Healthfinch, which owns the prescription refill application Swoop, has landed $7.5 million in its first round of funding to bankroll the development of its new practice automation platform "Charlie."

Investment firm Adams Street Partners led the funding, with participation from JumpStart Ventures, Chicago Ventures, OCA Ventures, Abundant Ventures and a private investor.

This funding round takes healthfinch's total raised to more than $10 million since the company, founded by CEO Jonathan Baran and Chief Medical Officer Lyle Berkowitz, launched in 2011.

"The rapid adoption and demand from health systems for Swoop is a clear indication that automating routine and repeatable tasks is the future of healthcare delivery,” said Baran in a statement. “To this end, we're moving beyond individual applications in favor of a robust practice automation platform that can handle many more tasks beyond prescription refill requests including visit planning, patient communication and much more."  

Investment firms such as Adams Street Partners have been quick to recognize healthfinch's vision and its ability to execute for customers, said Tom Bremner, partner at Adams Street, in a statement.

"Healthfinch represents a very strategic and promising addition to our investment portfolio,” he said, “They have what we deem to be a winning trifecta: strong clinical and executive leadership, a compelling product roadmap that will bring clear value to the healthcare system, and most importantly, clients who have been using healthfinch products to achieve up to 5X efficiency and financial ROI."

Baran and his executive team, including Chief Operating Officer Sanaz Cordes, and Chief Technology Officer Jonathan Broad, will use Series A funds to add to their technical and clinical teams to accelerate development of the Charlie platform and expedite delivery to health systems, they said.

Baran first made his pitch for automating physician tasks in September 2012 at athenahealth’s annual MDP (More Disruption Please) Conference in Northport, Maine.

"Half of all primary care physicians are burnt out," Baron told the audience. "So this is on us” to "automate and delegate."

“We’re burning out the doctors. And we can’t have happy patients and good health systems if we don’t have happy providers, said Cordez, speaking at the Venture+ Forum at HIMSS15.

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