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Robert Palmer was introduced to Austin in 2014, when he attended SXSW. A year later, he is on a panel that's part of the festival’s first ever SX Health and MedTech Expo — an indication that his startup is on to something special.
Founded in 2010, PotentiaMetrics provides data and analytical tools to health care institutions, medtech companies and patients, enabling them to better predict the clinical and financial impact of a given treatment or a medical device. Now, the startup has raised $625,000 of a planned $750,000 financing from five investors.
Palmer, president and CEO of PotentiaMetrics, joined three peers on a panel to lead the “Personalized, Predictive Outcomes Empower Patients” discussion, which took place March 17.
“All of us on the panel agree the future of medicine is to get it personalized,” Palmer said.
Indeed, personalized medicine, sometimes called precision medicine, is PotentiaMetric’s primary focus, Palmer said.
The company, which Palmer said aims to close a Series B round of $10 million by next quarter, offers three software products. PotentiaMED is used by clinicians and patients to determine the best treatment course for an illness, usually focused on cancer or cardiac surgery. PotentiaFIT is designed for medtech companies to appropriately assess the effect their devices have on one’s fitness and wellness. PotentiaPRO is a product tailored for professional sports teams and leagues.
Palmer, who is president of PotentiaMED, said “shared decision making” is the key to everything his company does.
“The critical factor in everything we do is we have to return something that’s different or unknown previously, allowing patients and individuals to access information and make more informed decisions,” he said. “The notion of the product is not to replace a physician or even give clinical advice. Those decisions are so complex and multidimensional, there’s never one answer.”
The problem, Palmer said, is that treatment plans are often too generic. Cancer treatments, he explained, are based largely on the results from clinical studies that analyze only five percent of adult cancer patients.
“What we’re seeing with outcomes is that roughly 50 percent of treatments for cancer are not effective and are potentially harmful.”
Rather than leave clinicians to make decisions based on data with a limited-scope, the team at PotentiaMetrics — a 20-person group of clinicians, bio-statisticians, epidemiologists, and data and analytics experts — enables clinicians and patients to make informed-decisions based on relevant data collected from institutions across the country.
PotentiaMetrics works with more than a dozen institutions. Its first paying customer came in 2010. Palmer said the company charges by subscription for the SaaS products, and he said the services cost between the high six to low seven figures.
The company is partners with the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, where PotentiaMetrics originated. More than 10 years worth of research and development went into the tools, most of which came from — and some continues to come from — an office at the school. Palmer moved the company to Austin in 2014, looking for a tech-centered city where the PotentiaMetrics team could network with more customers, be them clinicians or medtech companies.
Ultimately, the team at PotentiaMetrics — which Palmer hopes will double by next year — aims to improve lives, and it believes more personalized, educated treatments and devices could achieve that goal.
“Patients who are more informed can have deeper and more meaningful conversations with their treating clinicians to make the best decision for them based on their goals and their values."
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