Pam Tenaerts is the Chief Scientific Officer of Medable, which went from being a small company creating software helping clinical researchers to design their own experiments to being the big dog in remote clinical trials during the pandemic. Medable has raised over $500m in the past 3 years. Pam has a stellar research background and this interview covers the gamut about how clinical trials work, which companies are involved, how remote (or hybrid) trials actually work, and what the likely outcome for clinical research will be. If you have any interest in understanding the state of play in pharma R&D, this is compulsory viewing–Matthew Holt
#Healthin2Point00, Episode 199 | Olive acquires Empiric plus raises by Medable & Papa
Today on Health in 2 Point 00, I air some of my grudges as we get into our deals for the day. In the third extension of their Series C, Medable gets another $78 million bringing their total to $217 million. Olive acquires Empiric Health, expanding into surgical data analytics – where does this fit in with Sean Lane’s five-point strategic plan? Finally, Papa gets a $60 million raise and Anthem, Blackstone and K Health launch a joint venture. —Matthew Holt
Medable’s CEO: Covid19 Vaccine Will Start Big Pharma’s Era of De-Centralized Clinical Trials
By JESSICA DaMASSA, WTF HEALTH
Covid 19 vaccine development may have mainstreamed questions about how to hasten drug development timelines, but Medable, a health tech startup that offers researchers a way to de-centralize clinical trials, has been working to solve this problem for five years. Freshly funded with a $91M Series C raise, co-founder and CEO Michelle Longmire talks through the benefits of “liberating” clinical trials from academic research centers and sending them onto devices into patient’s homes. Traditionally, drug development processes average more than 10 years, cost millions of dollars, and are limited in the diversity of patients they can recruit because of the heavy focus on the geographic location of the research team conducting the trial. Medable’s digital platform breaks these limitations, reducing drug development timelines and costs by making it easier for researchers to draw study participants from anywhere. More importantly, it makes the novel medicines being tested by the trial available to a bigger, more diverse array of patients. Despite the gains made in 2020 toward the de-centralized clinical trial model (Medable’s revenue shot up 500%), there’s concern that Big Pharma may return to the business processes of old once the pandemic is under control. Does Michelle think last year make enough of an impact to change their business model for good? Find out what’s ahead for the future of pharma.
#Healthin2Point 00, Episode 169 | They’re real and they’re SPACtacular!
Today on Health in 2 Point 00, It’s a whacky SPACy world, as a new SPAC rolls “UpHealth” and has me singing Bob Marley, meanwhile there’s $91m for remote clinical trial software player Medable, $76m more for Spring Health joining the throng of mental health companies, while K-Health gets $42m to introduce chat bot front ends to Korean pop music…or something like that. —Matthew Holt
Health in 2 Point 00, Episode 122 | Livongo Q1 Earnings, LetsGetChecked, Vida Health, and Medable
Today on Episode 122 of Health in 2 Point 00, Jess asks me about LetsGetChecked raising $71M for at-home testing, Vida Health raising $25M for virtual chronic-conditions-management programs, Medable securing $25M for clinical trials, and Livongo publishing their Q1 earnings report (and their stock rising 10% days before the report was released!). I am excited to see their CFO, Lee Shapiro, go on a buying spree in the space now — Matthew Holt
Health in 2 Point 00, Episode 47
Jessica DaMassa asks me about Patrick Soon-Shiong and his Verity hospital chain going bankrupt, whether Peerfit can justify its $8m raise, and who I’m going to see at TechCrunch Disrupt this week–Matthew Holt
Michelle Longmire, CEO Medable
I never ceased to be amazed by how smart young clinicians solve problems that they see. Michelle Longmire was in residency at Stanford working with colleagues building point solutions when she realized that what they needed was an easy platform on which to develop medical grade apps. Her company Medable was the result. Then she realized that the other big market was clinical researchers, who now have access to Apple’s ResearchKit, but need an easy way to build a study without using developers. I interviewed her recently and she built a study for me using Medable’s new Axon product.
