Baltimore, Maryland-based WellDoc has raised $22 million in a round led by Samsung Ventures and Merck Global Health Innovation (GHI) Fund with participation from Adage Capital Management, Excel Venture Management, Alexandria Venture Investments and Hudson River Capital Partners.

The company will use the funds to focus on growing adoption of its flagship offering, BlueStar, an FDA-cleared mobile application and program for people with Type II diabetes that is prescribed by physicians and adjudicated through pharmacies just like pharmaceutical therapies. The offering analyzes patient data, compares the data to past trends, and sends analytics to the patient’s healthcare team.

The program is supported by motivational messages, behavioral coaching, and educational content, delivered right to the patient's mobile device. The program also provides the patient's physician with clinical decision support tools based on data about how each patient is doing.

“The success of our initial commercial launch of BlueStar has provided us with valuable information that we will use to expand nationally to bring BlueStar to adults with type 2 diabetes,” WellDoc CEO Kevin McRaith said in a statement. “Our goal is to help improve patient self-management, which ultimately leads to better outcomes as demonstrated in our published clinical trials, as well as our commercial launch. The progress reported by those who have used BlueStar to date, and the data we have captured from that usage, motivates us to find new ways to make our product available to more people.”

WellDoc first announced that it was working with Samsung last November, when the consumer technology giant announced its collaboration with 24 different digital health companies. At the time, the companies planned to jointly explore “next generation diabetes devices and product offerings.” 

Then this year, in August, WellDoc and Samsung announced they would bring a new version of WellDoc's BlueStar mobile prescription therapy for diabetes to 300 Toronto citizens in partnership with the Ontario Telemedicine Network (OTN), a Canadian government-funded provider. The new offering, BlueStar-S, would combine features of BlueStar and Samsung S Health.