SonarMD Raises $10M in Series A Financing
SonarMD, a company focused on efficiently managing complex patients, just received $10m in funding through a joint investment from BCBS Venture Partners and Arboretum Ventures.
SonarMD partners with payer organizations and specialist groups to improve care for “high beta” patients – those with high variability in clinical outcomes as well as cost, and who are typically treated with expensive drugs. To SonarMD, this variability represents large potential to optimize, both in terms of providing better care and doing so cost effectively. SonarMD’s strategy involves rewiring incentives within specialty practices so that specialists – those with the greatest clinical knowledge and closest relationships to the patients – are better equipped and motivated to engage in value-based care. Payers provide the financial incentive, and SonarMD provides the care management and patient engagement tools needed to transform clinical practice. The result is more holistic, preventive care, fewer costly adverse events, more judicious use of expensive treatments like specialty pharmacy medications, and healthier patients.
“We see great promise in this model. Although SonarMD is starting with inflammatory bowel disease in GI practices, their strategy could easily expand into a number of other ‘high beta’ specialty areas where there’s room to improve on care, cost, and outcomes.” – Anna Haghgooie, managing director of Sandbox Industries, on behalf of BlueCross BlueShield Venture Partners.
The funding will help SonarMD acquire key new team members who can help channel their current traction into more growth and expansion. The group is currently led by its Founder and CMO Larry Kosinski, MD, a gastroenterologist, and CEO Devin Gross, who signed on in August of this year.
Changing clinical practice isn’t easy, but SonarMD has already shown its model can work. “Getting the specialists on board is crucial. They’re the key players in this space, and when they’re properly set up to support value-based care, that’s when the tides will shift.” – Dr. Kosinski.
