Moving Analytics Raises $6M to Increase Virtual Cardiac Rehab Solutions and Expand Team Amidst Telehealth Industry Growth

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LOS ANGELES (PRWEB) APRIL 19, 2021

Moving Analytics, a telehealth company providing virtual cardiac rehab solutions, today announced it raised $6M in a Series Seed-2 round. The round was led by Aphelion Capital, LLC, through Cardeation Capital, with co-investments by OCA Ventures and Seae Ventures. This investment brings Moving Analytics’ total funding received to date to $9.5M.

As COVID-19 has continued, consumer adoption of US patients using telehealth increased roughly 350% from 2019 to 2020. The additional funding raised will be used to expand Moving Analytics’ virtual cardiac rehabilitation program, Movn, for both existing and new patients.

“We are thrilled to be able to support Moving Analytics’ mission in increasing access to a vital, life-saving service such as cardiac rehabilitation,” said John Kim, from Aphelion Capital. “Through our extensive due diligence and vetting through our partners, we have found Movn to be the most comprehensive and mature solution in the market with stellar proof points and evidence of success.”

With this round, the company will be able to grow their partner and customer base, increasing enrollment rates and clinical outcomes across the country. It will also go toward servicing its growing clientele of health plan partners in more markets by ensuring Moving Analytics’ programs also meet the needs of Medicare reimbursement – a key component to future growth. The company will also leverage its capital to enroll more patients into rehab and improve the patient experience and richer user experiences, including adding more tailored educational content in the app’s library targeting special populations.

“Our goal at Moving Analytics has always been to increase access to care and drive the future of cardiovascular health,” said Harsh Vathsangam, Co-founder and CEO at Moving Analytics. “With COVID continuing to increase the need for patients to enroll in virtual rehab solutions for cardiac health, we’re thrilled to be able to expand the capabilities of our platform even further to support existing and potential customers in need of services.”

Moving Analytics has grown immensely since its inception, having served several thousand patients by improving patient experience with a low-cost, high convenience program that has fewer in-office visits, and equivalent health outcomes.

“With the rise of telehealth options and the introduction of cardiac rehabilitation participation as a HEDIS measure for health plans, there’s been an increased demand for the Movn program, we’re very excited to bring on strategic investors who are backed by leading health plans and institutions can help catalyze our growth,” said Ade Adesanya, Co-Founder and President at Moving Analytics.

With its customers and partners, the company has been able to prove success with its Movn program – Highmark Health has shown more than a 60% enrollment rate, an 80% completion rate and equivalent clinical outcomes.

About Moving Analytics
Moving Analytics provides virtual cardiac rehab and cardiovascular disease management programs to support cardiologists and health plans in improving the health outcomes, quality and cost of care for their members. Developed in partnership with Stanford University, Moving Analytics programs are based on more than 30 years of published research involving over 70,000 patients. Our flagship product is Movn Virtual Cardiac rehab which targets patients after an acute coronary event such as a heart attack or heart surgery. Movn has successfully improved cardiac rehab participation rates, member outcomes and lowered readmission at marque organizations like Kaiser Permanente, Highmark Health Plan, Allegheny Health Network and the Veteran Affairs. For details and inquiries, please contact hello@movinganalytics.com.

Telehealth Addiction Treatment Comes of Age

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Virtual healthcare, which has proliferated and become more sophisticated during the pandemic, will be an even greater presence in the future

By Jason Langendorf

April 8, 2021

Eight months was all it took for Eric Bogue to be transformed from a person frustrated and only half-interested in his recovery into a true believer and apostle of telehealth addiction treatment.

Bogue first attempted to address his substance use disorder in 2014, but his traditional recovery efforts fell short—even if, he admits, he gave it something less than his best shot. “I didn’t take it seriously then,” he says.

But it wasn’t only his mindset that was holding Bogue back. His job as a security officer is located two cities away from his home in Frankfort, Ky., while his young daughter lives three cities away—in the opposite direction. “Back when I was going to the clinics, it just was not working out,” he says. “I would have to take a day off to get all that accomplished in the same day, get my errands done and go get my daughter.”

[Telehealth] is absolutely the future. Not even just addiction treatment, but for doctors in general. It’s absolutely modernized.”—Eric Bogue, telehealth patient

About a year ago, Bogue came across an advertisement that would change his life. The spot promoted a company, PursueCare, offering telehealth-based recovery—essentially, remote addiction treatment. He learned he could make clinic “visits,” attend meetings and get practically on-demand recovery care from home. He was impressed by the privacy built into the program, which removes the stigma some feel when walking into brick-and-mortar clinics—and cuts out other potentially awkward moments.

“I’m gonna tell you one of the big things for me with telehealth: I love how they do the drug screens,” Bogue says of PursueCare’s video-supervised mouth-swab testing. “I’m a very private person. I don’t like having to go and pee in front of somebody in a clinic.”

