(Bloomberg) -- Reify Health raised $220 million in a funding round that saw its valuation more than double from last year to $4.8 billion.
The series D financing for the Boston-based company was led by Altimeter Capital and Coatue, according to a statement reviewed by Bloomberg News. Dragoneer Investment Group also participated in the round, along with earlier investors Iconiq Growth, Adams Street and Battery Ventures.
Reify says it will use the funding to help make clinical trials more representative of diverse populations. Underrepresentation of some minority communities in medical trials has been a problem for researchers because the effectiveness of certain treatments can vary by race and ethnicity.
Ralph Passarella and Michael Lin co-founded Reify in 2012 with a goal of slashing the amount of time it takes to enroll patients in a clinical trial to three months from an average of about 18 months.
Reify has a tech platform called StudyTeam that connects biopharmaceutical companies that sponsor research with clinics and hospitals, using analytics to help them them accelerate enrollment. Its Care Access business helps trial sponsors conduct trials in places where research generally hasn’t been done, like people’s homes, local clinics or health centers.
“We’re dedicated to making the clinical trial process faster, more efficient, more predictable so we can get the medicines to the people that need them,” Passarella, Reify’s chief executive officer, said in an interview. “A big part of what we’re doing in Care Access is making it possible for us to look for people and offer clinical research to people in so many more locations at once.”
Some of Reify’s customers include Amgen Inc., AstraZeneca Plc, Eli Lilly & Co., Merck & Co. and Sanofi.
“One theme that was really consistent in talking to different pharma executives has been the need to accelerate and broaden patient access and patient recruitment of clinical trials, which is a huge bottleneck and there’s very limited technology today,” Coatue’s head of health care, Aaron Weiner, said in an interview. “Reify’s solution to this problem is unparalleled -- that’s what got us excited. Since our original investment they’ve really continued to scale.”
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