TMC-backed fintech platform announces collaboration to digitize health care expenses

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This Texas Medical Center startup is digitizing employee expense management within health care. Photo courtesy of TMC

The Texas Medical Center announced a partnership with San Francisco-based Bond Financial Technologies Inc this month on a platform that will bring an embedded financial solution into the realm of health care expenses.

According to a statement from the companies, inefficiencies make up about 35 percent of the $5 trillion annual health care expenditure in the U.S.

To find a solution, TMC Innovation launched its own fintech company, Tanaflow, which aims to digitize health care expense management through applying machine-based learning. Bond Financial launched Bond Treasury in tandem to facilitate the innovation.

Together the products will first aim to tackle the often paper-based and cumbersome task of employee expense reimbursements, which accounts for an estimated $300 million a year at TMC, according to the statement.

“TMC’s Tanaflow will use Bond Treasury to embed financial services into our software applications to save time and money so we can refocus on serving the more than 10 million patients we see annually,” Odero Otieno, founder in residence at TMC and CEO of Tanaflow, says in a statement. “Over time, we expect to expand into other non-clinical tasks and transactions, such as payment acquiring, treasury management, and credit. Bond has the technology platform, talent, and vision to be our long-term partner and we are incredibly excited to partner on this new journey.”

The Tanaflow technology will be integrated across TMC's 61 institutions and 21 hospitals.

This will be Bond Financial's first foray into the health care industry. The company, founded in 2019, aims to create, launch and scale embedded financial experiences across industries at an enterprise level through its API platform. Investors include the likes of Goldman Sachs and Mastercard.

"We’re seeing tremendous interest from enterprise businesses that want to embed purpose-built financial products into their software applications, and are excited to partner with impactful organizations such as TMC to bring more efficiencies into the healthcare vertical,” Roy Ng, co-founder and CEO of Bond, adds in a statement.

The TMC is also currently underway on its 250,000-square-foot, $186 million TMC3 Collaborative Building, which will house research initiatives and foster collaboration among academic health care institutions and industry partners. Slated to open in the fall of 2023, it's also designed to support strategic initiatives and investment from life science-focused firms and national venture and equity and partners.

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Until now, Rice students could study AI through elective courses and an advanced degree. The new bachelor's degree program opens up deeper learning opportunities to undergrads by blending traditional engineering and math requirements with other courses on ethics and philosophy as they relate to AI.

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