In a short time, Bogue was hooked on telehealth, and in the eight months since he began his PursueCare program, he says his recovery has been “phenomenal.” He’ll tell anyone who’ll listen about the benefits of telehealth addiction care, including a couple of friends he recruited into the program. “For me, just the whole experience,” Bogue said, “it was almost like it was too good to be true.”

The Proliferation of Telehealth

It’s hardly a new phenomenon, but telehealth’s popularity has exploded over the past year, accelerated by a COVID-19 pandemic that has restricted face-to-face engagement and prompted the federal government to temporarily loosen virtual healthcare restrictions to meet overwhelming demand. With so many having recently been introduced to this option, how might remote care evolve to meet demand? Expect the future to bring expanded access, more customized care for individuals and groups, and growing acceptance of telehealth as an integral part of the continuum of care.

Although one of the great benefits of telehealth has been improving access to care in underserved communities, we’re likely only halfway home. Increasing awareness about telehealth is important—Bogue says he didn’t even know of its existence until about a year ago—but so too is extending that access to everyone.

What we’ve seen with COVID, in terms of telehealth, is phenomenal. I think that’s the one silver lining of COVID. We’ve now supercharged our healthcare.”—Courtney Hunter, vice president of state policy for Shatterproof

Many people with the greatest need for treatment lack the resources to afford a computer, a smart device or wifi. Meanwhile, some of the communities where reliable internet connectivity remains a problem—mountain towns and remote areas, for instance—have been hit hardest by the drug epidemic.

“What we’ve seen with COVID, in terms of telehealth, is phenomenal,” says Courtney Hunter, vice president of state policy for the addiction nonprofit Shatterproof. “I think that’s the one silver lining of COVID. We’ve now supercharged our healthcare in a way that can make behavioral health services so much more accessible for people, particularly in rural communities. And so how do we get people even the fundamentals, whether that’s a cellphone plan or a disposable phone or whatever, so that they can access those services?”

Telehealth: A Personalized Treatment Approach

Innovators in the addiction treatment space were considering or already delivering new telehealth offerings before the pandemic, a trend we will likely see expand in coming years.

“Before COVID hit, this was already in our pipeline,” says Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation CEO in-waiting Joseph Lee. “And we did it because we saw that patients had geographic limitations. Our virtual services were unique in that they provided group and individual therapy, so it wasn’t just an individual thing. But that’s just the start.”

Post-pandemic, we’re going to see a permanent move to at least hybridizing care between in-person and virtual solutions. I think most of the research is indicating that digital health is definitely here to stay.”—Nick Mercadante, founder and CEO of PursueCare

Nick Mercadante, founder and CEO of PursueCare, notes the different cultural norms and social determinants of health across regions, states and even neighboring communities. He believes providing options that meet individual needs, as well as catering to the distinct needs of specific populations—Mercadante worked with the elderly in skilled nursing facilities before launching PursueCare—will play an important role in unlocking telehealth’s full potential.

“It’s kind of the double-black-diamond approach,” Mercadante says. “But I think ultimately we get better outcomes with what we do, rather than just barreling into it.”

Virtual Care Is Here to Stay

Experts continue to push for the full adoption of the emergency telehealth provisions instituted during the pandemic. At the same time, antiquated state mandates and restrictions that have often gummed up the works are being rethought, gradually lowering the barriers to more effective care. Mercadante says lawmakers are coming to the realization that many well-intentioned policies are doing more harm than good, and he imagines a future in which traditional brick-and-mortar healthcare and telehealth operate not just side by side, but collaboratively.

“Post-pandemic, we’re going to see a permanent move to at least hybridizing care between in-person and virtual solutions,” Mercadante says. “I think most of the research is indicating that digital health is definitely here to stay. It can play a role, even with in-person care, to augment and support, to help stay tethered with your patients in between visits and keep patients engaged and thinking about next steps in their care.”

President Joe Biden’s plan to expand access to addiction treatment would grease the skids for a fixed, dynamic telehealth system of care in the United States, and his proposed infrastructure bill would go a long way toward improving internet capabilities in communities that are most in need of addiction recovery care.

“This is absolutely the future,” Bogue says. “Not even just addiction treatment, but for doctors in general. It’s absolutely modernized. It’s the future.”

eBlu Solutions Announces $11.4M Series A Round

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LOUISVILLE, Ky.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–eBlu Solutions (Louisville, KY) announced today that it has raised an $11.4M Series A round led by OCA Ventures (Chicago), with co-investors Mutual Capital Partners (Cleveland) and FCA Venture Partners’ Health Innovations II (Nashville).

“When we’re investing in a company, we do extensive due diligence”

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Under the leadership of CEO Mark Murphy, eBlu Solutions is a digital health prior authorization software company – whose digital platform streamlines the prior authorization of expensive infusion-based specialty medications.

