Axial Exchange Announces Completion of Series A Financing

RALEIGH, N.C., Feb. 22, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Axial Exchange, Inc. announced today that it has secured Series A financing. The round was lead by Canaan Partners with IDEA Fund Partners also participating in the round. The proceeds will be used to fund the continued development of the company's health care communication platform and to expand its sales and marketing initiatives.

"Axial has a strong management team that will infuse new thinking into an industry going through transformative change.  We like the way that Axial thinks about turning data into useful, time-critical information.  We believe this company will quickly grow into a positive force in the healthcare IT industry," said Steve Bloch, MD, General Partner at Canaan Partners.

"We are thrilled to have the support from such top tier investors as Canaan Partners and Idea Fund Partners.  They share our vision for a future where appropriate access to clinical information is a given for all health professionals.  We are committed to delivering solutions with both top line and bottom line benefit to hospitals, by focusing on the value of timely information delivery for complex clinical issues like continuity of care," said Joanne Rohde, Founder and CEO of Axial Exchange.

The Axial Communication Platform enables hospital-based care providers to collaborate with outside physicians. Delivering high quality care while maintaining costs often hinges on the ability of physicians from separate specialties and physical locations to communicate. Axial gathers clinical information from disparate hospital systems and provides summaries that are designed for the needs of the various outside stakeholders that provide care, including primary care physicians, specialists, and medical home case managers.

No special software is required for the end users. Clinical summaries are securely "pushed" to smart phones and web browsers as soon as the information is available at the hospital. As the Axial Communication Platform leverages both open source software and a cloud-based delivery model, it is available at a fraction of the cost of historical health IT solutions.

By bridging the gap between the hospital and those that provide post-discharge care, the Axial solution can simultaneously lower unprofitable readmissions and strengthen a hospital's ties to area physicians. Many hospitals rely on outside physicians to refer patients for profitable planned procedures.

About Axial Exchange

Axial Exchange provides software that enables continuity of care across care settings. The Axial Communication Platform is designed for hospitals to coordinate with outside providers - from EMS paramedics to post-discharge providers. Axial combines the value of open source software with the scalability of modern cloud architecture to reduce the cost and complexity of health care interoperability. For more information, visit: http://www.axialexchange.com

About Canaan Partners Healthcare

Canaan Partners invests in visionary entrepreneurs and provides them the networks, insights and operational guidance required to build high-performance technology and healthcare companies. Founded in 1987, the firm has raised eight funds and completed more than 83 acquisitions and 52 IPOs. With $3 billion under management and a worldwide footprint, the firm is committed to catalyzing the growth of innovative biopharmaceutical, medical device, diagnostics and healthcare infrastructure companies. Among its successes are Amicus Therapeutics, a pioneer of next-generation oral therapies for the management of human genetic diseases; BiPar Sciences, a biopharmaceutical company pioneering novel tumor-selective therapies to address urgent unmet needs of cancer patients; Calixa Therapeutics, developer of hospital-based antibiotics to treat infections resulting from resistant strains of bacteria; and Cerexa Inc., one of the largest biotech acquisitions of 2007. Other Canaan investments include Advanced BioHealing, Calibra Medical, Chimerix, Inc., Liquidia Technologies, ReVision Optics, Theraclone Sciences, Transcend Medical, and VaxInnate.  Canaan maintains a presence in California, Connecticut, New York, India and Israel. For more information, visit:  http://www.canaan.com.

About IDEA Fund Partners

Located in Research Triangle Park, IDEA Fund Partners provides seed and early stage equity funding along with company building expertise to IT, materials technologies and medical device companies in North Carolina, as well as the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic regions. Currently investing out of its first fund, IDEA Fund Partners has invested in nine companies since 2006. For more information, visit: http://www.ideafundpartners.com/