Proteus Biomedical's Raisin system
Redwood City, California-based Proteus Digital Health announced that it had raised $62.5 million in its latest round of funding led by Oracle with participation from existing investors Otsuka, Novartis, Sino Portfolio and others. MobiHealthNews reported on the first $17.5 million that Proteus raised for this round a year ago, so the $62.5 million includes an additional $45 million raised over the course of the past year. In total, Proteus, which was founded in 2001, has raised north of $170 million from a long list of investors that includes Medtronic, Itochu, St. Jude Medical, and Kaiser Permanente Ventures.
Proteus Digital Health, which changed its name from Proteus Biomedical last July, is developing an intelligent medicine offering called Raisin, and the basic system includes sensor-enabled pills, a peel-and-stick biometric sensor patch worn on the body, and companion smartphone apps. The patch records when a pill is ingested and also tracks other things like sleep patterns and physical activity levels. The ingestible sensor component of the Raisin offering gained FDA clearance last July, while the company's sensor-laden patch secured clearance in 2010.
Oracle and Proteus will work together to help investigators in clinical trials to better understand and measure medication ingestion, dose timing, and associated physiologic responses from patients. Proteus' ingestible sensor technology will be integrated into Oracle's clinical trial products, including InForm, Data Hub, and its Siebel clinical trial management system.
Last summer Proteus announced a partnership with Japan-based Otsuka Pharmaceutical, which is known for its Abilify drug for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, that will bring technology based on Proteus Digital Health’s Raisin platform to that country.
In January 2012, UK-based retail pharmacy chain Lloydspharmacy inked an exclusive deal with Proteus to launch Proteus’ first commercial product, Helius, an offering that includes sensor-enabled pills, a peel-and-stick sensor patch worn on the body, and a mobile app. The offering is similar to Proteus' Raisin technology but instead of integrating the sensor in the pharmaceutical itself, patients have to swallow a separate pill with their medication.
Proteus also licenses its peel-and-stick sensor patch technology to other companies in digital health, including BodyMedia, which had planned to launch a disposable sensor patch through a deal with Avery Dennison. Given its recently announced acquisition by Jawbone, it's unclear whether that BodyMedia device will ever ship.
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