Boston-based Reify Health, a 10-year-old startup behind cloud-based solutions to streamline clinical trials, has raised $30 million in a Series B round led by Battery Ventures.
With the funding, Reify plans to expand its footprint beyond the U.S. to work with researchers outside of North America. The startup has so far deployed its technology, a platform called StudyTeam, at 1,800 research sites across 26 countries, according to Ralph Passarella, CEO and co-founder, mainly working to assist clinical trials sponsored by biopharmaceutical companies.
StudyTeam essentially digitizes the systems used by researchers at clinical trial sites, streamlining existing processes and cutting down the time it takes for trials to proceed. Reify says half of the top-20 global biopharma companies use the platform, including Eli Lilly and Company, Amgen and others.
"We look at the world where you can kind of upgrade the spreadsheets and paper and sticky notes all these research staff use to get their job done on a day-to-day basis," Passarella said. "By bringing their workflow online, you can make it easier for them to share information with the pharmaceutical companies. We've built two products, one for health care staff and one for sponsors, that work together in harmony and have figured out how to scale it."
By Reify's own estimate, StudyTeam accelerates clinical trial enrollment by an average of six weeks per trial. That could be critical for patients who are anxiously anticipating new breakthroughs, especially for challenging diseases.
Reify is involved with research on the coronavirus, which it plans to reveal more about in the coming weeks. But for Passarella, as well as his co-founder and Reify executive chairman Michael Lin, the coronavirus does not present a novel problem with the clinical trial system. It has simply made ubiquitous an experience that scores of patients have dealt with for years.
"Each one of us—everyone on this call, around Boston, around the world—we're all waiting on clinical trials to proceed," Passarella said. "That same feeling of waiting, of 'man I hope this works,' of 'man I hope this trial works soon'—that's how people with Alzheimer's and stage four breast cancer feel every single day, and that's what they're going to feel when the pandemic is over, too. It's really important that we don't forget that, and we remember how important it is to make this process more efficient."
