AiCure wins venture capital funding for medication adherence platform

AiCure recently closed a Series A fundraising round of US$12.25 million from a venture capital consortium led by New Leaf Venture Partners, with additional participation from Pritzker Group Venture Capital, Tribeca Venture Partners, and Biomatics Capital, established by Boris Nikolic, former Chief Advisor for Science and Technology to Bill Gates.

AiCure is an artificial intelligence company claiming to connect the world’s patients to better treatments, in turn, improving health. The firm takes advantage of the imaging and computing power of smartphones to offer direct visualization of patient behavior.

Investor confidence in AiCure was driven by the platform’s unique ability to apply machine learning, computer vision, and Big Data analysis to health care. The patented mobile software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform uses artificial intelligence and facial recognition to visually confirm medication ingestion.

Accurately measuring medication adherence is fundamental to both clinical trials and clinical care. Nearly US$200 billion are lost annually in the United States in failed trials and expensive hospitalizations because patients do not take their medications as prescribed. High-risk patients are more likely to suffer poor health outcomes as a result of not taking their medications correctly and consistently.

“AiCure is the only effective and scalable platform that we have seen that solves one of the most significant problems in efficiency and quality of healthcare today,” said Vijay Lathi, managing director of New Leaf, who has joined the AiCure board of directors.

Prior to raising institutional capital, AiCure was able to make substantial technical and commercial progress due to US$7 million in National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding. The competitive innovation grants were awarded to AiCure and participating academic collaborators to develop a platform that would “significantly impact drug research and therapy.”

As a result of this work, AiCure’s technology has been validated against drug levels in blood samples. Its feasibility also has been established across very different patient populations, from elderly stroke patients to study participants in schizophrenia and HIV prevention trials.

Beyond the NIH, AiCure has gained significant traction commercially. Pharmaceutical companies and government institutions are partnering with AiCure to monitor medication adherence and optimize treatment models. Payers are also taking a strong interest in AiCure as a means to increase medication adherence and reduce costs in their high-risk, high-cost patient populations. The combined revenue opportunity across multiple verticals sets AiCure apart in the medication adherence space.

Article Topics

AiCure  |  artificial intelligence  |  big data  |  biometrics  |  computer vision  |  facial recognition  |  funding  |  healthcare  |  investment  |  patient monitoring  |  SaaS  |  smartphones