Particle Health Secures $10 Million in Funding Amid Ongoing Antitrust Dispute with Epic Systems to Enhance Healthcare Data Accessibility and Interoperability
Particle Health, a New York-based healthtech company, has recently secured additional funding to further its mission of making medical records more accessible and actionable for healthcare innovators. The company, founded in 2018 by Troy Bannister and Dan Horbatt, has been at the forefront of developing a modern API platform that integrates with the largest electronic medical records (EMRs) in the U.S., aiming to break down data silos and enhance patient care.
The latest funding round, amounting to $10 million, was raised from existing investors, including Menlo Ventures, Canvas Ventures, and Pruven Capital. This financing comes on the heels of a significant legal development, as Particle Health filed an antitrust lawsuit against Epic Systems, a leading electronic health records (EHR) company. The lawsuit alleges that Epic has been stifling competition in the emerging “payer platform” market, a critical area where healthcare companies and digital health players rely on aggregated patient data for tasks like analytics and claims processing.
Particle Health acts as a middleman between EHR systems like Epic and healthcare companies, drawing patient healthcare information from these systems to provide actionable data for providers and digital health players. The company’s platform is designed to standardize and unify healthcare records from thousands of sources, making them usable at scale through the FHIR R4 data format. This approach has enabled Particle Health to deliver an exceptional 90% success rate in obtaining a patient’s records, with an average of 105 records per patient per search.
The recent funding is intended to provide additional runway for Particle Health’s next phase of growth, according to sources familiar with the matter. The company has seen significant traction, with a 450% increase in annual recurring revenue and a 300% increase in customers over the past year. The team has expanded from 11 to 40 people since its $12 million Series A funding in 2020, and further growth is anticipated.
The dispute between Particle Health and Epic Systems has been ongoing, with Epic filing a formal dispute with Carequality, the data interoperability network used by both companies to access and exchange patient information. Epic alleged that some of Particle Health’s customers were using Carequality to access patient data for non-treatment purposes, potentially violating HIPAA. As a result, Epic cut off data requests from those Particle Health customers. The issue was resolved in October, but the antitrust lawsuit remains a critical point of contention.
Particle Health’s mission to enable simple and secure access to actionable healthcare data has been bolstered by legislative changes and the heightened awareness of digital-first practices pushed by the realities of COVID-19. The company has built a developer-friendly environment for the biggest innovators in health tech, quickly dismantling the complexities of traditional healthcare integrations and enabling provider services, pharma, and virtual-first companies to get access to the whole patient story.
With this latest round of funding, Particle Health is poised to further evolve the capabilities of its API platform, empowering users with even more meaningful and actionable data. The company’s focus on patient attributes that lead to more clinically relevant decision-making has established it as an industry leader in applying the next-generation FHIR data format to make interoperability easier. Companies innovating with Particle Health include Strive Health, Cureatr, and Invitae, underscoring the company’s role in leading the charge on developing a best-in-class developer experience and highly adaptable data transformation pipeline.