There’s no doubt that medical companies and academic researchers would like access to the African market for clinical trials.
The problem has long been navigating that continent’s health care system to find suitable patients in an efficient manner.
A startup that is moving its operations to Buffalo exists to solve that very challenge.
Infiuss Health won a $500,000 prize in the recent 43North competition by convincing judges that it can sustain the surge of momentum it has built in 2021.
Infiuss pivoted its business in late 2020 – initially it has been building software that helped African blood banks recruit donors. It closed a seed round in the middle of the year as it gained entry into Y Combinator, the famed Bay Area accelerator, and also started onboarding customers in the United States and United Kingdom. Then came the 43North competition in late October.
Now co-founder and CEO Melissa Bime is preparing to move to Buffalo from Alabama to establish Infiuss’ U.S. base of operations, with plans to hire a team that can help scale its business. The company, which has a team of four in the U.S. and Africa, is preparing to partner with Circuit Clinical, another fast-growing 43North winner that built a venture-funded model around expanding access to clinical trials.
“If you are a company working on a medical trial and trying to figure out how to diversify the participant cohorts, we are providing a cheaper alternative than recruiting in the United States,” Bime said.
Bime was educated in Africa and worked as a nurse across five of its countries before co-founding Infiuss with Mbah Charles. Combined with her own network are research offices in Nigeria and Cameroon that help build partnerships with physician groups and hospitals in Africa. Infiuss’ software platform connects pharmaceutical and medical device companies directly to the African patients undergoing their trials, allowing not just for medical updates but also for feedback.
Bime is now navigating the complexity of uprooting her life and moving it to Buffalo, with the support of 43North. She said the goal is to continue building out both sides of the business as she aims to reach $1.5 million in annual recurring revenue by the end of this year.
“Our goal is to solidify the business model and make sure that we are building something valuable,” she said. “The only way we can validate that is by growing revenue, and that’s going to give us the confidence that we are building something great.”
