Athenahealth expanding accelerator program

Cloud-based EHR vendor athenahealth is expanding its More Disruption Please accelerator with investments in two new companies and the opening of a new location in San Francisco.

The Mass.-based company also will partner with the Health Information Trust Network (HITRUST) to offer its accelerator companies “verified security assessments” on HIPAA compliance and other regulatory matters.

The two new companies each received investments of about $250,000 and are based in the company’s Boston accelerator. One is CredSimple, a startup focused on medical credentialing for hospitals and payers that automates verification of provider qualifications. The other, RubiconMD, is a medical referral company that connects primary care physicians with specialist expertise at the point of care via remote consults.

RubiconMD recently raised a total of $1.3 million, including the investment from athenahealth.

The More Disruption San Francisco accelerator is now accepting applications from Bay Area mid-stage healthcare startups that will share the new athenahealth office space in the city’s tech hot spot South of Market district.

Athenahealth also plans to roll out co-working space in which non-portfolio companies can rent space in Boston, San Francisco, “and potentially other athenahealth office locations,” according to a release.

The company hopes its partnership with HITRUST will lower the barriers of entry for health IT startups. The network will provide accelerator companies with data security risk assessments, through its Common Security Framework, that will be subsidized by athenahealth.

The More Disruption Please accelerator was started in 2010 and its network includes 2,500 members.

Beth Walsh,

Editor

Editor Beth earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and master’s in health communication. She has worked in hospital, academic and publishing settings over the past 20 years. Beth joined TriMed in 2005, as editor of CMIO and Clinical Innovation + Technology. When not covering all things related to health IT, she spends time with her husband and three children.

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