Israeli startup Vim closed an impressive Series B funding round, bringing in $60 million from Walgreens, insurance giant Anthem, and Optum Ventures, an American insurance company. Others who participated in the round included Sequoia Capital, First Cressey Ventures, GreatPoint, and Premera Blue Cross.

Software agnostic

Israel’s healthcare system is in a pretty good place in comparison with the U.S. healthcare system, where every clinic uses different systems, which don’t necessarily communicate one with another, nor with private insurance companies; leaving the healthcare bureaucratic system out of the loop. “These systems are developed by commercial companies and present challenges regarding “healthy” information sharing between the healthcare entities. Integrating between medical systems is one of the American market’s biggest problems nowadays,” claims Oron Afek, CEO and co-founder at Vim, in a conversation with Geektime.

credit: Vim

This is where the agnostic Vim platform enters the game - Vim Connect - which connects between the healthcare systems, irrelevant of their software, to the insurance companies. “The platform pulls from available data resources (Public APIs for example) as well as analyzing user interface with computer vision technology in order to create an abstract API layer above the system used by the physician, which can be used through standard web apps,” according to Afek.

Afek describes this past year as the most defining one in company history. “What started with uncertainty; doctors questioning their place in a world where patients refuse to go to clinics; ended with physicians actively wanting to move to value based care models.” That transition skyrocketed demand for products like Vim, which was pretty evident in this latest funding round.

Old romance

Obviously, Walgreens, one of the biggest pharmacy chains in the U.S., was the superstar backer in this round. Afek explains that the romance between the pharmacy giant started 3 years ago, when he met Walgreens CSO Rick Mills. “It snowballed from there. We are extremely excited to have a strategic investor like Walgreens.”

Vim was founded in 2015 by CEO Oron Afek, CTO Asaf David, and CPO Yale Peled. The company employs 100, with 70 of them based in Israel. Vim has raised $72 million to date.