Wilmington digital health company Amalgam Rx acquired Avhana Health

Wilmington’s Amalgam Rx, a digital medicine and patient support company, has acquired Baltimore-based Avhana Health.

With the acquisition, which closed this month, Avhana’s seven employees will join Amalgam’s 100-member team, which already has a presence in Baltimore. The acquisition is Amalgam Rx’s first. Terms were not disclosed.

“We’re super excited for what the joint companies mean, especially for our long-term growth as a company and our trajectory,” said Avhana CEO Noah Weiner — “what they’re going after and what it means for startups in Baltimore.”

Avhana was founded in 2014 by Noah Weiner and Nate Weiner, who are brothers. The company provides tools in the area of clinical decision support, which means it helps doctors with decision making, specifically relating to adopting and adhering to quality guidelines. Avhana’s tools integrate with electronic health records systems, giving access to data and allowing the tools to be integrated directly into a doctor’s workflow. Along with expanding digital tools, this reduces costs for healthcare systems.

The business grew from serving seven medical groups and health systems in early 2020 to 150 currently, said Noah Weiner. That led the company to a step it previously hadn’t taken: raising outside capital.

Weiner counts Ryan Sysko, the CEO of Amalgam Rx who also founded Columbia-based WellDoc, to be a mentor, and the two keep in touch regularly. At one recent update, they found common ground in how they could fit together. Ultimately, it led to the acquisition deal — complete with a graphic representing the companies as puzzle pieces to announce it.

Amalgam Rx makes digital therapeutics, which are applications that can be prescribed, as well as programs that support patients through care. It will add Avhana’s tools, seeking to expand them into other areas of medicine and combining them with other digital solutions.

“EHR [electronic health record] integration is the Holy Grail for digital health solutions, but it’s not only about data integration; workflow optimization is even more important,” Sysko said in a statement. “Providers, working at the nexus of digital health adoption and scaling, will only adopt tools that are safe, effective, and embedded in their workflow. The combination of Avhana and Amalgam will bring us closer to realizing digital health’s tremendous potential.”

It’s not the funding round that Avhana set out to raise, but Weiner said Avhana’s team will be able to continue to build, and benefit from being part of a bigger company. Operating as a standalone brand as integration begins, Avhana is also planning to grow.

“This allows us to still accomplish the same goals that we had, but accomplish it in a different way,” Weiner said. “They’re giving us lots of resources, especially in the data science space.”

Check out Amalgam’s open roles.