Kaiser Permanente Ventures Leads Round; New Leaf, Sands, Easton, Lionbird and Rex Health Ventures Participate
Quick Facts
- Total Series B Funding Round: $12 Million (closed 1/12/15)
- Lead: Kaiser Permanente Ventures
- Also Participating: New Leaf Venture Partners, Sands Capital Ventures, Easton Capital Investment Group, Lionbird, Rex Health Ventures
- Total Raised to Date: $22.4 Million (Series A Round, $10.4 million; 7/16/13)
- Hospitals Served as of 12/31/2014: 144 (101 hospitals added in 2014)
- Medications Tracked as of 1/12/2014: 3.6 million
- Cloud-based Software and Internet of Things / RFID for Hospital Medication Tracking; products include:
- Kit Check for automated pharmacy kit medication restocking in hospital pharmacies and tracking throughout the hospital.
- Anesthesia Check for automated anesthesia medication tracking, validation and recording in the operating room to the syringe level.
Washington, DC — Kit Check™ (https://experience.bluesight.com), the leader in hospital pharmacy kit processing and medication tracking software, today announced a $12 million Series B funding round led by Kaiser Permanente Ventures. Rex Health Ventures, the venture investment arm of Raleigh, N.C.-based Rex Healthcare, also contributed to the round. All previous investors from the 2013 Series A funding round also participated in the Series B; these include New Leaf Venture Partners, Sands Capital Ventures, Easton Capital Investment Group and LionBird. Dave Schulte, vice president and senior managing director of Kaiser Permanente Ventures, will also join Kit Check’s Board of Directors.
Kit Check has achieved tremendous growth in the eighteen months since the 2013 funding round. At that time, the company was serving seven hospitals with the Kit Check cloud-software and RFID-based solution. By the end of 2013, the customer count had grown to 43 and reached 144 in December 2014. During that period, the number of hospital medications tracked grew from about 400,000 to over 3.6 million today and total users now exceed 5,000. Kit Check also introduced its second product in 2014, Anesthesia Check, which is currently in operating rooms (OR) at three leading hospital systems. Anesthesia Check tracks medications from vial dispensing in the pharmacy, to OR syringe prep, to patient administration and waste — automating recording and safety checks throughout the medication lifecycle.
“Kit Check has proven that easy to use and install cloud software can accelerate technology adoption in hospitals and successfully deliver significant healthcare savings. It has also shown that new technology approaches such as RFID and Internet of Things can fundamentally change how hospitals track medications, reducing manual labor and errors while increasing visibility and patient safety. Having Kaiser Permanente Ventures and Rex Health Ventures as investors in the round is great validation of the current success and growth prospects,” said Vijay Lathi, Managing Director of NLV Partners.
“Kit Check has identified a big opportunity in the pharmacy to reduce cost and improve accuracy in medication dispensing. The team recently extended this concept into the surgical suite to help anesthesia providers with critical labeling, recording and medication administration activities. As the healthcare industry continues its focus on cost reduction while maintaining high levels of accuracy and patient safety, Kit Check is proving to be effective on all three fronts. Rex Health Ventures made this investment because Kit Check has delivered clear value and impressive traction with hospital users,” said Bobby Helmedag, Director Rex Health Ventures.
Kit Check Co-founder and CEO Kevin MacDonald commented, “Kit Check’s cloud software solutions have experienced rapid adoption over the past 18 months, while growing our customer base twenty fold. We are happy to see the endorsement by the venture arms of two leading health systems in our Series B funding and look forward to further extending our product portfolio and customer growth. Manual medication tracking in hospitals is costly and introduces unacceptable patient risk in today’s healthcare environment. We are excited to be making such a big impact for the industry and for patients.”
About Hospital Pharmacy Kits
Pharmacy kits are used throughout hospitals for critical care procedures including operating room anesthesia, crash carts, pediatric emergency, labor and delivery and many others. The kits contain up to 200 medications each. Kit Check’s solution eliminates a decades-old manual process of hospital pharmacy kit replenishment and expiration verification.
After a hospital pharmacy kit is used for patient care by medical staff, it is returned to the pharmacy so consumed medications may be replaced. Historically, a pharmacy technician would determine what items are missing and handle each individual medication manually to ensure it is not nearing expiration. After expiring items were removed and medications restocked, a pharmacist would then double-check the accuracy of kit contents. By adding RFID tags to medications, a Kit Check scanning station can count and validate each item automatically. Instead of 30 minutes of manual labor, RFID combined with Kit Check’s cloud-based software enables these processes to be completed in just 3 minutes, generating a 72-90% time savings while increasing kit accuracy by 99.5%.
About Kaiser Permanente Ventures
Kaiser Permanente Ventures is the corporate venture capital arm of Kaiser Permanente and is dedicated to forming partnerships with innovative companies and exceptional entrepreneurs. Kaiser Permanente Ventures investments are designed to improve quality, service and affordability for Kaiser Permanente members; introduce innovative products and services to the health care organization; and generate attractive rates of return. Since its inception in 1997, Kaiser Permanente Ventures has invested in more than 55 health care information technology, health care services and medical device companies. Visit?ÿwww.kpventures.com?ÿto learn more.
About Kit Check™
Kit Check™ is the leader in automated hospital pharmacy kit processing and medication tracking software. Since 2012, Kit Check™ has focused on replacing time consuming and error-prone manual processes in hospital medication handling with faster and safer automation technologies driven by a scalable cloud software platform. Kit Check™ is headquartered in Washington, DC and serves over 100 hospital pharmacies throughout the United States. For more information please contact Kit Check™ by email at PR@kitcheck.com or call at (786) 548-2432 ext. 5.