Censinet, a third-party risk management company for healthcare providers has raised $7.8 million in Series A funding co-led by HLM Venture Partners and Cedars-Sinai Health System. The Series A round also includes participation from seed investors Schooner Capital, LRVHealth and Excelerate Health Ventures.
The Problem with Provider Vendor Risk Management Today
Hospitals today work with 700 vendors on average, each requiring a risk assessment that can take eight weeks or more to complete. Due to the lack of resources, manual processes and antiquated tools such as spreadsheets, only a fraction of vendors are regularly assessed, if ever at all. To make matters worse, these assessments are often outdated almost as soon as they are completed due to dynamic product updates, environmental configurations and cyber threats that change much more frequently than in the past. This wasted time and inadequate third-party vendor coverage increase the risk of breaches to patient data, regulatory fines, reputational damage and, most importantly, disruption to patient care.
“Third-party risk management is inefficient and a costly process for the healthcare industry at a time when resources are especially scarce,” said Darren Dworkin, Senior Vice President and CIO at Cedars-Sinai Health System. “We see a big opportunity for a leader to both deliver a solution and improve compliance. Censinet’s singular focus on healthcare, their experienced team and commitment to security-first innovation position them perfectly to lead in this emerging and critical space.”
Addressing Inefficiency in Third-Party Risk Management
To address the inefficiencies in third-party risk management, Censinet also announced today the launch of the Censinet Platform, which is the first and only third-party risk management platform built by and for healthcare providers to manage the threats to patient care that exist within an expanding ecosystem of vendors.
The Censinet Platform enables healthcare organizations to manage all vendors in their third-party ecosystem in one place with immediate access to each vendor’s risk profile and risk rating. With the Censinet Virtual Vendor Catalog™, providers know all of the active vendors, they’re doing business with and can easily access the information they need to make decisions based on accurate, real-time data. Censinet One-click Assessment™ reduces the time it takes to assess vendor risk from weeks to minutes, while automating inefficient workflows and providing continuous, real-time updates to risk. Comprehensive dashboards and reporting make Censinet the only real-time platform to deliver a 360-degree view of vendor risk across a health system’s entire third-party ecosystem.
“At Censinet, we believe risk never sleeps in healthcare: it’s in infusion pumps lurks on hospital networks and in the cloud and says good morning at the end of a shift,” said Ed Gaudet, CEO, and Founder of Censinet. “That is why we created a better way to manage risk exclusively for healthcare providers – one that is transparent, immediate and always on. Censinet’s unique cloud-based collaborative platform puts healthcare providers in control with real-time intelligence for rapid and accurate decision making.”
Censinet’s Plans for Funding
Censinet will use the funding to build out the Censinet Platform’s vendor risk management capabilities, scale its go-to-market team, and accelerate the adoption of the Censinet Platform by healthcare providers and their vendors. As part of the investment, Vin Fabiani will join the Censinet board of directors. The company also maintains an advisory board that includes C-level executives of top-tier healthcare providers and vendors who have served as design partners during the development of Censinet Platform.
