Investing in Canvas Medical: Reimagining the EMR for the future of healthcare
Canvas Medical is reimagining the electronic medical record (EMR) system for the future of healthcare with its digital health developer platform. Canvas enables startups and established healthcare providers alike to launch new patient experiences and business models faster.
We are thrilled to announce that M13 is leading Canvas Medical’s $24M Series B alongside previous investors including Inspired Capital, IA Ventures, and Upfront Ventures. In addition to this funding, Canvas Medical has achieved ONC certification, which allows Canvas customers to be fully reimbursed in value-based models with Medicare and Medicaid.
Canvas provides a full-stack ambulatory EMR and digital health developer platform, enabling startups and established healthcare providers alike to launch new patient experiences and business models faster. Canvas is built for two key stakeholders: developers and care teams. A better developer experience enables a modern and intuitive user experience for care teams. This functionality – coupled with Canvas’ narrative charting approach – reduces administrative burden and drives better patient outcomes.
Our investment in Canvas is predicated on a few simple principles:
Regulatory changes and consumer preferences post the pandemic will spur new digital care models from both new and established healthcare providers. These models require better software that allows customization tailored to specific populations.
This software will be built by an influx of developers entering the healthcare sector who will work closely alongside clinicians. Both developers and clinicians prefer a modern EMR that facilitates more time spent on patient care, and Canvas is the only EMR that comes close to enabling developers to build their software around care delivery. Canvas will become a driving force behind attracting and retaining top talent across the industry.
Value Based Care (VBC) reimbursement models, especially ones focused on serving medicare and medicaid populations, will rely on solutions like Canvas to build complex rules around patient care.
Healthcare innovation requires a modern EMR system
We are coming off a record breaking year of tech-enabled healthcare funding to support innovative and complex care models. 2021 was the largest healthcare fundraising year ever, partially due to the pandemic bringing the need for digital care delivery to the forefront.
With new healthtech entrants coming to market daily and established players committed to innovation, we believe these new healthcare companies require a modern platform partner to build better care.
Healthcare delivery by nature has to be highly personalized and a wide variety of care models exist, each with a focus on a variety of conditions, patients, care providers, reimbursement methods, ect. A product with a static feature set is unscalable and stands in the way of care model innovation, retention of clinicians and attracting developer talent. Canvas is building tools and building blocks for developers to customize and configure their platform to serve each bespoke care model. That is why we believe Canvas is setting the foundation of future healthcare infrastructure.
Purpose built for clinicians and developers
Developers love building with Canvas
As investors, we have observed software developers entering the healthcare industry which lacks a modern infrastructure on which to innovate. In an increasingly competitive hiring market, we believe that companies building on Canvas will have a recruiting and retention advantage.
Developers can leverage the Canvas console, APIs and SDKs to build unique care workflows and clinical decision support for the care team. For example, a mental health company might encode customized care journeys in the following ways:
If a patient answers that they feel depressed on an intake questionnaire then prompt a mental health diagnosis assessment.
If a particular diagnosis is confirmed, a customized medication protocol is prompted. Ability to program cost stewardship for high cost intervention.
If this diagnosis requires additional members of the care team to engage (i.e. therapists, mental health coaches, ect.), then automatically delegate tasks to defined teams.
Reducing clinicians’ administrative burden
Clinicians are not shy about their frustration with the archaic and non-intuitive existing EMR options. Canvas’s platform is bringing user-centric workflow development to the medical field, which has long been plagued by software that was not built with physicians in mind. For care teams, that means no switching screens, no searching through dozens of tabs and no scrolling through drop-down menus.
Canvas has revolutionized documentation with its Narrative Charting approach, which is 3x faster with 80% fewer clicks than traditional EMRs while reducing duplicate workflow and collecting structured data. The Canvas system is purpose-built to reduce a clinician’s cognitive burden and enables them to spend more time on patient care.
Enabling the rise of value based care models
Although prior to the pandemic less than 20% of Medicare spending was in VBC contracts, CMS has announced it wants to move 100% of Medicare providers into two-sided risk arrangements by 2025. In addition, CMS wants 50% of Medicaid and commercial contracts in VBC models by 2025. Canvas customers can now be fully reimbursed in federal value-based payment models and are therefore well-positioned to serve risk bearing models.
Value based care models require individualized treatment approaches and protocols for each patient subpopulation. Canvas’s suite of products and their ability to customize workflows and interfaces, allows them to embrace the complexity of value based care delivery and facilitate cost savings.
Andrew Hines, Founder and CEO of Canvas Medical, saw first hand his wife’s struggle with EMR systems as a nurse practitioner and was inspired to build a better solution. He has both the engineering background and experience working with healthcare technology to transform the massive $30B+ EMR market.
To Andrew, and the entire Canvas team: thank you for partnering with us, and we are excited to be on this journey together.