For patients suffering from complex, chronic conditions, the path to receiving specialty medication can be fragmented and expensive for all parties. eBlu Solutions aims to make benefits verification, prior authorization, and manufacturer co-pay assistance programs more efficient for practices that deliver physician administered infusion-based specialty medications to patients. Instead of navigating a complicated net of drug-specific online portals and insurance approvals, eBlu Solutions’ scalable and secure software platform makes the process of getting patients on life changing treatments more streamlined for medical providers.

“We’re enthusiastic to grow and continue developing our talent pool of 70+ team members. eBlu was founded with a mission to simplify the fragmented process behind benefits verification and prior authorization for infusion-based specialty medications. For patients suffering from complex, chronic conditions it is common for physicians to recommend specialty medications. Unfortunately, these medications can be costly, leading to an often-burdensome fragmented process of phone calls and faxes between physicians and insurance providers. eBlu Solutions’ secure and scalable platform helps the medical practice navigate the approval process so their patients can start treatment as soon as possible. This capital will allow us to expand our team and pursue our mission,” said Mark Murphy, CEO of eBlu.

“We’re delighted to have the support of this experienced group of Venture investors. eBlu Solutions aims to use the proceeds of the Series A to continue to grow its team and fuel the development of talent in our sales, product management, business intelligence, and software development areas,” said co-founder and CTO Nathan Fornwalt.

“Our platform brings together a great combination of technology and human expertise to streamline a fairly fragmented process which helps patients whose access to quality healthcare depends on the communication between payers and providers. We’re excited to keep scaling so we can have an ongoing positive impact on improving the lives of patients,” added co-founder and COO Kim Farley.

“When we’re investing in a company, we do extensive due diligence,” said Andy Patton, Executive in Residence at FCA. “eBlu has a really clear vision and a unique mission that’s scalable beyond rheumatology, neurology, gastroenterology, and allergy & asthma – the specialties they’re currently supporting. We’re excited to help eBlu continue to grow. Electronic prior authorization software has received substantial interest from investors over the last few years. eBlu occupies a unique position in the industry.”

About eBlu Solutions

eBlu Solutions provides a secure software platform for electronic prior authorization and benefits verification in the infusion-based specialty medication space. eBlu Solutions aims to streamline the fragmented nature of the approval process for specialty medication treatments, and currently supports a variety of specialties including rheumatology, neurology, gastroenterology, and allergy & asthma. eBlu’s initial partnerships have been with pharmaceutical companies, HUBs, and IMCs to make treatment less burdensome for patients, practices, and providers across the country.

eBlu was a participant in the 2016 cohort of XLerateHealth, a leading healthcare accelerator headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky. Since that time, the company has continued to refine its technology platform and grow its revenue. Despite the COVID pandemic, eBlu Solutions saw its revenue double in 2020 and expects 2021 year over year revenue to more than triple.

eBlu’s management team has a long history of working in healthcare. Founder and COO Kim Farley and CEO Mark Murphy have a combined 45+ year track record in the healthcare industry. Similarly, Founder and CTO Nathan Fornwalt has a strong background in technology innovation and product development.

More information can be found at: www.eblusolutions.com

FT Partners Advises Snapsheet on its $30,000,000 Series E2 Financing

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Overview of Transaction

  • On March 25, 2021, Snapsheet announced its $30 million Series E2 financing round led by Ping An Global Voyager Fund and Pivot Investment Partners
  • Existing investors include Nationwide, Liberty Mutual, Intact Ventures, Tola Capital, and Commerce Ventures, among others
  • Headquartered in Chicago, IL, Snapsheet is a leader in cloud-native claims management software for insurance carriers, third-party administrators, insureds and vendors
  • Since its founding in 2010, Snapsheet has used its technology to digitize and automate the claims workflows for over 100 clients and their customers, processing millions of claims and more than $7 billion in appraisals

Significance of Transaction

  • This funding will allow Snapsheet to accelerate growth and add new functionality to its cloud native end-to-end claims management platform
  • To fuel further product development and extend awareness, Snapsheet will use the funds to make key hires across engineering and sales teams
  • With this round, Snapsheet has raised more than $100 million in financing

FT Partners’ Role

  • FT Partners served as exclusive strategic and financial advisor to Snapsheet and its board of directors
  • FT Partners previously advised Snapsheet on its $29 million Series E financing in 2019
  • This transaction underscores FT Partners’ deep InsurTech domain expertise and its successful track record generating highly favorable outcomes for high growth FinTech companies globally

Accenture to hire 150 moms for ‘highly coveted roles’

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By Vanessa Yurkevich

Updated 9:43 AM ET, Thu February 18, 2021

(CNN) One of the largest consulting companies in the world is making a major commitment — to moms.

