Big Bet on FHIR Paying Off for Smile CDR

Smile CDR has built a clinical data repository that is completely based on the HL7 FHIR standard. The founders bet their entire company on this standard and that bet is paying off. The company has grown from 5 employees to over 250 in just a few years and recently closed a $20 Million Series A.

Healthcare IT Today sat down with Duncan Weatherston, CEO of Smile CDR, just ahead of their appearance at the #HLTH2021 conference down in Boston. We wanted to find out more about the company and their solution that lets health systems, payers and hospitals store and share information quickly and securely through APIs.

Company Growth

Smile CDR was founded only five years ago, in Toronto. In those early years they bootstrapped their way to success and grew the company smartly. They now have over 250 employees across multiple office locations. Their impressive client base stretches across 17 countries and includes organizations like Change Healthcare, Highmark, LabCorp, and an organization near and dear to my heart – the Government of Canada.

In August 2021, the company closed $20 Million in Series A growth capital led by 30 North Group, a Seattle-based family office and UPMC Enterprises. The funds will bolster the Smile CDRs sales and marketing efforts as well as supporting new client implementations.

Raising funds is never easy, but Weatherson said that it was “a remarkably pleasant experience” and credits a roster of enthusiastic early adopters who bought into the vision of a standards-based approach to healthcare data sharing.

Meeting the Need

Weatherston believes that healthcare, as an industry, is recognizing the need to be able to use information more effectively, and the legacy tools currently in use are a limiting factor.

Smile CDR can help healthcare organizations better leverage their information.

“When we are successful, you won’t have to have a different tool for each environment,” said Weatherston. “Every application will support an open standard and getting the data will be easy. You’ll be able to take advantage of the myriad of systems in your environment and deploy applications rapidly and effectively.”

To achieve that goal, the information must first be in a standard format that can be easily accessed.

“Most of our clients put their data into our database,” continued Weatherston. “We process that data on the way in and on the way out to normalize and make it available in whatever format they need.”

Earlier in 2021, Smile CDR became the first company to receive the Drummond Group Payer and Patient Access FHIR API Certification – which means their platform is fully compliant with the HL7 U.S. Drug Formulary FHIR Implementation Guide referenced in the Patient Access API requirements of the CMS Final Rule.

Passionate about FHIR

It was abundantly clear from the interview that Weatherston is enthusiastic and passionate about FHIR. He strongly encourages everyone to read up on the latest HL7 FHIR news and to explore the work being done on the DaVinci Project.

“I’m astonished and in awe of all the work done by communities like the DaVinci Project and others. It’s absolutely transformative and it’s going to take healthcare out of the doldrums and into an exciting future.”

Watch the full interview to learn:

  • How the info block rule is impacting the adoption of FHIR
  • What Weatherston thinks about the current state of healthcare innovation in Canada
  • What Smile CDR is working on next

For more information visit https://www.smilecdr.com/

Listen and subscribe to the Healthcare IT Today Interviews Podcast to hear all the latest insights from experts in healthcare IT.

And for an exclusive look at our top storiessubscribe to our newsletter.

Tell us what you think. Contact us here or on Twitter at @hcitoday. And if you’re interested in advertising with us, check out our various advertising packages and request our Media Kit.

About the author

Colin Hung

Colin Hung is the co-founder of the #hcldr (healthcare leadership) tweetchat one of the most popular and active healthcare social media communities on Twitter. Colin speaks, tweets and blogs regularly about healthcare, technology, marketing and leadership. He is currently an independent marketing consultant working with leading healthIT companies. Colin is a member of #TheWalkingGallery. His Twitter handle is: @Colin_Hung.

   

Categories