RS21 ramps up with acquisition of medical firm
Albuquerque-based data analytics firm RS21 is poised for rapid growth in the health care industry after acquiring Versatile Med Analytics for an undisclosed price.
VMA will now merge into RS21, creating a new Health Lab division focused exclusively on health care-related data analytics.
By combining VMA’s specialized expertise in health care analysis with RS21’s data management, integration and visualization platforms, the two homegrown Albuquerque companies hope to quickly dominate in the field of data health care analytics in New Mexico and beyond, said RS21 president and CEO Charles Rath.
“I believe we’ll soon become the premier health care analytics platform in the state, and someday, in the entire country,” Rath told the Journal.
Those are grandiose ambitions for a 6-year-old startup that Rath launched in 2014. But RS21 has grown rapidly since then.
It achieved national prominence last year by launching an “urban health vulnerability index” that offers public officials, health care organizations and others instant access to detailed information on local neighborhoods and communities in 500 U.S. cities to help make critical decisions on how to best allocate scarce resources during the global pandemic. It also partnered with the Washington, D.C.based Project on Government Oversight to build a COVID-19 relief spending tracker that allows anyone to quickly determine how the federal government’s nearly $4 trillion relief funding is being distributed.
RS21 specializes in packaging mounds of information into user-friendly dashboards with maps, graphics and point-andclick tools that help decision makers quickly understand the root causes of issues and take speedy action on things. Apart from health care, the company has built online platforms to analyze infrastructure resilience, disaster preparedness, supply chain management, community safety, security and cybersecurity.
With the VMA acquisition, RS21 will now double down on data analytics for the health care industry.
VMA CEO Angelica Bruhnke and Chief Technology Officer Stefany Goradia will become RS21 Health Lab president and vice president, respectively.
They co-founded VMA in 2017 to provide data analysis services to health insurers, health care providers and government agencies. Clients have included Blue Cross Blue Shield operations in New Mexico and other states.
“We help health care organizations use data in ways they haven’t before to improve their operations clinically, financially and operationally,” Bruhnke said.
During the pandemic, for example, VMA helped medical groups manage the avalanche of demand for lab testing and other services.
“A lot of data was involved that they needed to analyze fast,” Goradia said. “We helped them rapidly navigate through it to respond to the situation.”
VMA has four full-time employees, plus a team of contractors it draws on for projects.
RS21 plans a swift ramp-up of in-house staff for the Health Lab, growing the division to at least 20 people by year-end 2021, Rath said.
RS21 currently employs 80 people, up from 65 last fall. It reported $7.1 million in revenue in 2019, up from $92,000 in its first full year of operations in 2015.
Rath expects revenue to double this year, with about 25% of the growth coming from the new Health Lab.