Patient-facing clinical trial software company uMotif has raised $3.2 million (£2.4 million) in a new funding round led by independent investment manager Albion Capital, with additional participation from unnamed angel investors.
uMotif makes apps for capturing consent, electronic patient-reported outcomes (ePRO), and electronic clinical outcome assessment (eCOA). The UK-based company, founded in 2012, works with pharma companies including AstraZeneca, Novartis, UCB, and Merck.
“uMotif has developed a game-changing product for the health and pharma industries, opening new doors to creating more successful treatments, enabled through unprecedented patient engagement,” Albion Capital partner Andrew Elder said in a statement. “Since launching five years ago, [founders] Bruce [Hellman] and Ben [James] have done a fantastic job in positioning uMotif as one of the world leaders in a field which is notoriously hard to penetrate with new technology."
The company plans to use the new funding to expand operations, which are currently focused mostly in the United States and Europe, into the Asia-Pacific region.
“We’re delighted to secure this round of funding,” Hellman, uMotif’s CEO, said in a statement. “We see this investment as adding rocket fuel to fire that’s already burning brightly. It will enable us to bring on even more world-class talent and remain at the forefront of patient-centric technology.”
Apps for clinical data collection are an important part of a trend toward digitizing the clinical trial that’s been ramping up over the last 10 years.
Traditionally, clinical trials would ask patients to fill out excessive paperwork or journals while regularly traveling to and from a clinical site for check-ins, an ordeal that leads many to miss their dosages or drop out of the study. Offering these technologies instead can greatly improve the quality of trial data, as well as the efficiency of data collection.
uMotif’s apps could also be useful outside of a research context. The UK’s National Health Service investigated uMotif’s Parkinson’s tracking app in a study published last year in Nature Parkinson’s. They saw a 10 percent improvement in adherence as well as improvement in their care experience with their doctor.
