Apixio's $13.5M round shows the growing importance of big data in health care

Medicare rolls are swelling and the Affordable Care Act is bringing more people under the umbrella of insurance coverage. As a result, medical groups and health plans have an ever-more pressing need to predict the costs of care.

San Mateo, Calif.-based Apixio wants to fill that need by crunching a lot of existing clinical data, providing healthcare organizations with the intel they need to accurately estimate patient risk. That enables providers to more accurately (and profitably) bill for their services.

Apixio says it uses natural language processing and machine learning to make sense of a mountain of unstructured data.

Bain Capital Ventures and a group of Silicon Valley angel investors are getting behind the concept by infusing Apixio with $13.5 million in new capital. The new capital brings Apixio’s investment total up to $22.6 million.

“The proceeds will be used to ramp up our sales and operations in support of the strong growth we are experiencing in our risk adjustment business,” said Shawn Dastmalchi, CEO and co-founder of Apixio, in a statement. “We also intend to further develop our Big Data technology and to build on our vision to provide analytic solutions that power value-based care.”

Apixio was founded in 2009 and raised $500,000 from undisclosed investors that year.