Health Care Companies Can Be Sexy, Says OpenView Partner George Roberts

“The health care sector is perceived as not being as sexy as Web 2.0, or even cloud computing, but that doesn’t mean you can’t build a health care company into something sexy and worthwhile,” says George Roberts, a partner at OpenView Venture Partners.

The Boston-based firm obviously believes strongly in health care. The firm is planning to announce this week that it has made a minority investment in Prognosis Health Information Systems Inc., a Houston, Texas-based provider of health care information systems for health care providers.

The investment is the company’s first institutional round, says Roberts, who joined the company board. Previously, Prognosis had raised angel funding, and the angel investors all remain shareholders, he says.

Roberts declined to disclose the amount that OpenView invested, but he said it was made from the firm’s first and second fund.

The investment is OpenView’s second in health care, following closely on the heels of its $9.5 million backing of Kareo, a provider of Web-based medical billing software.

OpenView is “talking to another health care information systems provider at the moment about making a possible deal,” Roberts told me.

Roberts says that OpenView, which is known as an expansion stage venture investor with a focus on high-growth software, Internet and tech-enabled companies, has been looking at health care for a few years.

Given the push to improve electronic health record solutions for health care providers under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, it’s a wonder why more investors don’t also find the sector sexy, or at least compelling to invest in.