UK-based research technology company uMed has raised £3.7 million to help healthcare providers in the UK and US, including GPs, hospitals and health specialists, run patient research more efficiently while safeguarding patient data and ensuring regulatory compliance.

VC investors AlbionVC, Delin Ventures and Playfair Capital are backing uMed’s latest round of funding, along with Silicon Valley’s 11.2 Capital to reinforce the company’s US presence. 

uMed’s platform automates the clinical study process, creating regulatory quality patient registries that combine electronic health data with structured data captured from each patient. 

WHY IT MATTERS

Medical research studies can cost many millions of pounds each, and up to 80% of these costs are associated with manual processes delegated to healthcare providers which uMed aims to eradicate.

uMed is delivering its technology to a number of clinical research studies including the University of Oxford-led RAPTOR-C19 study, part of the national priority CONDOR platform evaluating the use of COVID-19 diagnostics in different settings.

RAPTOR-C19 is comparing the accuracy of different rapid tests for COVID-19 among patients in community settings, such as GP surgeries. These findings are informing the scaling up of testing in the UK, which is a key priority in helping scientists better understand and control COVID-19 transmission.

The uMed platform provides the functionality required to digitally target and engage patients for this study, enabling e-consent and the automated capture of structured outcomes remotely which are linked back to the data from each patient record.

This ensures the efficient execution of the study across a large number of sites, and creates the capacity for healthcare providers to participate in many more of these studies than would otherwise be possible.

THE LARGER CONTEXT

In related news, health tech company 54gene recently launched a clinical research programme in Nigeria to provide end-to-end clinical development services.  

ON THE RECORD

uMed’s founder and CEO, Dr Matt Wilson said: “Our technology can support healthcare providers in finding appropriate patients to participate in medical research including large scale patient registries which usually demands laborious, manual processes on top of their already complex and heavy workloads.

“As our technology is uniquely able to reach back compliantly from the Electronic Health Record (EHR) to the patients, the process for building research registries can be heavily automated. It means clinicians can focus on patient care, while patients are given the opportunity to participate in many more studies from home with full transparency over use of their health records.”