Modernizing Medicine attracts $231 million private equity investment

May 10--Health-technology company Modernizing Medicine announced Wednesday that Warburg Pincus, a global private equity firm focused on growth-stage companies, has invested $231 million into the company.

The funding will be used to provide liquidity to existing shareholders, fund further expansion and support future strategic endeavors, said Daniel Cane, CEO of the fast-growing Boca Raton-based company. "It's a great firm, a great fund, it's good people ... With this investment we infused some additional jet fuel into our company to be able to execute even more aggressively, to be able to hire and innovate and bring great products and solutions," Cane said in an interview Wednesday.

Modernizing Medicine currently employs 550 people and is booking $100 million in annual revenue. "If there was any doubt that you could found and scale a company in South Florida, hopefully those doubts are now erased," Cane said.

Founded in 2010 by Cane and Dr. Michael Sherling, Modernizing Medicine has been one of the recent tech success stories in South Florida. Cane, a serial entrepreneur who earlier in his career co-founded and exited education-tech company Blackboard, met Sherling, his future co-founder, in the doctor's office.

Modernizing Medicine's flagship product is EMA, which is a mobile, cloud-based, specialty-specific electronic health record system now used by more than 10,000 providers at thousands of specialty practices nationwide, and the company now offers a full suite of products and services including practice management, revenue cycle management, telehealth for dermatology, analytics and more. Before this latest mega-round of funding, Modernizing Medicine had raised about $100 million, including $38 million in 2015.

"We've been quiet the last year but we've been executing," said Cane. "We have an incredible team and we continue to grow. We still serve only a handful of specialties -- we remain focused -- but we do more within each specialty than we ever have in the past."

If there was any doubt that you could found and scale a company in South Florida, hopefully those doubts are now erased.

Daniel Cane, CEO of Modernizing Medicine

Cane said the latest round of funding will allow it to pursue strategic objectives that not only benefit physicians and their practices but also the patient. "We are building a lot of mobile patient engagement applications, looking at ecommerce, looking at telemedicine," he said. That includes investing in technologies that streamline "prior authorization" to allow more patients to get the treatments they need faster, said Cane. In ecommerce, there are other opportunities to streamline processes that complement a patient's treatment, and telemedicine has particular potential to take off in dermatology, Modernizing Medicine's largest specialty with about 6,000 providers, Cane said.

Modernizing Medicine now has three South Florida locations, its main headquarters in the Research Park at FAU, a temporary space in the Boca Raton Innovation Center while its new space there is being built out, and a Weston office. "We are always hiring," said Cane. Indeed, more than three dozen job openings are listed on Modernizing Medicine's webite, including for engineers in product development and product management, as well as for positions in marketing, sales and legal.

Fred Hassan, managing director of Warburg Pincus and the former CEO and chairman of Schering Plough, and Amr Kronfol, Warburg Pincus principal, will join Modernizing Medicine's board of directors. "We see meaningful opportunities for the company's continued growth and acceleration of existing products and initiatives, and we look forward to partnering with Dan, Michael and the entire management team," said Andrew Park, principal of Warburg Pincus.

Founded in 1966 and headquartered in New York, Warburg Pincus, with an active protfolio of more than 140 companies, has more than $44 billion in private equity assets under management. Warburg Pincus has been an active investor in the health technology sector, with current investments including DocuTAP, Helix, Intelligent Medical Objects, Specialists On Call, and A Place For Mom.

Nancy Dahlberg: @ndahlberg

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