Accenture will hire 150 mothers for positions at its Midwest division as soon as possible, the company tells CNN Business. The newly created positions will be in technology, strategy and consulting out of the company’s offices in Chicago. The company said the roles will offer the new hires flexibility, support, training and mentorship.
To help find and hire candidates, Accenture is partnering with The Mom Project, a marketplace that connects professional women with companies. The Mom Project will screen applicants and put forward candidates for the roles. The organization said it is focusing on mothers who are unemployed and looking to make a career change.
“The jobs that we’re talking about for these moms are careers. They’re highly coveted roles in technology and in consulting, they’re the type of roles that enable them to support their family,” said Lee Moore, senior managing director for Accenture Midwest, who is heading up the partnership.
This comes at a time when women have been disproportionally affected by the pandemic. Women have lost 5.3 million jobs in the last year, compared to 4.6 million jobs lost by men. And some 2.5 million women have left the workforce all together, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“Those of us in positions to do so must take bold action to reverse this backslide,” said Allison Robinson, co-founder and CEO of the Mom Project. “I think our partnership with Accenture sets such a strong message to corporate leaders across the country, and I hope it will embolden them to do more.”
In 2017, Accenture set a goal to become a gender equal workplace by 2025. Of its 514,000 global employees, 215,000 are women. The partnership with the Mom Project is one way the company believes it can reach their goal, and the 150 new hires is just the start, said Moore.

‘Borderline desperation’

Nicole Conner felt lucky to be employed during most of the pandemic, working virtually in human resources and recruiting for a facilities management company.
But this fall, she says she was asked by her company to come back to the office full-time. She told them she couldn’t because her seven-year-old son Atticus was at home learning virtually. Then, she says, she was fired.
“I really have no choice but to have a remote job,” said Conner, who has been using the Mom Project’s platform for her job search.
Because she was fired, Conner said she is ineligible for unemployment. She said she and her son are surviving off food stamps and her student loans.
“I’m kind of at the point where it’s borderline desperation and I just need a remote job. At this point, it’s just click and apply, click and apply, and hope that something comes through,” said Conner.
Michelle Mitchom, a mother of four who lives outside of St. Louis, Missouri, was laid off in July. After a 10-year career in sales, her job search has also led her to apply for jobs she never considered before.
“I’ve been applying for any type of job. It doesn’t matter if it’s entry level, internships, if it’s janitorial, if it’s anything — I’ve been applying,” said Mitchom.
A former corporate trainer, Brooke Gasaway found herself unemployed and five months pregnant during the pandemic. Now that her son is six months old, she is looking for a job again, but not the way she used to.
“I’ve found myself at this moment applying for a lot of roles that are more junior than I would typically apply for simply because it feels safe that I know I’m overqualified,” said Gasaway.

‘A national emergency’

In an interview earlier this month, US President Joe Biden referred to the number of women leaving the workforce as a ‘national emergency.’ As part of his $1.9 trillion stimulus plan, he is proposing $15 billion in grants to working families to pay for childcare. He also wants to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.
“It will enable parents, particularly women, to get back to work,” the President said during the unveiling of his ‘American Rescue Plan.’
The Mom Project sees government policy as a key component to retaining and getting women back into the workforce.
“I think number one is policy support. We know that parents are strapped and needing support when it comes to childcare. The availability and the affordability are major barriers to moms and parents being able to work,” said Robinson.
Corporate America is starting to make some changes, too. Companies like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft have added more paid leave for employees during the pandemic, while Spotify says it will allow employs to work from anywhere even after the pandemic.
For its part, Accenture says it hopes to hire more moms in other divisions of the company soon.
“This is becoming nothing short of a crisis,” said Moore. “I think we can lead the way and truly make a difference.”

PursueCare Partners With Ohio-Based Thrive Peer Support

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·4 min read
The partnership offers a rapid transition from face-to-face peer support to telehealth addiction treatment at home.

MIDDLETOWN, Conn. and CLEVELAND, Feb. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — PursueCare and Thrive Peer Support today announced that they have partnered and have launched a statewide collaborative peer support and Substance Use Disorder treatment model across the state of Ohio. This collaboration promotes a seamless pathway from Thrive’s specialized in-person peer support to PursueCare’s comprehensive telehealth clinical addiction and behavioral health treatment, one that can be initiated at emergency rooms and other settings that are under mounting pressure due to COVID-19 and increasing overdose rates.

Thrive is a recovery support organization that sends certified peer recovery coaches into emergency room settings to help individuals who have experienced an overdose or substance-related emergency. Their services often help individuals overcome barriers like transportation, homelessness, stigma, and trauma. Thrive’s peers frequently refer individuals to outpatient Medication-Assisted Treatment (“MAT”) and other treatment programs, but COVID-19 has presented numerous challenges where access to in-person care was already scarce.

