Seven engineers from Madison, Wisconsin, all of them former employees of healthcare EHR giant Epic Systems, have landed $3.5 million for their software company Redox. It's their first round of venture funding.

Boston-based .406 Ventures led this Series A round of funding with participation from Flybridge Capital Partners and HealthX Ventures.

Luke Bonney and Niko Skievaski founded Redox in 2014.

The Epic alumni who run Redox are aggressive about interoperability, and they claim it's easier to achieve than it seems. They call it "turnkey interoperability."

Rightly or wrongly, their former employer, Epic Systems, has oft been criticized for lacking interoperability. The company has defended itself, pointing out that it has long supported HL7 standards and interfaces as well as other transaction standards. But the critics persists.

[See also: Epic defends interoperability bona fides.]

Redox, though, is focused on its engine.

"Redox empowers innovation through EHR interoperability," executives claim on their website, which features the Redox Engine.

"The Redox Engine is a new type of interface engine that allows you to easily share data with any application or affiliated health system you choose," they write.

They say Redox provides health systems with a platform that acts as a single access point for all cloud-based applications, providing access controls and monitoring while eliminating integrations.

[See also: Interoperability: Just ahead or still far off?.]

Redox APIs and implementation services make it possible for cloud-based vendors to sell to health systems and focus on developing their applications, they say. More than 120 applications currently use Redox as an integration partner.

"We all used to work at Epic, where we did everything from software development to implementation, integration and optimization," the team writes on its website. "We've designed Redox to help health systems manage integrations and modernize EHR interoperability. We love this stuff."

Redox is the first investment for HealthX Ventures, which was started by Mark Bakken, co-founder of Nordic Consulting, an Epic consulting firm. HealthX Ventures is planning to raise $30 million in investment funds, it stated in a federal securities filing this past September.