Palm Beach Gardens medical startup raises $10M — but moves HQ out of state

Palm Beach Post (FL)

April 17-- Apr. 17--First the good news: Bridge Connector, a startup born in Palm Beach Gardens two years ago, this week raised $10 million in venture capital.

Now the not-so-good news, at least for Palm Beach County's high-tech ambitions: Bridge Connector, a firm focused on medical records, has moved its headquarters to Nashville, Tenn.

The company isn't leaving Palm Beach County. however. Founder David Wenger is still here, and Bridge Connector is moving into a 4,000-square-foot office overlooking the Intracoastal Waterway in Palm Beach Gardens.

On Wednesday morning, Wenger admired the view from his new office and said he has no plans to leave his hometown, even if he frequently travels to Nashville.

"You can't beat this," Wenger said as a yacht trolled past. "This is paradise."

Hometown pride notwithstanding, Wenger moved Bridge Connector's main office to a 17,000-square-foot space in Nashville. Wenger said his company's growth led him to confront a harsh reality: Engineers experienced with health-care data are more plentiful in Nashville than in Palm Beach County.

"Nashville is a hotbed for health-care talent," Wenger said. "The largest health-care companies in the world are based out of Nashville."

Indeed, Nashville is home to four Fortune 500 health-care companies -- HCA Healthcare, Community Health Systems, Envision Healthcare and Lifepoint Health. The Music City also is a hub for biotech research. Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Vanderbilt University brought in a combined $370 million in grants from the National Institutes of Health last year, far more than any Florida research institute.

As for its product, Bridge Connector's "integration platform" helps hospitals, doctors offices, nursing homes and labs share information more easily. Wenger said the U.S. healthcare system is awash in data, much of it locked in formats that can't be easily traded among health-care providers.

Wenger, 31, said he was inspired to start Bridge Connector after hearing his father, Palm Beach County gastroenterologist Jeffrey Wenger, describe the labor-intensive process of processing patient records.

"They're having to retype that information into one system, and then scan or fax it, and it's not useful inside the other system," Wenger said. "We've made it transcribable from System A to System B."

The business model appealed to Axioma Ventures, a Tampa-based investment firm backed by Howard Jenkins, the former chief executive of Publix Supermarkets. Axioma Ventures on Tuesday announced a $10 million investment in Bridge Connector. That means the company has raised $20 million since early 2018.

Bridge Connector charges healthcare providers $500 to $3,000 a month for its services, Wenger said.

Launching a venture-backed tech company in South Florida poses its challenges. Despite state and local investments of more than $750 million in Scripps Florida and Max Planck Florida, both in Jupiter, venture capital remains scarce.

"It was hard to find that venture capital money down here," Wenger said.

In one example that heartens Wenger, Modernizing Medicine of Boca Raton has raised more than $200 million from investors. Like Bridge Connector, it focuses on bringing technology and automation to the paperwork-heavy medical field.

Palm Beach County's hopes of creating its own health-care hub are especially obvious in Jupiter, home to Scripps Florida and Max Planck Florida. Despite large public subsidies, the county's biotech industry has been slow to create the private sector jobs promised by Gov. Jeb Bush when he wooed Scripps.

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