St. Louis, Missouri — Advanced ICU Care Inc. has received a $2 million equity investment for its intensive care telemedicine services, according to a regulatory filing.
The company contracts with community hospitals to provide remote staffing coverage to intensive care units from its St. Louis headquarters. Advanced ICU Care provides care via what’s known as telemedicine–cameras, patient data and real-time videoconferencing technology that connects the company’s health providers to patients and on-site clinicians at hospitals across the country.
The company will use the new funding to expand its sales and marketing efforts and help new clients finance the start-up costs of implementing Advanced ICU’s technology, CEO Dr. Mary Jo Gorman said.
Most of Advanced ICU’s clients are understaffed, mid-size community hospitals with between 150 and 400 beds, Gorman said. Those hospitals typically rely on pulmonologists to staff their ICUs, Gorman said. The company’s clients include hospitals in Weston, Wisc.; Fort Wayne, Ind.; Boise, Idaho; and La Grande, Ore. Advanced ICU’s services help clients reduce costs and improve patient outcomes, Gorman said.
Advanced ICU employs about 60 physician “intensivists” and clinical nurses at its St. Louis headquarters. At any one time, about six to eight are working, Gorman said. The company uses telemedicine software developed by Baltimore-based Visicu, whose technology combines clinical management software with patient data and video feeds.
Including the recent $2 million fund-raise, Advanced ICU has garnered about $12 million in funding since its 2004 inception, Gorman said.
Earlier this year, the Cleveland Clinic’s emerging business department said it was considering starting a telemedicine-ICU service.
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.
