SINGAPORE – February 15, 2017 Singapore-based HealthTech startup mClinica has raised $6.3 million in Series A funding to expand its operations globally. The company has developed mobile technology to unite pharmacies on a common platform, provide access to new sources of data, and allow for the deployment of data-driven programs that improve patient affordability and health outcomes. Since raising its seed round in 2014, the company has connected thousands of pharmacies across Southeast Asia, providing consolidated access to millions of patients and billions of data points.
The recent oversubscribed round is one of the largest Series A financings for a digital health company in Southeast Asia. The round was led by Silicon Valley based Unitus Impact and joined by London headquartered Global Innovation Fund, MDI Ventures of Indonesia, and Endeavor Catalyst of the US. Existing investors 500 Startups, IMJ Investment Partners and Kickstart Ventures also participated in the round.
“Across many developing countries, basic health data is missing. Trillions of dollars are spent by the public and private healthcare sectors and often there is no data to guide the right programming and policy decisions” states mClinica Founder and CEO Farouk Meralli. “At mClinica, we are connecting once-fragmented pharmacies on a common platform providing a unified set of global health data that has never been available before. Our goal is to rapidly transform the availability and quality of global health data in a matter of months not decades.”
mClinica currently operates in major markets in Southeast Asia such as Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines, and is rapidly expanding to other countries. Through its platform, mClinica enables leading multinational pharmaceutical companies, governments, NGOs, and academic institutions to obtain previously inaccessible data and run patient programs that directly touch populations at the local pharmacy level. As a core part of its platform, mClinica offers health ministries the ability to rapidly generate and visualize real-time health data for decision making and policy formulation. The team is engaging with several governments that are looking to employ powerful, data-driven tools to improve the delivery of health care in emerging markets.
“mClinica is now shedding light on global health epidemics through data that has never been available,” stated mClinica’s COO Vasil Rusinov. “For example, in Indonesia, our data showed that 5% of patients were prescribed with combinations of medicines that had a high-risk of interactions that could have caused severe health complications including renal failure and liver conditions. In the Philippines, our platform has quickly discovered that nearly 60% of patients with tuberculosis in the private sector may not be receiving the standard of care they need to cure themselves and protect society. In Vietnam, our data detected a significant double-digit rise in diabetes treatment within a key city in less than one year.”
Discussing his firm’s investment in mClinica, Managing Partner Beau Seil stated that “at Unitus Impact, we view mClinica as a ‘systems changing’ company that can fundamentally change the face of health care in developing countries. Due to the highly fragmented and multilayered nature of pharmaceutical supply chains, there are massive data gaps that affect the delivery of essential medicines and health services in the developing world. Markets are broken, and they cannot and will not function efficiently until there is data that key stakeholders can use to clearly understand both the supply and demand sides of the equation. Using a simple, yet powerful mobile-based platform, mClinica is creating a tremendous win-win scenario for private companies and public sector organizations looking to deliver needed medicines and information to the hundreds of millions – if not billions – of people in mClinica’s target markets. With a CEO and team that is equally dedicated to the social impact and commercial viability of its offerings, mClinica is providing immense value to pharmaceutical companies, ministries of health, and NGOs working to reach underserved communities.”
Welcoming the announcement, the Global Innovation Fund’s Nishant Lalwani stated “mClinica is generating, analysing and deploying healthcare data that simply didn’t exist in a useable fashion. This data will potentially transform the development of healthcare policy in mClinica’s target markets. It will also be valuable to those directing aid capital in the region, such as government donors and philanthropists who are seeking to make informed, evidence-based decisions around patient health programmes. mClinica will also offer significant discounts to patients and improve drug adherence among customers using prescription medicine, thus creating impact at both a macro and individual level.”
Nicko Widjaja, CEO of MDI Ventures, also added, “The Indonesian healthcare ecosystem has been growing rapidly in the past few years since the introduction of the national healthcare system. Telkom Indonesia through Admedika and Telkomedika have been working very closely with the government and healthcare industry to bring quality healthcare throughout the country. mClinica’s product and solution should fit nicely with these initiatives. Together we could introduce innovative business models that could allow for better quality healthcare while reducing the burden of the supporting ecosystem. We are excited to support mClinica market expansion to Indonesia as we are innovating how healthcare is managed in the country”.
mClinica CFO Jon Lin Shiyang states, “We are excited to have assembled this group of investors who will help mClinica to achieve its commercial and social mission. Together they bring deep industry and geographic insights and connections to help us accelerate our efforts.”
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About mClinica
mClinica’s mission is to unite the world’s pharmacies to transform global health data and advance patient health. The company currently operates across Southeast Asia and connects thousands of pharmacies on common platforms providing access to millions of patients and billions of data points. It works with some of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies as well as governments, NGOs and academic institutions.
For more information on mClinica, visit http://www.mclinica.com
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Farouk Meralli