics for $300M.

Ambient Clinical Analytics, located at the Mayo Clinic Accelerator in Rochester, was established by Berning along with five Mayo Clinic clinicians _ Vitaly Herasevich, Ognjen Gajic, Andy Boggust, Vern Smith and Brian Pickering—to address the growing concern over medical errors attributed to cognitive overload. Clinicians can experience cognitive overload as they attempt to process too many pieces of information received during the course of critical patient care.

According to a 2016 study by researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine, several hundred thousand deaths per year are due to medical errors in the U.S. with a substantial percentage due to mistakes related to clinical cognitive overload. In their study, the researchers cite medical errors as the 3rd leading cause of death in the U.S., ranked after only cancer and heart disease. The corresponding economic cost for the U.S., determined by a 2012 study reported in the Journal of Health Care Finance, is over $1 trillion annually.

Ambient’s patient monitoring platform AWARE (Ambient Warning and Response Evaluation) improves the way critical care providers operate. This clinical decision support system collects and organizes the abundant often scattered patient data into a readily available easily interpreted actionable format. Clinical teams are presented with a “smart view” of the patient’s Electronic Health Care record data. Information overload is thus minimized leading to greater decision-making efficiency during vital clinical processes. The incidence of cognitive errors is considerably reduced. Correspondingly, direct care improves as physicians and medical personnel have more time to spend with the patients rather than analyzing and interpreting information. And this reduction in medical errors translates into better patient health outcomes and lower healthcare costs.

“Healthcare providers need efficient and organized tools at their fingertips in order to increase patient safety,” said Berning in an earlier press release. “Ambient Analytics provides solutions developed by clinicians for clinicians to accomplish this. Our software saves lives, and the hospitals that embrace our technology can improve mortality and mitigate patient risk.”

Ambient’s system supports best-care practices for ICUs, Operating Rooms, Emergency Departments and other critical care areas.

According to prior press release by the company, “Ambient is an exceptionally secure, high-performance Software as a Medical Device (SaMD) platform that has achieved FDA Class II clearance. Ambient’s software uses licensed Mayo Clinic technologies, which include over 1,000 rules and algorithms, to give providers real-time access to vital process-of-care information and analytics.”

In addition to the AWARE Critical Care platform, Ambient Clinical Analytics’ technologies include, as described on their website:

  • AWARE Sepsis Detection And Response Tool (DART™), a real-time clinical decision support tool that can be used in any acute care setting identifying potential sepsis conditions when they occur and guiding the care team through the process of care.
  • Mayo Clinic YES Board™, a multi-patient workflow management tool used in emergency departments and acute care settings to improve hospital workflow processes and provide real-time situational awareness.
  • AWARE CERTAIN™, a guided practice solution developed by Mayo physicians that focuses on the first critical period or golden hour of care when a patient enters a critical care environment.
  • The Synthesis technology that connects patients’ data with mobile devices. This is a component for both the YES Board and AWARE.

Ambient’s solutions are being implemented globally through partnerships in China and Europe.

For additional information about this company, visit www.ambientclinical.com.

 

 

 

References:

  1. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/study_suggests_medical_errors_now_third_leading_cause_of_death_in_the_us
  2. “The economics of health care quality and medical errors”. Journal of Health Care Finance 39(1):39-50 (2012).

 

This story is part of the AIM Archive

This story is part of the AIM Institute Archive on Silicon Prairie News. AIM gifted SPN to the Nebraska Journalism Trust in January 2023. Learn more about SPN’s origin »

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