While much of the world eagerly watches to see if the vaccination rollout helps curb and eventually stamp out Covid-19, one of the companies that has been helping to manage the spread of the virus is announcing a big round of funding on the heels for strong demand for its technology.
Huma, which combines data from biomarkers with predictive algorithms both to help monitor patients, and uses the same technology to help researchers and pharmaceutical companies run clinical trials, has closed an equity round of $130 million, a Series C that the company can extend to $200 million by way of a $70 million debt line if it chooses.
Huma can pick up data that patients contribute via smartphones, or by way of diagnostic devices that measure glucose, blood pressure or oxygen saturation, and the plan will be to use the funding to augment that in a couple of ways: to continue investing in R&D to both expand the kinds of biomarkers that Huma can measure and to work on more research and trials; to continue expanding London-based Huma’s business particularly in newer geographies like the US, alongside a strong wave of business it’s been seeing in Europe, specifically the UK and the DACH region.
The funding includes a number of high-profile strategic and financial backers that speak to some of the opportunities coming down the pike. Co-led by Leaps by Bayer, the VC division of the pharmaceutical and life sciences giant, and Hitachi Ventures, it also includes Samsung Next, Sony Innovation Fund by IGV (one of Sony’s investment funds), Unilever Ventures and HAT Technology & Innovation Fund, Nikesh Arora (the former president of SoftBank and ex-Google exec) and Michael Diekmann (Chairman of Allianz) all in the round. Bayer also led Huma’s $25 million Series B in 2019, when the startup was still called Medopad.
Medopad rebranded to Huma last year in April, just as the Covid-19 pandemic was really taking hold across the world. In the year since, CEO and founder Dan Vahdat said that the company has been on a growth tear, working hard across the spectrum of areas where its technology could prove useful, since it provides a bridge to monitoring patients remotely, at a time when it’s been significantly more challenging to see people in person.
“Last year when the pandemic first hit, it made everyone’s lives miserable not just from the health aspect but also research aspect,” he said. “The whole idea is how to decentralize care and research.”
Its work has included partnering with the NHS early on to ship some 1 million oxygen saturation devices to monitor how patients’ levels were faring, since that was early on discovered to be a leading indicator of whether a patient would need urgent medical care: this was essential way to triage people remotely at a time when hospitals were quickly getting overwhelmed with people. Vahdat said this directly helped reduce readmissions by one-third.
It is also playing a role in helping to monitor all the many patients who had been due to have operations but found those postponed. In the UK alone, there were 4.8 million people waiting as a result for their procedures, “a shocking number,” Vahdat said. How to handle that queue? The idea here, he said, is that when you are a patient at home waiting for cardiac surgery, your condition might deteriorate quickly. Or it may not. Huma set up a system to provide diagnostics for those patients to monitor how they were doing: signs that they were not doing well meant they would get moved up and brought in to be seen by a specialist before they deteriorated and became urgent rather than managed cases.
Alongside this clinical work, Huma has also been working on a number of trials and research, including a phase 4 study on one of the Covid-19 vaccines that has been getting distributed under emergency authorization (this is a regulatory process that comes in the wake of that authorization).
It’s also been continuing to contribute essential data to ongoing medical research. One that the company can disclose that is not directly related to Covid-19 is a heart study for Bayer; and one that is related to Covid-19 — finding better biomarkers (specifically in looking at digital phenotypes) to detect Covid-19 infections earlier — called the Cambridge Fenland study.
This long list of work has meant that Huma still has much of its Series B in the bank, and so it’s also been turning its attention to humanitarian work, donating resources to India and other countries still in the throes of their own Covid-19 crises.
Although startups that bridge the worlds of medicine and technology can be very long plays, the last year has shown not just how vital it is to invest in the smartest of these to see out their ambitions for the greater good of all of us, but that, when they do have their breakthroughs, it can prove to be a huge thing for the companies and investors. BioNTech’s last year has been nothing short of a stratospheric turnaround, going from a loss-making business to one producing more than $1 billion in profit in the last quarter on the back of its Covid-19 vaccine research and work with Pfizer.
It’s for that reason that so many investors are keen to continue supporting the likes of Huma and the insights it provides.
“Aligned with the vision of Leaps by Bayer, Huma’s expertise and technology will help drive a global paradigm shift towards prevention and care and may boost research efforts using data and digital technology,” said Juergen Eckhardt, Head of Leaps by Bayer, in a statement. “We invest into the most disruptive technologies of our time that have the potential to change the world for the better. As an early investor into Huma we know how perfectly the company fits into that frame as one of the leading digital innovators in healthcare and life sciences.”
“Huma has built a comprehensive remote patient monitoring platform and established a strong track-record and we are excited to be working with Huma to bring its world-leading health technology to new markets in Asia. We believe that together we can advance new digital health products to power better care and research for all,” added Keiji Kojima, EVP of Hitachi’s Smart Life division.
