AI-backed remote monitoring and digital therapeutics company Biofourmis raised a whopping $300 million in Series D funding, boosting the company to unicorn status with a valuation of $1.3 billion.

The round was led by General Atlantic, with participation from CVS Health and existing investors Openspace Ventures and EDBI. Biofourmis said the Series D brings its total raise to $445 million. 

WHAT IT DOES

Biofourmis' business has two main sectors: its care at home offering and its digital therapeutics sector. Though it's working on a pipeline of digital therapies, the company's heart failure tool is closest to commercialization. The BiovitalsHF software, which aims to monitor patients and help them optimize their medication dosage, received FDA Breakthrough Device Designation in July. 

With home care tools, Biofourmis remotely monitors acute and post-acute patients, alerting a care team when their condition is changing from their personal baseline. Earlier this year, the company launched its own virtual specialty care platform called Biofourmis Care, focused on managing patients with chronic conditions like heart failure and diabetes. 

"Let's take heart failure. It's a complex chronic condition. And if you're just managing the heart failure patient and looking at parameters like your blood pressure and weight, and other things, you just can't be predictive or provide better care and drive any outcomes," Biofourmis founder and CEO Kuldeep Singh Rajput told MobiHealthNews.

"And that's the core value proposition we focus on. How can we automatically, using software, optimize dosage and therapy and provide everything that is required for the clinicians to make sure the patients are optimized."

WHAT IT'S FOR

With the influx of capital, Biofourmis plans to invest in clinical trials to develop digital biomarkers and expand its digital therapeutics pipeline. 

The company also plans to grow its virtual care and remote monitoring business, including its specialty care platform, with providers and pharma companies. However, Biofourmis is also interested in working with the value-based care market.

"We started our care at home business last year. And we specifically focused on hospital systems as our customers, but there are strategic partnerships and acquisitions we could potentially make to strengthen our position in value-based care, by partnering up with ACOs [accountable care organizations], health plans, value-based primary care organizations that are really aligned to improve patient outcomes and lower the cost of care," Rajput said.

MARKET SNAPSHOT

Others in the remote monitoring space include players like Athelas, which scooped up $132 million earlier this year; Current Health, which was recently acquired by Best Buy; and Cadence, a newer entrant focused on chronic conditions that raised $100 million in late 2021.  

Some digital therapeutics companies include Pear Therapeutics, Happify Health, Big Health and Click Therapeutics. 

Biofourmis' last funding round came in September 2020, when it scooped up $100 million in Series C funding. Meanwhile, digital health funding declined in the first quarter this year, according to a report by CB Insights. There were only 27 mega-rounds, deals worth $100 million or more, during Q1, compared with 43 in Q4. 

"So the markets have slowed down," Rajput said. "Investors are specifically looking for technologies and platforms which have really demonstrated good clinical rigor, regulatory rigor, and have the ability to scale. And I think we meet that bar."