PursueCare is a technology-enabled addiction treatment and mental health treatment provider that offers its care through a digital platform accessible from mobile devices. The telehealth modality has effectively delivered MAT, psychiatry, counseling, at-home lab testing, and pharmacy services conveniently and privately. The program allows patients to meet frequently with their doctors and counselors from anywhere, including nights and weekends, to complete their individualized recovery programs.

While the telehealth model was emerging before the pandemic, it has proven essential for specific populations experiencing isolation or who do not have in-person care readily available in their community. “If there could be any positive drawn at all from COVID-19, it would be that telehealth has finally broken through as a real option for people who historically haven’t been able to get effective treatment in traditional brick-and-mortar settings,” said Nick Mercadante, PursueCare’s Founder and CEO. “When it comes to Substance Use Disorder, there’s no question that COVID-19 poured gasoline on an already burning fire. Evidence is showing us that our programs are helping many people in need,” Mercadante added.

Both organizations have several established partnerships with traditional health care settings that frequently diagnose Substance Use Disorder or treat overdoses, so this collaboration was a natural fit. It will effectively enhance the resources offered to patients in those settings that often lack effective interventive solutions.

While Thrive focuses on non-clinical support from a peer-to-peer standpoint, those in need of substance use disorder treatment and/or mental health care are transitioned into PursueCare’s digital treatment portal. PursueCare’s care coordination experts then introduce the virtual treatment model to patients, connect them with clinicians that can prescribe FDA-approved medications, and establish an ongoing at-home care regimen.

Throughout the course of care, Thrive staff collaborates with PursueCare’s treatment team to address in-person needs that arise and ensure that overall personal and health goals are met. Both PursueCare and Thrive feel they can better manage substance use in the region, which has surged due to COVID-19, by working together. “Thrive exists to provide peer support to people on their recovery journey. By partnering with PursueCare, we can meet the growing need for addiction and mental health services through a technology that keeps our clients and our peer support staff safe,” said Brian Bailys, CEO, Thrive Peer Support.

About PursueCare:
PursueCare offers virtual evidence-based addiction treatment for opioid and alcohol use disorders, all through our mobile application. By partnering with health systems, community health centers, employers, and health plans, PursueCare offers a transitional digital addiction treatment program for patients needing addiction treatment – with a focus on those who experience significant barriers to in-person care. Patients can also seek treatment without needing a partner referral. PursueCare is available in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia, Rhode Island and New Jersey, with more states being announced in the coming weeks. For more information, visit www.pursuecare.com.

About Thrive Peer Support:
Thrive Peer Support is a continuing care and recovery support organization located in Ohio. Thrive is certified by the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Substance Use Services for Peer Support and Case Management in Ohio. Thrive offers a variety of programs to assist individuals in behavioral health recovery. These programs are designed from the ground up to offer continuing supportive care for individuals in behavioral health recovery. The Thrive team is innovative in their programming and takes the initiative to design programs to help behavioral health recovery. Thrive Emergency Room Peer Support was established with the goal of helping individuals who presented in the ER that survived an overdose. In the first 12 months, Thrive saw more than 1,200 patients and helped get more than 300 into detox or other immediate treatment. Others were linked with MAT or other recovery programs. Thrive Emergency aims to reduce ER visits and increase the opportunity for a patient to enjoy long-term recovery. For more information, visit www.thrivepeersupport.org.

Prisidio Raises $3.3 Million Seed Round to Help People Safely Secure Their Most Important Personal Documents and Information Online

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CHICAGO – Feb. 3, 2021 – PRLog — Prisidio, a secure online vault where people can store and organize their most important documents and information, today announced a $3.3 million Seed round, co-led by OCA Ventures and Origin Ventures.

Prisidio is a private and secure cloud vault where people can centrally collect, store, organize, and share critical personal information, accessible only by close family members and trusted advisors. Information stored on Prisidio may include wills and trusts, legal agreements, health records, property and financial holdings, and other vital documents.

More than just a digital safety deposit box, Prisidio provides intelligent assistance to guide people through the process of identifying, documenting, and managing their physical and digital assets, as well as keeping those assets up to date. The platform gets people’s lives organized and affairs in order for retirement, business ventures, estate planning, or any unforeseen life events.

The company’s co-founders, Glenn Shimkus, CEO, and Paul Koziarz, CMO, have decades of digital document and workflow technology experience, having sold their prior startup, Cartavi, to DocuSign in 2013. Following the acquisition, they remained at DocuSign to help its successful expansion beyond e-signatures to the Agreement Cloud.

“We store our most vital information in myriad locations, so when we need critical information, we often struggle to find it,” said Glenn Shimkus, CEO and co-founder. “Even worse, if something were to happen to us suddenly, a risk the global pandemic has made quite real, our loved ones are left to search for the proverbial needle in a haystack. Prisidio provides families with security, convenience, and ultimately, peace of mind, knowing they are prepared for whatever life may bring their way.”

