Curisium raises $3.5 million to bring blockchain to value-based contracting

Add value-based contracting to the list of potential use cases for blockchain in healthcare. 

Hospital executives watching all the buzz around blockchain and wondering how the digital ledger technology might fit into their revenue cycle, in fact, may have just gotten a hint about the future. 

With nearly one-third of the payments in the $2.7 trillion U.S. healthcare market already tied to some form of alternative payment model, the company said it will use the investment to advance its technology. 

[Also: Blockchain interest gaining, but cost questions cause providers pause]

The Curisium platform deploys blockchain and secure computation technologies to allow payers, providers and life science companies to engage in patient-centric value-based contracts.

Healthcare organizations and innovative upstarts initially saw big promise in blockchain's interoperability, privacy and security, even the the possibility of transforming electronic health record software because the digital ledger technology can, in theory, grant patients more control over their own medical data. And more recently proponents have been saying it could also be used in the pharmacy supply chain to establish a chain-of-custody log that would make it harder for substandard and fraudulent drugs to make their way to market. 

[Also: Change Healthcare rolls out enterprise blockchain for hospitals, payers]

Those same characteristics enable similar opportunities for value-based care. 

"Payers, providers, and life science companies are increasingly entering into various forms of innovative contracts," said Peter Kim, co-founder and CEO of Curisium. "However, effective implementation today is hampered by costly logistics, lack of trust, and difficulty verifying patient-level outcomes."

Curisium investors in this round include Flare Capital Partners, New Enterprise Associates, Shuttle Fund, Sanofi Ventures and Green Bay Ventures.

Flare Capital co-founder Bill Geary said that by enabling outcome verification at the individual level, the technology could be a foundation for more innovative contracting in the future. 

Greg Papadopoulos, venture partner at NEA and former CTO of Sun Microsystems, said it breaks down silos in healthcare with "unique cryptographic guarantees" around its data access.

Papadopoulos and Sanofi chief data officer Milind Kamkolkar joined Curisium's inaugural Industry Advisory Board while Geary and Mohamad Makhzoumi of NEA joined the Curisium board of directors. 

Twitter: @JELagasse
Email the writer: jeff.lagasse@himssmedia.com