Portfolio News

Diversity in Clinical Trials: A Regulatory Imperative

A recent study has shown that Americans of color participating in clinical trials received significantly less inclusion than white Americans. This analysis, conducted by Komodo Health, shows that 85% of participants in oncology trials were white over the past five years. For reference, black participants made up only 7% of the trial population. This should be further scrutinized as black patients currently have the highest mortality and lowest survival rate of any other ethnic/racial group in nearly all types of cancer cases.  Komodo has reaffirmed that...

Kathleen Bresette named chief revenue officer at RxLightning

RxLightning has hired Kathleen Bresette as its first chief revenue officer. Bresette’s experience in the health care industry is expansive. Most recently, she served as vice president of business development and client strategy at DrFirst Inc. She was also previously the chief revenue officer for Aptus Health (then Physicians Interactive). In her new role at RxLightning, Bresette will be responsible for the generation of revenue, business development provider growth and sales, and building a sales team. RxLightning raised $17.5 million in funding in April to accelerate growth...

Merck Digital Sciences Studio’s SciMar ONE is already demonstrating early value

Last year, McKesson Ventures joined a group of funders including Merck, Microsoft, the Global Health Innovation Fund, Northpond Ventures, and the New Jersey Institute of Technology to bring to life a “founder-friendly” startup accelerator for companies in the biopharma industry. That accelerator is the Merck Digital Sciences Studio. By participating in the Merck Digital Sciences Studio, which provides mentorship, coaching, training, support, community, and investment to enable the next generation of innovative technology for drug discovery and development, startup founders gain access to up to $150,000...

Lessons from Farzad Mostashari, CEO and Co-Founder of Aledade, on Empowering Independent Primary & Value-Based Care

Aledade CEO and Co-Founder Farzad Mostashari was recently a guest on the Pear Healthcare Playbook podcast. In the talk, Mostashari discusses his journey to healthcare, how he started Aledade, the importance of independent physicians in value-based care, and how Aledade scaled as a profitable health tech company, and goes on to share some advice for founders of startups. Mostashari’s journey into medicine began when during his childhood, his father fell ill and required hospitalization. He got his MD from the Yale School of Medicine, and a...

Real-Time Clinical Trial Monitoring at Clinical ink

Clinical Ink Senior Director Enterprise Architecture Alex Doan recently wrote a case study about how the company chose to use the Rockset analytics platform to improve query speed and other performance metrics. He began by explaining Clinical Ink, which he described as a suite of software used in over a thousand clinical trials to streamline the data collection and management process, with the goal of improving the efficiency and accuracy of trials. The company’s cloud-based electronic data capture system enables clinical trial data from more than...