Today, most consumers’ critical and sensitive information is spread across multiple physical and digital locations. People write in paper notebooks, save PDFs on hard drives, send countless emails updating key information, or, worse, don’t have critical information inventoried and organized at all. With Prisidio, users have a highly-secure centralized location to organize and manage their vital information, such as key contacts, estate documents, or medical directives, and can share that information with those they trust—now or in the future.

“The market for identifying and organizing important personal information is ripe for disruption,” said Jim Dugan, Managing Partner and Co-founder of OCA Ventures. “Glenn and Paul have the industry expertise, entrepreneurial drive, and early-stage experience to make Prisidio into a best-in-class solution. OCA was proud to invest in them when they launched Cartavi in 2012, and we are delighted to do so again today.”

“Consumers can quickly highlight leading companies that can file their taxes or make a restaurant reservation, but there is no leading brand focused on safeguarding vital documents and information for families,” said Jason Heltzer, Managing Partner at Origin Ventures. “Yet there is a big need, in that less than 40 percent of US adults have a will, and Gen Xers aren’t going to a brick-and-mortar bank to put paper into a safety deposit box. I look forward to working with Glenn and Paul again to help build the dominant brand in the space.”

Prisidio will use the investment to build out its leadership, technical, and marketing teams, drawing on the Chicago roots of its founding team as it expands its company and product.

About Prisidio:

Prisidio is a secure online vault for consumers to store their most important documents and information. Its cloud-based platform allows users to store, organize, manage, and share key documents and information with their family and advisors in one secure and easy-to-access digital location. Prisidio is led by two document management veterans, Glenn Shimkus and Paul Koziarz, who together founded and built real estate document management software company Cartavi, which was acquired by DocuSign ($DOCU) in 2013. For information about Prisidio, visit prisid.io

About Origin Ventures:

Origin Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm founded in 1999 that invests in high-growth technology companies creating software and marketplaces for the “Digital Native Economy.” Origin Ventures was an early investor in Grubhub, Cameo, BacklotCars, Tovala, Tock, 15Five, and other market leaders. The investment team are all former operators and engineers with an average of 15 years of venture investing experience, with experience at Google, Twitter, SAP, and Metromile, among others. Origin’s offices in Chicago and Salt Lake City provide access to “between the coasts” investment opportunities in the U.S. and Canada. Learn more at www.originventures.com.

About OCA Ventures:

OCA Ventures is an early stage (Seed, Series A, and Series B) venture capital firm focused on equity investments in companies with dramatic growth potential, primarily in technology and highly-scalable businesses. OCA invests in many industries, with a preference for technology, financial services and healthcare technology. Founded in 1999, the firm is investing out of its fourth fund in companies across the United States with offices in Chicago and Palo Alto. Learn more at www.ocaventures.com.

Photo:
https://www.prlog.org/12856649/1

InSight + Regroup, the Leading Telepsychiatry Provider, Announces Rebrand, Changes Name to Array Behavioral Care

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MOUNT LAUREL, NJ– InSight + Regroup, a recognized leader in telepsychiatry and telebehavioral health has unveiled a new name, new logo and new website as part of an extensive rebranding initiative. The organization will now be known as Array Behavioral Care, a name that highlights their unique ability to deliver modern, quality behavioral health care to settings ranging from hospitals to homes.

“The time was right to modernize, streamline and simplify our brand identity,” said Geoffrey Boyce, Chief Executive Officer.

“The name Array represents our ability to offer services across the continuum of care and the breadth of opportunities we offer to clinicians,” said David Cohn, Chief Growth Officer, who led the rebranding efforts.

“We also wanted something that expresses our focus on innovation within the behavioral space while conveying a positive, hopeful tone. Our new brand symbolizes continuous growth while representing who we are, what we do, where we’ve been and where we want to go as an organization.”

The Array clinical team started practicing telepsychiatry in 1999 when its Chief Medical Officer, Jim Varrell, MD provided the nation’s first commitment via telepsychiatry.

In December 2019, InSight Telepsychiatry and Regroup Telehealth joined forces to form the largest telepsychiatry service organization in the country under the name InSight + Regroup.

In 2020, the organization positioned itself for significant growth by conducting hundreds of thousands of telepsychiatry sessions and hiring 325 new clinicians. The team made rapid expansions to its Array AtHome service line, formerly known as Inpathy, as consumers and clinicians alike shifted to totally remote options. Array also developed creative partnerships that integrated behavioral health services into primary care practices and launched programs that allowed for hospitals and health -systems to leverage teams of telebehavioral health clinicians in order to efficiently meet COVID-related spikes in mental health demand.

For 2021, the Array team forecasts significant enhancements and scaled-growth within their three service lines as well as a major investment in the organization’s growing ‘people’ function.

