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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowHorror stories from doctors and other health care providers prompted Dave Wortman to start Diagnotes, a company whose technology helps users such as hospitals, health systems and physician practices manage patient-related communications while adhering to federal privacy guidelines.
Now, Diagnotes has the financial backing of doctors.
AngelBom—the 6-month-old chapter of the angel investment group VisionTech Partners—has invested between $50,000 and $100,000 in the Indianapolis-based tech company.
AngelBom is composed of alumni of the IU Kelley School of Business’ Business of Medicine Program and this is the group’s first investment, although some of its members also have put money into Boosterville, a fundraising connection between businesses and charitable causes.
Wortman, Diagnotes’ chairman and CEO, said the investment from AngelBom came as part of a larger round of fundraising from several local investment groups.
“AngelBom was an important piece of bringing it all together,” he said. “Having a group of physicians make an investment in a company like Diagnotes adds to the validation that the problem that we’re solving and the approach to solving it has merit. Seeing the others who are invested in the company is something that any new investor will look at.”
Ben Pidgeon, VisionTech’s executive director, said AngelBom’s members were impressed by Diagnotes’ management team, the technology the company had developed and its early growth.
AngelBom, which takes its name from “business of medicine,” was formed to help its members invest wisely in medical-related startups. The group has heard pitches from six companies in the first six months and has two more scheduled for April. He said AngelBom expects to invest in two more companies in the next month.
Pidgeon said AngelBom now has 12 members and hopes to be at 20 by the end of the year, and he hopes the group will have a portfolio of $5 million invested in about 20 companies within five years.
He said having a chapter of doctors—AngelBom is VisionTech’s sixth investor group—has benefited the startups seeking funding. “There’s some advantage to knowing if doctors said yes—or if they said no,” he said.
The participants in VisionTech and AngelBom also are helping each other.
“The members of AngelBom rely on VisionTech as a whole to validate some of the other opportunities—mainly technology—but VisionTech members also rely on AngelBom because of their breadth of knowledge within the healthcare industry,” Pidgeon said. “It’s a great way to leverage the two areas of business and medicine.”
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