Venture capital funds from Google and Salesforce led the seed investment round for newly launched startup Florence, a software company aimed at hospital emergency rooms.
Florence said it received $20 million in funding from a series of high-profile technology investors on Thursday morning. Along with Google and Salesforce, initial investors included Thrive Capital, Vast Ventures, BoxGroup and Atento Capital.
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Florence has developed an intake application that patients can complete in the emergency waiting room. It also has prescription coordination and discharge applications. Florence founder and CEO Aniq Rahman said receiving funding from GV (Google Ventures) and Salesforce Ventures at the seed round was a nice show of faith from the big tech companies.
"You usually see like GV, Thrive Capital and especially Salesforce coming in at the Series B or C rounds. They'll write $100 million checks," Rahman said. "It's nice to be able to work with partners that can really support us throughout the journey."
Rahman said the company’s goal is to make patient experiences more digital and consumer friendly, which he said is necessary for health systems competing against new entrants.
“It used to be that your competition was the hospital on the other side of town. Now it's Amazon, Ro, Hims [and Hers], CVS, Walgreens, Walmart, Best Buy, [and] Dollar General," said Rahman, who previously was president of ad measurement software company Moat, which Oracle acquired in 2017 for $850 million.
Rahman said Florence has been operating quietly the last two years. The company has about 70 employees, he said.
Florence will integrate its applications into provider workflows and electronic health record systems. It has already integrated with EHRs from Epic, Cerner, Athenahealth and Meditech, Rahman said.
This story first appeared in Digital Health Business & Technology.
