**Spare Tire Raises $3M to Save Healthcare Organizations from Document Downtime**

The healthcare industry is no stranger to cyberattacks and system outages, with hundreds of incidents affecting millions of Americans in 2025 alone. But a new solution is emerging to help hospitals and care clinics stay operational even when their electronic health record (EHR) systems go dark.

Spare Tire Corp., a company that provides healthcare firms on-demand backup for sensitive records, has announced it has raised $3 million in early-stage funding to provide its service to more hospitals and care clinics. The Series A funding round was exclusively funded by existing investors in ShelterZoom Corp., the document security-oriented parent company of Spare Tire.

Cyberattacks and system outages are a major threat to healthcare organizations, making headlines with alarming frequency. According to a report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights, there have been 364 hacking incidents reported this year alone by October. These incidents can lead to the loss of sensitive information to third parties, but for healthcare, malware and ransomware also disrupt work by locking away, corrupting or erasing records.

“Downtime is not just a couple of hours for maintenance,” said Chao Cheng-Shorland, co-founder and chief executive of Spare Tire and ShelterZoom. “It’s now stretching to several months. Even a small ransomware attack takes two to three weeks to clean and restore.”

EHR systems are the digital platforms hospitals and clinics use to store, manage and access patient information – from medical histories and lab results to medications, imaging, billing and clinical workflows. Most healthcare providers in the United States rely on large commercial EHR vendors such as Epic, Oracle Cerner, Meditech, Allscripts and AthenaHealth.

If access to electronic records goes dark, every operation of a healthcare service faces challenges, from diagnosis to documentation. Doctors and staff at hospitals can’t reliably maintain the continuity of treatment of patients in their care if they can’t double-check their electronic records or update them. Onsite teams must resort to either pen-and-paper processes or outdated backup snapshots, which may not be current.

“Clinicians are madly searching for paperwork” during ransomware incidents that leave digital systems unusable for weeks, Cheng-Shorland described. Downtime can also have a significant impact on a hospital’s ability to make money in the short term, because suddenly it becomes difficult to bill insurance – a major source of operational funding.

Long-term EHR outages can lead to significant losses in revenue. Spare Tire gives clinicians only the essential workflows they need: recent patient history, vitals, medication orders, templates, bed management and insurance-ready ICD-10 documentation. When the main EHR comes back online, the system automatically syncs the data back.

Hospitals can choose to sync all their historical data to prepare for an outage. The company recommends syncing four weeks of inpatient historical data to keep the system lightweight, although some hospitals believe even three days provides significant value. For outpatients, it is recommended to sync the most recent visit.

However, Cheng-Shorland stressed that Spare Tire is not a complete drop-in for an EHR system. It’s designed to be a lightweight application that provides continuity in the event of an emergency or outage. “We’re not trying to run 10,000 miles,” she said. “We’re the spare tire – a lightweight EHR that carries you until the primary system is restored.”

Spare Tire has already been deployed to early adopters and pilot customers, with more than 100 hospitals, urgent care services and EHR vendors in evaluation across the U.S.

“After more than three decades in medicine, I’ve seen how technology can both elevate and disrupt patient care,” said Dr. Kevin Nini, board-certified plastic surgeon and investor in Spare Tire. “Spare Tire stood out because it solves the very real problem of keeping clinicians connected to their patients even when systems fail.”

Cheng-Shorland said Spare Tire will use the funding to run large-scale proof-of-concept deployments with major hospital systems, ensuring the platform can scale reliably under real-world conditions. The company will also expand its go-to-market teams and continue developing product roadmap items, including multicloud failover, to meet growing demand from hospitals, clinics and EHR vendors.