HealthMatch, an Australian startup offering a platform for matching patients to clinical trials, has recently closed a A$10 million ($6.8 million) Series C funding round led by Folklore Ventures. The round was also joined by Square Peg Capital and other investors.

Launched in 2017, the company is now being used by over one million patients worldwide and has made over 3.6 million matches to clinical trials spanning more than 300 conditions to date.

WHAT IT'S FOR

According to a media release, the new funds will be used to further expand its team and platform reach across the United States. HealthMatch noted that its US business has been a major contributor to its growth with the company recording average new user registrations of 100,000 patients per month since it launched there in October last year. 

"We have great healthcare in Australia, where access to leading healthcare providers and medicines is publicly available through Medicare. Unfortunately, this is not the case in the US and we have seen strong interest in accessing trials, particularly from underserved and diverse communities that aren’t adequately resourced," CEO and founder Manuri Gunawardena said about the US clinical trial market.

WHY IT MATTERS

HealthMatch claims that there has been significant demand from pharmaceutical companies for solutions that address the efficiency of clinical trials and derisk the process of bringing new drugs to market given that 80% of clinical trials around the world are getting delayed and abandoned due to poor recruitment – a problem that is costing the industry billions annually. 

The company is increasingly collaborating with pharmaceutical companies, such as Roche, AbbVie, Boehringer Ingelheim, and budding biotechnology firms like Imugene and Earli. It is leveraging insights from 32 million de-identified and aggregated patient information to help them in designing better trials and choosing where to conduct them to ultimately deliver better treatments for patients.

MARKET SNAPSHOT

Another clinical trial technology startup from Australia, Evrima, also recently raised funding of A$3 million ($2 million) to expand its headcount and scale its offering. 

In May, uMotif, a London-based company that develops software for gathering patient data for clinical trials and research, scored a $25.5 million investment to continue its international expansion.