For a community oncologist, the most critical intervention for a patient might have nothing to do with chemotherapy. It could be securing a ride to the clinic, finding food assistance, or navigating the labyrinth of insurance and clinical trials. This work is essential, but for years it has been a financial black hole for practices, consuming staff time without a clear path to reimbursement. Patient Discovery, a Boston-based startup founded in 2016, is building its business on making that invisible work visible, and billable, to Medicare.
The company’s platform, named Companion, is a focused workflow engine for oncology practices. It integrates patient-reported social determinants of health (SDoH) assessments, care coordination, and principal illness navigation (PIN) services directly into the clinical team’s daily routine. The core proposition is operational and financial: identify non-clinical barriers, route community referrals, and systematically capture the documentation required for CMS reimbursement, all without adding administrative logins or burdens [Patient Discovery, retrieved 2024]. The company claims a typical practice can go live and begin submitting reimbursable claims within 90 days [Patient Discovery, retrieved 2024].
The Reimbursement Wedge
Patient Discovery’s strategy is tightly coupled to recent shifts in Medicare policy. In 2024, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services introduced billing codes for Principal Illness Navigation services, recognizing the clinical value of helping patients with serious, complex conditions like cancer navigate their care. For 2026, CMS projected an 11% increase in reimbursement rates for these services [Patient Discovery, retrieved 2024]. This created a tangible, if paperwork-intensive, revenue opportunity for clinics that could properly document qualifying activities.
Companion is designed to automate that documentation. When a nurse spends 20 minutes connecting a patient with a local food bank, or a social worker helps a family understand hospice options, the platform can capture that activity, associate it with the correct patient and billing code, and generate a report ready for the revenue cycle team [Patient Discovery, retrieved 2024]. The company cites the example of Nebraska Cancer Specialists, which it says billed over $30,000 in new PIN services in its first month using the platform [Patient Discovery, retrieved 2024]. Patient Discovery estimates a five-physician oncology practice could achieve approximately $1.16 million in total reimbursement by systematically capturing this work [Patient Discovery, retrieved 2024].
A Team Built for Healthcare Complexity
The founders bring a mix of healthcare, technology, and regulatory experience. CEO Norm Shore and Chief Strategy Officer Shelby Chamberlain co-founded the company with Adam Sodowick, who serves as Executive Director of Practice Solutions. Sodowick was previously founder and CEO of True Office, a compliance training company acquired by the NYSE [Forbes, 2014]. The technical lead is CTO Julie Stern, a veteran of health tech companies including Accolade and H1 [Crunchbase, retrieved 2026].
Perhaps the most significant signal of credibility for the Boston-based company is its board. In 2022, Patient Discovery announced that Sandra Fenwick, the former CEO of Boston Children’s Hospital, had joined its board of directors [PR Newswire, 2022]. Fenwick’s deep roots in academic medicine and hospital administration lend weight to the startup’s focus on integrating with complex care delivery systems.
| Role | Name | Notable Background |
|---|---|---|
| CEO & Co-Founder | Norm Shore | Co-founder of Patient Discovery |
| CSO & Co-Founder | Shelby Chamberlain | Co-founder of Patient Discovery |
| Executive Director, Practice Solutions & Co-Founder | Adam Sodowick | Founder/CEO of True Office (acquired by NYSE) [Forbes, 2014] |
| CTO | Julie Stern | Former CTO at Accolade; EVP at H1 [Crunchbase, retrieved 2026] |
| Board Member | Sandra Fenwick | Former CEO, Boston Children’s Hospital [PR Newswire, 2022] |
Funding and the Path to Scale
Patient Discovery has raised a total of approximately $8.35 million since its founding, according to PitchBook data [PitchBook, retrieved 2024]. Its investors include Hard Yaka and the CS Venture Opportunities Fund. The most recent disclosed round was a $2 million Series A in April 2025 [PitchBook, retrieved 2024]. With a headcount estimated between 18 and 22 employees [LeadIQ, May 2026] [ContactOut, retrieved 2026], the company is at a stage where proving repeatable sales motion and expanding its clinic footprint are paramount.
The platform’s adoption likely hinges on a direct sales approach to oncology practices, a market characterized by long sales cycles and a need for deep integration with existing electronic health records. Patient Discovery says its tool surfaces patient needs directly within the EMR, avoiding the friction of separate logins [Patient Discovery, retrieved 2024]. This is a critical design choice for time-pressed clinical staff.
The Risks in a Regulated Market
While the reimbursement tailwind is clear, several challenges loom for Patient Discovery. The market for oncology practice software is crowded, and the company’s identified competitors in the structured data, such as Trusted Tablets, appear unrelated, suggesting a fragmented or nascent competitive landscape. More established players in oncology-specific EHRs or practice management could easily add similar functionality.
The business model also carries inherent regulatory risk. Its revenue proposition is directly tied to CMS billing rules, which are subject to change. A future reduction in reimbursement rates or a tightening of documentation requirements could suddenly deflate the value proposition. Furthermore, the company’s traction claims, while promising, are primarily self-reported. Widespread, independently verified case studies from large health systems would strengthen its market position considerably.
Patient Discovery’s most plausible answer to these risks is its focused expertise. By building a platform exclusively for oncology and layering in deep knowledge of PIN and SDoH billing codes, it aims to become the specialist tool for a specific, newly monetizable problem. The board appointment of Sandra Fenwick suggests a strategy of engaging with leading academic cancer centers, which could provide both validation and influential reference customers.
The Standard of Care Today
For the 1.9 million Americans projected to be diagnosed with cancer this year, the standard of care today extends far beyond the infusion chair. Managing transportation, nutrition, financial toxicity, and advance care planning is part of comprehensive treatment, but this work has historically fallen to overburdened nurses and social workers documenting in free-text notes or separate spreadsheets. There has been no systematic way to track this labor or justify its cost to payers. The result is that vital supportive care is often under-resourced and inconsistently delivered, creating inequities and worsening outcomes. Patient Discovery is betting that by aligning this essential work with a sustainable revenue stream, it can help clinics provide more of it. The patient population here is anyone facing a complex cancer journey, and the disease state is the myriad of non-clinical barriers that stand between them and the best possible health.
The next twelve months will be telling. The company will need to move beyond early-adopter practices and demonstrate it can land multi-site oncology groups. Another funding round may be necessary to fuel that sales expansion. For now, Patient Discovery represents a pragmatic, if unglamorous, approach to health tech: not chasing AI diagnostics, but wiring up the reimbursement pathways for the human care that already happens every day.
Sources
- [Patient Discovery, retrieved 2024] Company website and product pages | https://www.patientdiscovery.com/
- [PitchBook, retrieved 2024] Funding and investor data | https://pitchbook.com/
- [Forbes, 2014] Adam Sodowick background | https://www.forbes.com/
- [PR Newswire, 2022] Sandra Fenwick board appointment | https://www.prnewswire.com/
- [Crunchbase, retrieved 2026] Julie Stern background | https://www.crunchbase.com/
- [LeadIQ, May 2026] Employee headcount data | https://leadiq.com/
- [ContactOut, retrieved 2026] Employee headcount data | https://contactout.com/