This startup aims to make 50% of US hospitals less wasteful using smart data

Within hospitals, injectable medications are a huge and complex supply chain — and data analysis makes it more manageable. 

The market for injectable medications is estimated to grow to over $600 billion this year. Some hospitals administer over a million injections a year, with hundreds of pharmacists, thousands of nurses and thousands of patients involved.

That’s a lot of data. The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) spinout Bainbridge Health has been collecting and analyzing medical data since 2016. It has a goal of streamlining the hospital data aggregation and analysis process to give clinicians the information they need to make their work both safer for the patients and more efficient, with less wasted medicine.

“We pull data from different sources that most of the health care industry is unaccustomed to looking at,”  Bainbridge Health CEO Joseph Kaupp told Technical.ly. “A lot of organizations largely use the data that’s in their clinical data warehouse.” 

Since Bainbridge Health currently serves over 500 hospitals in 41 states, it’s built a network it can leverage to compare data across healthcare systems. 

How data analysis makes hospitals more efficient

Especially in pharmacies, Kaupp says, it’s common that all of the critical data pieces aren’t analyzed together, making it easy to lose track of waste — in this case, wasted medication that could help other patients.

Bainbridge’s data analysis can prevent wasting potentially life-saving medication by tracking the size of the bags that hold the medication compared to the most common dosages administered. 

For example, if a hospital is buying a certain drug in 500 milliliter bags, but 85% of the doses are 200 milliliters, it’s regularly wasting a considerable amount of the drug. A solution might be to buy 250-milliliter bags instead, but changes can be met with skepticism, and Bainbridge’s large network of hospitals can be used as proof that the change is effective.

“One of the things we can do when we bring on a new hospital is to show that across the 500 hospitals that Bainbridge serves, folks who are using 250-milliliter bags have considerably less waste without any real consequences,” Kaupp said. “That’s just one example of not just hospital-specific data, but leveraging this big network that we have.”

From 1 to 500, and still growing

Kaupp is one of three founders, along with Chief Clinical Officer Sean O’Neill and Chief Technology Officer Sam Wilson.

“I worked at an equity and consulting fund firm back in the day. I ended up partnering with some folks to help build an oncology software and services company years ago,” Kaupp said. “Based on that experience, I was lucky to be invited to be what was called their entrepreneur in residence.” 

Through that experience, he met clinicians and researchers, including O’Neill, a clinical pharmacist and medication safety officer at CHOP. 

“A lot of this was his brainchild,” Knapp said. 

In the early days, CHOP helped with incubation and seed funding, so the startup didn’t do any accelerators. Over the years, it has raised venture capital in a number of rounds. According to Pitchbook, it has raised over $6 million, with a post-valuation of over $16 million.

“The sales cycle for hospitals is long,” Kaupp said. “It’s very challenging to get in, so we really relied on some of that early-stage venture funding in order to get going.”

It took about four years for the startup to get to ten hospitals as clients. “And then, in one year, we went from ten to 100, and then from 100 to 300 and 300 to 500,” he said. “It takes a long time to start to get momentum, but once that flywheel gets going and you start to build a reputation, as folks who are trustworthy and have a good product.”

By the end of 2025, Kaupp said, based on the current pace of the pipeline, Bainbridge may surpass 1,000 hospitals. It aims to be in 50% of the US hospital market in the next two years as it continues to develop connections and product offerings.

By then, it’ll be a decade-old company. 

“It’s been hard,” Kaupp said. “If you’re going to do this, do this with really good people.”