Bridge Connector, a hyper-growth healthcare platform-as-a-service company born in Palm Beach County, on Tuesday announced it has raised $25.5 million in Series B financing to continue its national scale-up.
The round was led by its largest investor, Tampa-based Axioma Ventures, which was co-founded by Howard Jenkins, former CEO of Publix Super Markets. Entrepreneur and Tampa Bay Lightning owner Jeff Vinik also participated in the round, which was joined by all existing investors.
To date, Bridge Connector has raised $45.5 million.
Bridge Connector provides a suite of vendor-agnostic integration solutions and a full-service delivery model, helping health care vendors, providers, and payers more easily share data between disparate systems, such as electronic health records or patient engagement solutions.
“The lack of integration in health care has resulted in care teams relying on antiquated technology like fax machines to relay mission-critical information,” said CEO and co-founder David Wenger, in announcing the raise. “In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has never been clearer that this inability to share patient data between health care technology vendors creates dangerous care gaps that can mean the difference between life and death for some patients. Bridge Connector is building an ecosystem of connected solutions that is solving this problem.”
Founded in 2017, the company now employs about 165 people, said Wenger, in an interview with South Florida Tech. That’s up from just 25 employees two years ago. Coming off 2019 with 1,000% growth, Wenger said the company’s revenues nearly doubled during the COVID-19 pandemic. Bridge Connector has also added 40 employees since the pandemic’s spread in the U.S., Wenger said.
The company moved its headquarters to the healthcare hub of Nashville last year, but still has offices in Palm Beach Gardens, said Wenger, a serial entrepreneur was raised in Palm Beach County and previously ran a marketing and advertising agency before founding Bridge Connector. Wenger and much of the executive team are based in Palm Beach County. Bridge Connector recently hired a president, who is also based in Palm Beach County.
The new funding will further support the company’s scale-up as well as the growth of Destinations, a new integration-platform-as-a-service that connects health data systems using use-case-based interoperability blueprints to speed integrations with major vendors.
“We believed strongly in Bridge Connector’s mission to improve interoperability in health care when we made our seed investment, and they’ve exceeded all of our expectations along the way,” said Jenkins, who has participated in every funding round. “With the company on track for 800 to 1000% growth in 2020, we are eager to see how our continued investment will help Bridge Connector impact the industry and create a health care system that works better for patients.”
Stay tuned for a Member Spotlight coming soon with more about Bridge Connector.