Heritage Group announced this month the closing of its latest Healthcare Innovation Fund, backed by 15 leading healthcare organizations, at $220 million.

Heritage, which invests in companies focused on building technologies to address the most pressing challenges in healthcare, beat its original fund target by $20 million and its prior Healthcare Innovation Fund by more than $50 million.

Founded in 1986, Heritage Group is a private investment firm headed by Managing Directors Rock Morphis, David McClellan and Paul Wallace. The partners have collectively invested more than $1 billion in more than 100 companies over 30 years.

Among Heritage investors are national leaders in the payer, provider, IT and service sectors of healthcare, including:

Adventist Health System in Florida
Amedisys in Louisiana;
Cardinal Health in Ohio
Cerner Corp., in Missouri;
Community Health Systems in Tennessee;
Health Care Service Corporation in Illinois
Horizon Healthcare Services in New Jersey
Intermountain Healthcare in Utah
LifePoint Health in Tennessee
Memorial Hermann Health System in Texas
Sutter Health in California
Tenet Health in Texas
Trinity Health in Michigan and
UnityPoint Health in Iowa.

The provider investors operate more than 550 hospitals with 90,000 beds, and employ approximately 600,000 people combined. The payers cover more than 20 million lives under a number of health plans, deliver pharmaceuticals and medical products to more than 100,000 locations daily, and generate revenues of almost $300 billion.

"The structure and processes at Heritage have provided us with a unique opportunity to lend our expertise and help change our industry for the better," said Dennis Laraway, CFO at Memorial Hermann, in a statement. “We're currently working with several portfolio companies as a result of this model."

Sharecare, a digital health and wellness engagement platform that became part of the Heritage portfolio in 2013, has grown rapidly since Heritage's investment, for instance.

"We were very pleased to receive an investment from Heritage Group and for the strategic engagement thereafter, which has led to partnerships with several of the Fund's Limited Partners," said Jeff Arnold, CEO at Sharecare, in a statement.

Data analytics company Explorys is another example of Heritage creating both financial and strategic value. With the assistance of its strategic investors, Heritage was able to identify and evaluate Explorys, leading to an investment in 2012. Explorys subsequently secured enterprise contracts with two Heritage Limited Partners, dramatically increasing revenue. Last year, Explorys was acquired by IBM to complement and strengthen its Watson Health Cloud platform.

"Our partnership with Heritage was a critical component of the growth and success that ultimately led to our acquisition," said Steve McHale, CEO of Explorys.