Simply seven months after rising from stealth, Plenful, a San Francisco-based pharmacy automation startup, accomplished a $17 million Sequence A funding spherical. The spherical, introduced Thursday, brings the corporate's complete fundraising complete to greater than $25 million thus far.

Plenful's expertise is designed to automate the handbook and administrative duties that burden pharmacists and pharmacy technicians. This expertise got here to market at an essential time: pharmacy staff throughout the nation are experiencing excessive ranges of burnout, a lot in order that efforts are underway to create the nation's first-ever pharmacy affiliation.

“Pharmacies are struggling because of elevated affected person calls for, regulatory complexity and important workforce shortages which have prompted drugstore chains like CVS and Walgreens to shut 1000’s of shops over the previous two years,” mentioned Pleasure Liu, CEO of Plenful. “These challenges are placing huge stress on pharmacists, placing affected person care and the sustainability of the sector in danger. It’s clear that substantial adjustments are wanted.”

By easing administrative burdens, Plenful's expertise goals to assist pharmacy staff attain their full capability, ship high-quality care and maintain their career, Liu explains.

Plenful's software program platform collects information from numerous sources, comparable to faxes, PDFs and digital well being information. The platform makes use of this information to automate on a regular basis administrative duties – and permits customers to customise these duties.

Some standard use instances amongst Plenful's healthcare system clients embrace referral administration and 340B audits. For pharmacy clients, some widespread use instances embrace referral orders, doc information entry, income cycle administration, and 340B declare qualification.

Plenful sells its expertise to well being methods and pharmacy corporations by way of annual contracts — and for some use instances it fees a volume-based payment, Liu mentioned. The startup has greater than 25 clients, together with Tampa Normal Hospital, Renown Well being and Blue Cross Blue Protect.

The healthcare automation software program market is turning into more and more crowded with corporations like Innovaccer, Navina and SmarterDx, however Plenful differentiates itself by focusing solely on pharmacy duties, Liu famous. Her startup additional stands out as a result of it affords a whole platform somewhat than some extent resolution, she added.

“Whereas there are one-off software program options that automate particular person administrative duties, comparable to these supplied by Plenful, there is no such thing as a purpose-built pharmacy operations software program that addresses the identical holistic vary of use instances as Plenful,” mentioned Liu.

Plenful's Sequence A funding spherical was led by TQ Ventures. Different individuals included Bessemer Enterprise Companions, Susa Ventures and Mitchell Rales, co-founder and chairman of Danaher.

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