Health IT company Explorys has been selected as Startup of the Year in MedCity Media’s first annual “The Cities” awards honoring the best, brightest and most innovative in Cleveland’s healthcare scene. The Startup of the Year award recognizes a young medical company with a unique solution that has shown through a major accomplishment its high-impact potential to medicine.
The Cleveland-based company knows data, or as its executives like to say, “Big Data.” Explorys has started a Google-like service that helps researchers analyze in real-time information culled from troves of electronic medical records (EMRs). The idea is that medical researchers can mine the vast amounts of data to learn how variations in treatment can affect outcomes, uncovering best practices to enhance patient care and lower costs. The company’s technology was developed by a physician formerly at the Cleveland Clinic, which is an Explorys investor.
As part of the so-called Big Data movement — a term that refers to the analysis of large data sets — Explorys has positioned itself in a high-growth industry that federal officials say has the potential to revolutionize healthcare in America.
“I think we’re a next-generation company like Google and Facebook with a really important mission,” CEO Steve McHale said.
Launched just two years ago, Explorys has already made impressive progress — raising $15 million in investment funding and growing to 25 employees. But what makes Explorys so promising is that it’s only just begun. The company plans to employ 100 by the end of next year. McHale dreams of an initial public offering, which would represent a huge milestone for the company — though that’s at least several years away — as well as a day when the company employs as many as 1,000 people.
“We have attracted the best people and they truly live our mission of ‘improving healthcare through the use of Big Data,'” McHale said.
For Explorys, bigger certainly is better. As more medical records are loaded into its database, the stronger the conclusions researchers are able to draw from that data. In a short time, the company has inked deals with six U.S. health systems ranging from the East Coast to the Midwest to the West Coast. Earlier this summer, Explorys scored a big win when it added California-based St. Joseph Health System to its network.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
McHale listed attracting prominent health system clients like St. Joseph and MedStar Health in Maryland as Explorys’ top recent accomplishments.
McHale and Explorys cofounder Charlie Lougheed have tasted success before. The partners sold their previous company, Everstream, for $15 million. That proven track record no doubt gives investors confidence that Explorys will be another lucrative success story.
“We believe Cleveland is a great place to build a disruptive company like Explorys,” McHale said.
