Biofourmis, an AI health IT company based in Singapore, today announced it raised $100 million in a series C funding round led by SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2. CEO Kuldeep Singh Rajput said the company will use the proceeds to accelerate expansion, advance therapeutics pipelines, develop care pathways, and drive integration with health system, hospital, pharmaceutical, and research clients. Biofourmis also plans to commercialize new digital therapeutics solutions across cardiology, respiratory, oncology, and pain segments with a focus on Asian Pacific, Chinese, and Japanese markets.
Connected devices collect an incredible amount of patients’ data — called biomarkers — that can be used to predict a variety of health-related outcomes. Biofourmis asserts biomarkers could inform an objective measure of pain, for instance; the company recently engaged Chugai Pharmaceutical to discover ways to measure discomfort associated with endometriosis, a disorder in which endometrial tissue grows outside of the uterus. Biofourmis asserts that biomarkers enable remote patient monitoring, freeing up clinicians to address patients who urgently require in-person care.
Biofourmis describes its end-to-end Biovitals platform as a “physiology-based data analytics engine” for health care providers, payers, and pharmaceutical companies. Algorithms continuously ingest data from patient health histories and FDA-approved wearable sensors to create biomarkers reflecting overall health, generating disease- and therapy-specific models for maladies like heart failure, pain, and myocardial infarction.
Biofourmis says Biovitals can detect changes in health “days” earlier than traditional screenings and that it ties in with electronic health record (EHR) systems, enabling the service to alert doctors when an intervention might be necessary. Biovitals biomarkers also drive nutrition, fitness, and treatment regimens, as well as the reminders patients receive through Biofourmis’ companion smartphone app.
Above: The Biofourmis mobile app.
Biofourmis’ other spotlight product — BiovitalsHF — is designed to facilitate monitoring of heart failure patients with tools that deliver insight regarding treatment effectiveness, drug dosage variances, and adverse reactions. The company says some of its customers are using BiovitalsHF in conjunction with pharmacotherapy to provide in-home care, with the goal of reducing hospital readmissions and limiting emergency room visits.
It’s been an eventful year for Biofourmis, to put it mildly. In July 2019, the company partnered with researchers at Yale and the Mayo Clinic to study endpoints for heart disease using Apple Watches and Biofourmis’ mobile health monitor. In October, the FDA granted the Biovitals analytics engine 510(k) clearance as a medical device for ambulatory physiological monitoring. A month later, Novartis tapped Biofourmis to help develop digital therapeutic programs that follow patients home after they’ve been diagnosed with heart failure. And just this year, Biofourmis embarked on a program with the University of Hong Kong to assist with monitoring and treating COVID-19 patients.
Biofourmis also made two acquisitions aimed at bolstering its health technology platform. Last November, the company snatched up Zurich-based wearable company Biovotion, a startup developing a biosensor that can ostensibly measure 22 different vital signs. And in April, it finalized an agreement to acquire Gaido Health from Takeda Pharmaceuticals, a deal that expands Biofourmis’ portfolio in the oncology space.
Rajput says that revenue has increased “significantly” through the new collaborations with seven pharmaceutical companies and 10 health systems. He declined to reveal an exact valuation, but said that Biofourmis is now worth around $1 billion.
In addition to SoftBank, Biofourmis’ latest funding round had participation from existing investors EDBI, MassMutual Ventures, Openspace Ventures, and Sequoia Capital. It brings the company’s total raised to date to over $143 million, and it marks the adoption of Biofourmis’ new organizational structure. A division called Biofourmis Therapeutics will focus on developing software-based therapeutics, while a separate entity — Biofourmis Health — will work on virtual care models to remotely manage patients transitioning to post-care.
Author: Kyle Wiggers
Source: Venturebeat
