London-based uMed is a technology platform, which is embedded within a global network of healthcare providers that automates the process of building high-quality prospective research registries. In a recent development, the company raised venture capital funding to help healthcare providers take part in more clinical studies.
Raises €4.12M funding
The research technology company uMed has raised £3.7M (nearly €4.12M) from AlbionVC, Delin Ventures and Playfair Capital and Silicon Valley’s 11.2 Capital. The latest investment will help healthcare providers in the UK and US including hospitals and GPs. They will provide tools to run patient research more efficiently while protecting patient data and make sure regulatory compliance. This follows the £1M (nearly €1.1M) seed investment from Playfair Capital.
uMed’s founder and CEO, Dr Matt Wilson says, “Our technology can support healthcare providers in finding appropriate patients to participate in medical research including large scale patient registries which usually demands laborious, manual processes on top of their already complex and heavy workloads.”
“As our technology is uniquely able to reach back compliantly from the Electronic Health Record (EHR) to the patients, the process for building research registries can be heavily automated. It means clinicians can focus on patient care, while patients are given the opportunity to participate in many more studies from home with full transparency over use of their health records,” he further adds.
Helps in COVID-19 scenario
Already, uMed is delivering its technology to a slew of clinical research studies such as the University of Oxford-led RAPTOR-C19 study. This study is a part of the national priority CONDOR platform that evaluates the use of COVID-19 diagnostics in various settings.
RAPTOR-C19 compares the accuracy of various COVID-19 rapid tests among patients in community settings, including GP surgeries. These findings point put the scaling up of testing in the UK, which helps scientists understand and control COVID-19 transmission in a better manner.
The platform of uMed provides the necessary functionalities needed to digitally target and engage patients for the study. It enables e-consent and the automated capture of structured outcomes remotely. These are linked to the data from the patient record. Eventually, there is efficient execution of the study across a slew of cites and healthcare providers can participate in more such studies, claims the company.
Already, the uMed technology platform developed by former NHS anaesthetist and Medical Officer in the Royal Marines helps connect life science researchers with both healthcare providers and their patients. This platform has been embedded across a rapidly expanding global network, with over 1.7 million patients in over 160 primary care sites in the UK. And, its eyes to serve 2 million patients from a huge US health system from early next year.
How is automation of help?
As per the company, medical research studies cost several million, and up to 80% of the involved cost is related to the manual processes. This is where uMed comes to play as it eradicates the cost involved in safeguarding data. It lets researchers augment health records with additional structured data that is captured from patients at home. The platform does this without exposing patient identity and ensures key steps, including patient consent.
uMed’s platform automates the clinical study process and creates regulatory quality patient registries with electronic health data, including genomic and biomarker samples. With automation, it lets healthcare providers from small GP practices to large hospitals to participate in multiple research programmes simultaneously and support enhanced research revenue sans increasing overhead or burdens on clinical teams.
Main image picture credits: uMed