Providence Spins Out Praia Health with $20M in Oversubscribed Series A Funding

SEATTLE, April 2, 2024 — Praia Health, a newly formed digital health company, today announced the closing of a $20 million oversubscribed Series A financing led by Frist Cressey Ventures and backed by SignalFire, Epsilon Health Investors and Providence Ventures. The funding will bolster the platform’s ability to revolutionize the delivery of individualized health solutions at scale, enabling digitally driven health system transformation.

“Praia Health represents our dedication to support both our patients and caregivers, bringing identity- driven personalization to the communities we serve,” said Rod Hochman, M.D., president and CEO of Providence. “Through our incubation model, we have been able to create solutions that uniquely benefit our patients and caregivers.”

The new company is led by health care industry and startup veteran Justin Dearborn who has been serving as executive-in-residence within the Providence Digital Innovation Group (DIG) since September 2023. The Praia Health platform is the fourth incubated technology at DIG under the leadership of Sara Vaezy, Providence’s chief strategy and digital officer. Navid Farzad a partner at Frist Cressey, Yuanling Yuan a partner at SignalFire, and Vaezy, have joined Dearborn on Praia Health’s Board of Directors.

“At Frist Cressey Ventures, we are committed to identifying companies with potential to revolutionize the health care landscape,” stated Senator Bill Frist, M.D., co-founder and partner of FCV. “Praia’s adoption of the digital flywheel concept showcases a commitment to dynamic, consumer-centric engagement that closely aligns with our mission of fostering innovation and driving positive change in health care.”

Community Health Network, an Indiana-based health system focused on putting patients first while offering a full continuum of health care services, world-class innovations and a focus on population health management, recently licensed the Praia Health Consumer Platform for implementation in 2024.

“Praia Health will enable us to remove the traditional barriers to patient care by personalizing individuals' health journeys and seamlessly connecting them to the right services, products and resources—in an automated way,” says Patrick McGill, M.D., EVP and chief transformation officer of Community Health Network. “Praia Health is a game-changer, enabling us to better serve our patients, our partners, and our caregivers through digital transformation.”

Through its low-code ecosystem enablement capabilities, the Praia Health platform transforms the way third-party consumer solutions can be incorporated into a health system’s digital experience. Praia Health securely manages the data exchange between the solution, the health system’s electronic medical record solution, and other health system data sources, increasing the flexibility and speed of third-party integration, while dramatically reducing its cost.

Sixteen digital health partners have joined the Praia Health Ecosystem Partner program, including Atlas Health, Cedar, DexCare, Foodsmart, Fortuna Health, Kyruus Health, Livara Health, Medbridge, Modivcare, Omada Health, Rosarium Health, Season Health, Vale Health, Wellthy, Wildflower Health, and Xealth. As Praia’s Health’s clinical integration partner, Xealth enables digital solutions to be incorporated into the clinician experience and brings over 50+ additional connected digital health partners into the Praia Health ecosystem. In addition, Praia Health has secured Panda Health, the Avia Marketplace, Xealth, and West Monroe as channel partners for the platform.

“Partnerships and cross-industry collaboration are new imperatives for health systems, and an open, efficient platform for data sharing and consumer engagement is a prerequisite that hasn’t existed,” Dearborn said. “There is deep value associated with streamlining the delivery of the broad spectrum of consumer facing solutions that a health system wants to deploy today—both operationally and from a patient and caregiver satisfaction perspective. We’re excited to see that both health systems and digital health solution companies are already recognizing the value as well.”

Envisioned and incubated at Providence, Praia Health has been in use at Providence since January of 2022 and currently supports more than 3.5 million users accounts. With robust and novel identity and personalization technology at its core, Praia Health is the driving force behind Providence’s logged-in digital experiences which offer digital self-serve and navigation capabilities, care options including on-demand virtual care and individualized program, service and resource recommendations.

“The Providence incubation model has some incredible advantages—enabling us to prove out the technology in a real-world setting and work alongside other health systems and technology partners during the incubation process," Vaezy said. "I’m thrilled with our remarkable funding partners who will help us as we move forward to drive transformation and impact at scale.”

About Praia Health

Incubated at Providence, one of the nation’s largest and most innovative health systems, Praia Health™ is a modern, consumer platform for health systems that is revolutionizing the delivery of individualized health solutions and scale, enabling health system transformation through digital. For more information about Praia Health, visit praiahealth.com and follow us on LinkedIn.

About Frist Cressey Ventures

Frist Cressey Ventures (FCV) is a leading healthcare venture capital firm focused on accelerating the growth of high potential healthcare companies through value-added partnerships. Our mission is simple: to transform healthcare to improve lives. We invest in early-stage startups that build technology or services that advance quality of care, system integration, patient outcomes, affordability, and access. To learn more about Frist Cressey Ventures, visit our website at www.fcventures.com.

About Providence

Providence is a not-for-profit Catholic health system and one of the nation’s largest health systems, comprising a diverse family of organizations and driven by a belief that health is a human right. With 51 hospitals, over 1,000 physician clinics, senior services, supportive housing, and many other health and educational services, the health system and its partners employ more than 120,000 caregivers serving communities across seven states – Alaska, California, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas, and Washington, with system offices in Renton, Wash., and Irvine, Calif. Learn about our vision of health for a better world at Providence.org.