Slater invests $250K in Care Thread

By PBN Staff
Twitter: @ProvBusNews

PROVIDENCE – The Slater Technology Fund has committed to $250,000 in funding to a $750,000 seed round for Care Thread, a provider of secure mobile messaging and team-based collaboration solutions for the medical industry, Slater announced Tuesday.

An alumnus of the Betaspring startup accelerator, Care Thread plans to use the new investment to advance the development and commercialization of its mobile messaging solution.

“Care Thread is solving a really important problem in a mission-critical setting,” Thorne Sparkman, managing director of the Slater Technology Fund, said in prepared remarks.

“Teams of doctors and nurses are collaborating twenty-four hours a day to save lives, and they’re trying to reach each other with pagers! Now that many members of care teams are carrying sophisticated mobile devices in their pockets, the time for the messaging paradigm to change is here - but it’s a nuanced task,” added Sparkman. “[Dr. Scott Guelich’s] experience bridges diverse domains and technologies, and we’re excited to work with the talented team he has built.”

Guelich, a former software consultant and medical doctor, is Care Thread’s co-founder and CEO. According to a release, after going from Silicon Valley to working in a hospital, Guelich was struck by the challenges doctors and hospital staff face when communicating and coordinating care.

“He founded Care Thread to give them the tools they need to better serve their patients,” said a Slater Fund release.

The Care Thread investment is the Slater Fund’s first in the new year. Slater’s 2012 investments included med-tech maker IlluminOss Medical Inc. and an energy management services company VCharge, among others.