San Francisco-based Ooda Health, a new startup focused on decreasing waste and inefficiency in the area of healthcare administration, has raised $40.5 million in a Series A round that’s notable in a couple of ways: for one, the company’s veteran founders, including Castlight Health founder Dr. Giovanni Colella, chose to work exclusively with VCs with at least one woman partner. For another, the round includes an impressive lineup of strategic health insurance partners.
Oak HC/FT and DFJ led the round. The lineup of strategic partners includes Anthem, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona, Blue Shield of California, Zaffre Investments (a subsidiary of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts), Dignity Health, and Hill Physicians.
“We co-founded Ooda Health with this amazing team because, having worked with them before, we knew they were the right entrepreneurs to bring groundbreaking innovation to healthcare payments," Annie Lamont, cofounder and managing partner at Oak HC/FT, said in a statement. “We could not be more thrilled to be backing this mission, company and team.”
According to CNBC, Lamont also led a $2 million seed round for the company prior to this series A,
Colella and Lamont cofounded the company with Seth Cohen, former VP of sales and alliances at Castlight, and Usama Fayyad, who formerly served as chief data officer at Yahoo!. In addition to Castlight, one of the first digital health companies to go public, Colella also founded RelayHealth, which he sold to McKesson in 2006.
With Ooda, the three are tackling waste in healthcare administration.
“As consumers, we are accustomed to easy, near-instant transactions,” Cohen said in a statement. “But in healthcare, administration is time-consuming and expensive. Ooda brings the digital DNA and technological capabilities to enable payers and providers to collaborate and mutually benefit from the efficiencies of a faster, more dynamic healthcare payment system.”
Ooda Health’s vision is to use technology to connect the healthcare consumer, payer, and provider, creating a consumer experience that’s more like other retail transactions and a more collaborative, efficient back-end communication between payers and providers.
“Ooda Health will simplify and automate claims processing to create a real-time payment model,” said Colella said. “This will give providers more time to focus on delivering quality care, rather than payment administration and financial management.”