“We are prioritizing programs that cement Array as the employer of choice for forward-thinking behavioral health clinicians and administrators,” says Kelly Lewis, Array’s recently appointed Chief People Officer. “The Array brand perfectly encompasses the myriad of opportunities, the supportive, mission-driven team and the commitment to inclusion that this organization values.”

This rebranding, which was supported by branding firm Addison Whitney, solidifies Array’s value proposition and positions the organization as the industry-leader in modern behavioral care.

About Array Behavioral Care

Array Behavioral Care (formerly InSight + Regroup) is the leading and largest telepsychiatry service provider in the country with a mission to transform access to quality, timely behavioral health care. Array offers telepsychiatry solutions and services across the continuum of care from hospital to home with its OnDemand Care, Scheduled Care and AtHome Care divisions. For more than 20 years, Array has partnered with hundreds of hospitals and health systems, community healthcare organizations and payers of all sizes to expand access to care and improve outcomes for underserved individuals, facilities and communities. As an industry pioneer and established thought leader, Array has helped shape the field, define the standard of care and advocate for improved telepsychiatry-friendly regulations. To learn more, visit www.arraybc.com.

Ocient Announces $40 Million Series B to Help Organizations Manage Modern Data Demands

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Funding Comes on the Heels of First Petabyte-Scale Deployments for Auction & Exchange Analytics, Security, and Geospatial Applications

 | Source: Ocient

CHICAGO, Jan. 25, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Ocient, a data analytics solutions (DAS) company serving companies struggling with massive datasets, announced today the completion of a $40 million Series B funding round, bringing total invested capital to $65 million.

The investment was led by Chicago-based OCA Ventures and New York City/Los Angeles-based Greycroft, with participation by Valor Equity Partners, PSP Partners, Hyde Park Angels, Pritzker Group Venture Capital, Gaingels, and the MIT and Northwestern University chapters of Alumni Venture Group.

The new capital will be used to grow Ocient’s engineering, customer success, operations, and sales and marketing teams, with headcount expected to double to 150 by the end of 2021.

Co-founded in March 2016 by Chris Gladwin, Joseph Jablonski, and George Kondiles, Ocient transforms how industries ingest, store, and analyze the world’s largest datasets, delivering unmatched price/performance levels.

“Organizations are struggling to keep up with today’s data demands, a challenge that will only continue to increase exponentially,” said Gladwin, Ocient’s CEO. “With Ocient technology, organizations can tap into every piece of data now and in the future, unleashing massive new enterprise value.”

Ocient is deploying in Auction & Exchange Analytics, Security, and Geospatial customer use cases, all built on the proprietary Ocient DAS using industry-standard interfaces and hardware, which can hold quadrillions of rows of data, ingress billions of rows per second, and filter and compute across trillions of rows per second.

Available via the Ocient Cloud, public cloud, or on-premise, the Ocient DAS delivers in areas where existing data analytics solutions fall short:

  • Scalability – Handles petabytes of data without sacrificing performance.
  • Speed – Runs queries and analytics 5 to 50 times faster than the best alternatives.
  • Cost of Ownership – Requires 1/5th of the data storage footprint.
  • Flexibility – Handles complex analytical functions and dynamic schema changes.
  • Deployment Speed – Has purpose-built solutions for specific industry vertical use cases.
  • Accessibility – Uses industry-standard query and analytics interfaces, including SQL, JDBC, and ODBC.

“Ocient provides massive scale data analytics solutions with built-in machine learning via a full stack solution to optimize performance, supporting commodity hardware in the cloud or on premise, allowing customers to run queries in seconds which previously could not be executed,” said Jim Dugan, Managing Partner at OCA Ventures. “Ocient’s DAS enables its customers to gain higher fidelity and deeper insights from its data, and opens up new revenue streams while significantly reducing their cost of operations. As a lead investor from inception to exit in Chris’s prior data startup, Cleversafe, we experienced firsthand management’s ability to convert brilliant innovation into revolutionary commercial success, and we are thrilled to include a world-class firm like Greycroft and our other co-investors to help Ocient achieve dramatic results.”

Optimized for industry-standard hardware utilizing NVMe SSD, massively parallel processing on large core-count processors and 100Gbps networking, Ocient has benchmarked query-performance levels that are orders of magnitude better than competing products:

  • 50 times faster than high performance alternatives.
  • 1,000 times faster than MPP, NoSQL and Hadoop-based databases when querying a large dataset (with same hardware, queries and data).

“The Ocient DAS is the new standard for analytics for the world’s largest datasets, where queries that take other applications one hour to complete can now take less than 10 seconds,” said Mark Terbeek, Partner at Greycroft. “Ocient is building and deploying industry leading distributed scalable architectures for the world’s largest enterprise and government customers, and we are excited to support their phenomenal growth.”

