Clinical trial tech company Science 37 announced Thursday it has acquired a life science platform from Vault Health, which offers COVID-19 testing and health-screening services for employers. 

Science 37 said the deal accelerates its plans to add features like advanced scheduling, investigational product tracking and data sharing with electronic data capture systems and EHRs. 

The company said the purchase should be cash flow neutral during the calendar year, as it allows Science 37 to avoid planned expenses. 

"We are fortunate to be able to acquire such a valuable asset today to advance many of our high-priority development plans for the future," CEO David Coman said in a statement. "From a technology standpoint, the Vault Health life science platform has a parallel technology architecture making it reasonably simple to integrate and, from a delivery perspective, this acquisition will have an efficiency impact as early as the second half of 2023."

THE LARGER TREND

Science 37, which provides an operating system for running decentralized and hybrid clinical trials, announced plans to go public through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company in 2021 and began trading on Nasdaq later that year. 

During the third quarter, Science 37 reported $16.2 million in revenue, a 14% increase from the prior-year period. But it also posted a larger net loss of $23.4 million for the quarter, and only $4.7 million in net bookings, compared with $35.9 million for the same period in 2021. 

"The third quarter was challenging from a bookings perspective as we experienced delays in expected contract signings and longer sales cycles in our larger volume opportunities," Coman said in a statement. "We made great strides in our cash management for the quarter and are confident in our growth prospects as evidenced by a strong start to fourth quarter bookings and high levels of customer engagement."

At the end of 2022, the company received a delisting warning from Nasdaq, giving the company until June to raise its stock's closing bid price to at least $1.00 per share for at least 10 consecutive business days.