Medable Secures $25M Funding To Reduce Clinical Trial Timelines

Palo Alto, California startup Medable Inc. raised $25 million in funding led by GSR Ventures, to accelerate clinical drug development with digital technology.

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Founded in 2015, the company aims to reduce clinical trial timelines by 50 percent through its decentralized trial platform to streamline design, recruitment, retention and the collection of data. Siloed systems are replaced with integrated digital tools, data and interfaces to accelerate trial execution. In addition, Medable connects patients, sites and clinical trial teams to improve patient access, experience and outcomes.

Prior to COVID-19, there were 50,000 active clinical trials, Longmire said. Now, there are 70 clinical trials related to COVID that are going on or are about to be launched.

“The continued participation in clinical trials is important right now,” Medable co-founder and CEO Michelle Longmire, M.D., told Crunchbase News. “Prior to COVID, decentralized clinical trials were a novel, innovative approach. Now that clinics are shut down, decentralized clinical trials are the only approach to continued clinical trials, especially for finding a COVID vaccine. We are the only tech company to be able to provide this service, and we had to make sure we had the capital to execute this platform.”

The funding round was led by early-stage health care and artificial intelligence investor GSR Ventures, with additional investment from existing investor PPD Inc. Medable last raised $5 million in venture funding in February 2017, according to Crunchbase data. This new funding brings Medable’s total capital raised to more than $45 million, Longmire said.

GSR Ventures also recently participated in a $9 million seed round investment for Ferrum Health, a developer of an enterprise IT and AI patient safety platform for health systems, according to Crunchbase data.

Medable said its new investment will be used to extend product development, partnerships and market adoption for the decentralized trial platform.

In addition to the funding, GSR Ventures Partner Sunny Kumar, M.D., will join Medable’s board of directors. Kumar told Crunchbase News that he had been following the clinical trial space for a long time and started working with Medable in 2019. Since then, he has seen the company grow and mature.

“This is a huge opportunity,” Kumar said. “Medable has laid down a vision of the first steps of how tech could play a role in clinical trails, making it easier for patients to participate and for data to be collected.”

Medable’s digital platform-as-a-service is now used by biopharma sponsors and clinical research organizations worldwide in more than 30 countries and in 26 languages, according to the company.

The funding news comes on the heels of Medable’s April 29 announcement that it would partner with AliveCor to scale remote clinical trials by enabling in-home electrocardiogram testing.

Illustration: Li-Anne Dias