Israeli personalized medication management platform Medisafe announced today that it has raised a $14.5 million in a Series B funding round led by Octopus Ventures, with M (Merck)Ventures, to support the company’s rapid growth and global expansion. Other investors participating from previous rounds include Pitango Venture Capital, 7wire ventures, lool Ventures, TriVentures, Qualcomm Ventures and Eyal Gura.
With over 3.5 million patient and caregiver registered users, Medisafe focuses on helping the hundreds of millions of people worldwide to take their medications as prescribed, solving the problem known as medication non-adherence. Non-adherence is one of the most dire issues and complex behavioral challenges in healthcare that, in the US and Europe alone, is estimated to cause a death every four minutes and places a burden to health systems estimated at $500 billion annually. Moreover, pharmaceutical companies globally lose an estimated $637 billion each year due to medication non-adherence, bringing total costs to well over $1 trillion.
Medisafe has shown through published research that its mobile health platform leads to significantly higher medication adherence. In related studies, comparable increases in adherence have demonstrated a direct link to improved health outcomes across a wide variety of therapeutic areas, using measures such as hospitalization risk and total medical cost. This evidence has led private and government-sponsored medical insurers - Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) in the US, National Health Services (NHS) in the UK - to adopt quality measures to improve medication adherence.
Medisafe will use funds from this latest round of financing to grow its sales and marketing teams, expand the platform’s capabilities, as well as open an office in London to better service its European partners and capitalize on growing demand. Interest in Medisafe from the US and European markets has been particularly strong since last October when Medisafe announced the expansion of its offering for pharmaceutical and life sciences companies.
Based in Haifa, Medisafe was founded by CEO Omri Shor and CTO Rotem Shor. Omri Shor said: "We are excited to welcome Octopus Ventures and M Ventures who believe in and support our mission of improving people’s health, while producing measurable outcomes for our partners across the healthcare continuum, from pharma companies, to insurers and providers. We will use the new capital to hire the best talent, enhance the platform’s capabilities, and achieve our ambitious expansion goals globally."
Eyal Rabinovich of Octopus Ventures said, "At Octopus Ventures, we’re committed to backing unusually talented teams, obsessed with driving innovation within their industry and building global businesses. With Medisafe’s application of mobile, internet and big data to the global healthcare issue of medication non-adherence there is an opportunity to revolutionize the healthcare industry, reduce waste and the financial burden that comes with it, and improve lives."
Edward Kliphuis, Investment Director of the New Businesses fund at M Ventures (Merck Ventures BV, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, a subsidiary of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany (known as M Ventures in the US and Canada), said, "M Ventures invests globally in transformational ideas driven by great entrepreneurs. Technology enabled healthcare with the goal to improve patient outcomes is a key area of focus for us. We believe that Medisafe is perfectly positioned to address the issue of medication non-adherence through its technology platform, and ultimately improve patient outcomes by doing so."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on March 1, 2017
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