Arthur Ventures, a Fargo-based venture capital firm, led a $4 million Series A round for Protenus, a healthcare startup based in Baltimore, Maryland. The partnership, announced on Feb. 16, is their first publicly announced investment since June 2015.
Protenus creates what they call “an immune system for medical records,” or a software security solution for patient data that identifies when medical records are accessed inappropriately. It was started by two former medical students, Robert Lord and Nick Culbertson, as they sought to tackle the increasing problem of privacy in healthcare.
“Nick and I started Protenus as medical students to tackle a huge problem in Health IT today—the lack of privacy and security present in electronic medical records, particularly with respect to employee snooping and insider threats,” Lord said.
Arthur Ventures focuses exclusively on software companies that are being built anywhere but Silicon Valley, according to their website.
“Great ideas are not confined to the two coasts of the United States of America,” they state on the site.
Since their first investments in 2008, the fund has invested in nineteen companies from across the nation, in a variety of sectors – primarily marketing and healthcare. Protenus is their sixth investment in a healthcare company.
“We are extremely excited to welcome Robert Lord, Nick Culbertson, and the entire Protenus team to the Arthur Ventures family,” said James Burgum, partner at Arthur Ventures. “Nick and Robert both have tremendous backgrounds and they share a very important vision to ensure trust in healthcare.”
