Medication adherence app company MediSafe raised $6 million in a round led by Pitango Venture Capital with participation from 7wire Ventures as well as existing investors lool Ventures, TriVentures, and Eyal Gura.
This brings the company's total funding to at least $7 million to date. The company also received $2.36 million in prize money from Seven Ventures (7VPD) last month.
The funding will be used specifically to grow MediSafe's US user base because, according to the company, nearly half of Americans are prescribed at least one medication on a daily basis. The company plans to expand its user base through data partnerships, user experience improvements, and additional medication management features. As part of this expansion, the Haifa, Israel-based company also relocated its offices to Boston.
MediSafe, which was in Microsoft’s Tel Aviv accelerator, offers a cloud-based app system for medication adherence. Patients using MediSafe get a reminder to take their meds on their Android or iPhone app, and are then prompted to record doses when they take them. If they don’t indicate that they’ve taken their meds, a series of friends and family members is informed who can then take action.
In August 2014, MediSafe added a birth control pill tracking feature to its app.
“Female users have been using MediSafe for birth control pills for some time now, but it was a bit awkward,” MediSafe CEO Bob Shor told MobiHealthNews at the time. “You know a continuous medication is something that you take every day but it wasn’t really perfected for contraceptives, for birth control pills.”
Shor also said at the time that the app had 800,000 users and 55 percent of those users are female. Since then, the user base has grown to 1.3 million people.
Since MediSafe raised $1 million last year, the company has focused on building partnerships with pharmaceutical companies, healthcare providers, and pharmaceutical chains. Shor explained in August that one of MediSafe’s pharmaceutical partners suggested the birth control feature too. He added that selling deidentified data to healthcare providers and pharma companies will eventually be a source of revenue for MediSafe.
