Mayo Clinic physicians spin out a digital health company & secure $1.1M

A group of physicians from the Mayo Clinic have teamed up with Silicon Valley investors to launch a startup.

The new entity, dubbed Ambient Clinical Analytics, raised $1.1 million in funding. The funding came from many of the usual suspects in digital health: The Social+Capital Partnership, accelerator program Rock Health, and Mayo Clinic, along with some unnamed Silicon Valley venture capitalists. Halle Tecco, cofounder of Rock Health, said she’s long been impressed with the Mayo Clinic’s “entrepreneurial spirit.” Ambient Clinical is “a product of that,” she told VentureBeat via email.

Ambient Clinical Analytics also named technology veteran Al Berning as its chief executive officer.

Ambient Clinical sells a suite of technologies previously used by doctors at Mayo, including patient management and clinical support tools. The company will focus on building technology for the ICUs, operating rooms, and emergency departments at hospitals. One example is a surveillance alerts system that triggers physicians when a patient is at high risk for life-threatening conditions like sepsis. This “Septic Shock Sniffer” tool is already patent-protected.

Ambient Clinical is designed for smartphone- and tablet-wielding physicians. The technology can easily connect patients’ data with a mobile device. Another popular tool, AWARE, which stands for “ambient warning and response evaluation,” is an electronic medical record tool that uses analytics to filter the most relevant medical information.

“The impetus behind creating AWARE was that I would arrive in the ICU and spend the first hours just coming to terms with basic patient facts,” said Brian Pickering, one of the physicians who helped start Ambient Clinical, in a statement.

“Other physicians face the same situation. By applying technology to this situation, we found a way to hit the ground running. The application was designed to make transitions of care safer and more efficient.”

Ambient Clinical Analytics will be exhibiting at healthcare IT conference HIMSS in Orlando, Florida this month.