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Digital Health Expert Robert Lord Joins LionBird as New Partner

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Co-founder of Protenus will provide strategic insight in anticipation of the firm’s third fund, LionBird III, which will increase investment focus on pre-scale digital health companies


CHICAGO/TEL AVIV-YAFO (January 7, 2020) – LionBird has a new partner: Robert Lord. Lord is the co-founder of Protenus, a healthcare compliance analytics company from LionBird’s second fund. Lord joins LionBird to provide strategic insight as the company prepares to hone its digital health focus for its upcoming fund, LionBird III. In addition to his role at LionBird, Lord is the Chairman of the Board of Protenus, providing guidance and support to the Protenus team while also completing his medical degree at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Founded in 2014, the Protenus platform leverages artificial intelligence (AI) to detect inappropriate access to patient records for the nation's leading health systems and was named the 2019 KLAS Category Leader in Patient Privacy Monitoring . In July 2016, LionBird participated in Protenus’ $4M Series A, marking the first investment out of the firm’s second fund, LionBird II.

With an equal focus on digital health and business services, the current LionBird funds have shown strong performance to-date. In 2019, two of LionBird’s digital health portfolio companies were included in TIME magazine's top ten healthcare inventions of the year, and another two were named Best in KLAS category leaders. Since LionBird’s founding in 2012, the landscape of digital health investing has continued to gain speed, with healthcare companies globally on pace to exceed 4,500 rounds raised annually for the first time, according to CBInsights’ Q3 2019 Global Healthcare Report.

“We expect opportunities for great digital health investments to increase in the next few years, and having Robert join LionBird at this time will help us identify and invest in the best digital health start-ups,” said Ed Michael, managing partner at LionBird.

As an expert in the fields of AI, cybersecurity, healthcare analytics and data privacy, Lord is a frequent speaker at premier industry conferences, and has been invited to brief the U.S. Senate and provide insight to national leaders on cybersecurity preparedness. He is a featured thought leader in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes and the Baltimore Sun, among others, and was named to the Baltimore Business Journal’s “Tech 10” and Becker’s Hospital Review’s “Healthcare Entrepreneurs to Know.” Lord is also a fellow at New America, where he leads their efforts on healthcare cybersecurity policy. Prior to co-founding Protenus, Lord received his undergraduate degree magna cum laude from Harvard University, and was an MD candidate at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where he took a leave of absence to launch Protenus. Lord also designed and managed analytics systems for Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund, following his graduation from Harvard.

“As a founder, it was fantastic working with investors who could provide operational advice based on real-world experience,” said Lord. “LionBird gave me and my co-founder the confidence to make our own decisions while providing extremely useful support when consulted. I’m excited to make the shift from founder to investor with this experienced investing team so I can provide that same support to new founders and help LionBird sharpen its digital health focus.”


About LionBird

LionBird is a venture capital firm investing in pre-scale digital health companies with operations in Tel Aviv and Chicago. Founded in 2012 by veteran entrepreneurs and Fortune 100 executives in the software and healthcare industries, LionBird provides pre-scale capital and assistance to mission-driven teams re-engineering the status quo in their fields. Since its inception, the firm has invested in more than 25 founding teams across the U.S. and Israel and now has over $100 million in AUM. To learn more about LionBird or to contact the team, visit www.lionbird.com.

About Protenus

The Protenus healthcare compliance analytics platform uses artificial intelligence to audit every access to patient records for the nation’s leading health systems. Providing healthcare leaders full insight into how health data is being used, and alerting privacy, security and compliance teams to inappropriate activity, Protenus helps our partner hospitals make decisions about how to better protect their data, their patients, and their institutions. Learn more at Protenus.com and follow us on Twitter @Protenus.

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