Health IT, Touched by Angels

A California venture capital firm has selected 11 finalists in a nationwide contest to find the country's most promising health IT startups. Now all the finalists have to do is present their cases to 200 venture capitalists, angel investors and entrepreneurs next month in hopes of persuading someone to finance their dreams.

The contest is sponsored by Morgenthaler Ventures of Menlo Park, Calif., which has invested in more than 300 IT and life sciences companies. The firm is bringing together the rest of the investors for its invitation-only meeting with the 11 health IT firms, scheduled for Sept. 22 in Mountain View, Calif.

The finalists, selected from among 117 applicants, are divided among those needing seed money and those offering preferred stock to investors, called Series-A funding. Seed-money finalists are...Axial Exchange of Raleigh, N.C., with a pay-per-performance program that enables providers to coordinate care across different settings...