A young cloud-based EHR company in Florida is getting some serious venture capital cash after IBM announced it was making an investment move. 

 

The Boca Raton, Florida-based Modernizing Medicine will receive from IBM an undisclosed investment that caps $20 million in Series D cash secured by the company, now totaling $49 million. The investment, as IBM officials see it, will enable Modernizing Medicine to grow its market for eight medical specialities, as well as build upon its current platforms -- one of them being its Electronic Medical Assistant cloud-based EMR. 

 

Another of those platforms of focus will be the company's mobile application schEMA, powered by IBM's Watson, an app that allows for real-time clinical decision support. 

 

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Officials say the app, which Modernizing Medicine first introduced for dermatology, will be developed for use in other medical specialities, allowing clinicians to ask questions in natural language about symptoms and treatments and subsequently receive real-time, evidence-based responses. 

 

To date, some 5,000 physicians in the U.S. are using the company's platform. 

 

"Modernizing Medicine is a great example of the breakthrough innovation we have seen from our partners who are building a new class of cognitive computing solutions powered by Watson," said Stephen Gold, vice president of IBM Watson, in a March 19 press statement announcing the investment. The money, he added, "will help speed the introduction of their schEMA app and demonstrates how Watson can be used by medical professionals to improve how they practice evidence-based medicine."

 

[See also: IBM, Epic unite for massive DoD contract.]

 

Seeing as Modernizing Medicine was just last year asked to leverage Watson through schEMA, they are "honored" by IBM's decision to invest, said Daniel Cane, the company's co-founder and CEO. The "announcement is an exciting milestone in our journey to deliver specialty-specific solutions to healthcare providers, including an entirely new class of cognitive-infused patient care apps powered by Watson."

 

IBM's Watson unit, a $1 billion investment initiative launched early last year to spur cloud-based cognitive computing platforms, was not the first group to offer venture capital to the Florida-based company. Just last November, Summit Partners and Pentland Group help the company close on $15 million of funding.