About Ocient 

Ocient is building database and analytics software and services to enable rapid analysis of the world’s largest datasets. To learn more about Ocient, please visit http://www.ocient.com/.

About OCA Ventures

OCA Ventures is an early stage (Seed, Series A, and Series B) venture capital firm focused on equity investments in companies with dramatic growth potential, primarily in technology and highly-scalable businesses. OCA invests in many industries, with a preference for technology, financial services and healthcare technology. Founded in 1999, the firm is investing out of its fourth fund in companies across the United States, with offices in Chicago and Palo Alto. To learn more about OCA, please visit www.ocaventures.com.

About Greycroft

Greycroft is a seed-to-growth venture capital firm that partners with exceptional entrepreneurs to build transformative companies. The firm has deep experience in both consumer and enterprise technology, with a portfolio that spans the globe. Greycroft values building enduring relationships with founders and understands that they want more from investors than just capital. Greycroft has raised more than $2 billion in commitments and has over 200 active investments. The portfolio includes Acorns, Anine Bing, App Annie, Axios, Bird, BetterCloud, Braintree, Bright Health, Buddy Media, Bumble, Flutterwave, Goop, Happiest Baby, Huffington Post, Icertis, Lightricks, Maker Studios, Medly, Openpath, Scopely, SEMrush, Shipt, TheRealReal, Thrive Market, Trunk Club, Venmo, and Yeahka. For more information visit, www.greycroft.com.

Media Contact: Josh Inglis, josh@propllr.com, 312.504.7677

Rethinking Software and Risk to Protect the Public Sector

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We should build security into the foundation of programs.

Our current approach to cybersecurity, specifically within the public sector, is not working. We continue to spend more and more money on this issue across all industries, as evident in the fact that we have spent $173 billion on cybersecurity in 2020, twice the amount we spent just 10 years ago, while our losses continue to increase and currently surpass $1 trillion.

Rather than accept this trend as inevitable, we should rethink our approach to software and build security into the foundation of programs, instead of adding it in as an afterthought and subsequently risking the nation’s most sensitive data. The current approach of utilizing firewalls, antivirus and other mitigations, while important, does not substantially affect the economics of cybercrime. Therefore, we must focus on reducing the number of vulnerabilities in software if we are to defend federal agencies against potential attacks.

It’s best to think of malware as a business—whether it is implemented by criminals or state adversaries—with business-like incentives and disincentives. Budgets are always limited and there must be a return on the adversary’s investment.

To raise attacker costs, one must consider the lifecycle of malware: delivery, exploitation and finally, the attack. If any of these phases can be disrupted, we can have a greater chance of defending federal software and data. Delivery and attack are, however, largely at the discretion of the attacker, making them difficult for defenders to affect. That leaves exploitation, which involves the finding and exploiting of software or system weaknesses. This step is dependent on vulnerabilities, or rather, bugs in the security controls, which are under the complete control of the software developers.

Much of today’s efforts have been focused on threat mitigations which, while they do not remove bugs, attempt to make them unexploitable. It’s like treating the symptoms of a disease rather than the cause. This does provide some measure of protection but is not enough, for once an attacker learns how to bypass a mitigation, that same bypass can be reused repeatedly, increasing the attacker’s profit. Instead, we should focus on the architecture of today’s computer software systems, the majority of which are still based on decades-old software-development practices that leave too much open to attack.

One example of a critical systematic architectural flaw is known as ambient authority, a defect that greatly impacts user security and affects many, if not all software programs. Such a flaw can be explained in the case of running a program on a computer to view a PDF file. When a user runs a program to view a PDF, the program does not just receive permission to read the file. Rather, the program gains access to all of the user’s permissions, not just the few needed to view the document. If an attacker were to find a vulnerability within the PDF reader, the attacker could reprogram the software to perform any action the user could perform. This creates a tremendous security gap and exposes the user and agency to a plethora of potential risks.

It seems like a daunting task, but if we are to overcome today’s hostile threat environment, software systems must be written to isolate authority to a small part of the program. In the case of a PDF viewer, this would involve isolating the parts of the program that interact with the operating system from the parts that interpret a PDF. The PDF-specific code can then be run in a way that only has permissions to interact with the remaining parts of the program but not the operating system. This PDF-specific code will be the majority of code in the program. With the majority of code now isolated away from authority, there are far fewer bugs for attackers to abuse, drastically reducing the number of bugs that can be considered vulnerabilities.

As the world continues to increase in complexity, adversaries are taking advantage and extracting more value and becoming increasingly hostile against the public sector, putting the rest of the nation at tremendous risk and danger. Only when applications are written with security as the foundation of the platform, and not just as an accessory, will we stand a chance to reduce the attacker value and the endless threats.

Jonathan Moore is the chief technology officer at SpiderOak.