Clinical trial tech firm Medrio just got its first equity boost from an institutional investor—$30 million from Questa Capital Management.
Medrio intends to use the money to accelerate the development and deployment of software applications for electronic data capture (EDC) in clinical trials. Some of the new updates include eSource, ePRO and eConsent.
Founded in 2005, Medrio’s services are offered through an eClinical software platform called CloudEDC, which the company said could help build clinical studies in days instead of months. Over 2,000 clinical trials from more than 500 customers worldwide have used its products, which include mEDU for academic clinical studies at no cost, m1 for early-phase trials, and mCore as a full eClinical suite, the company says on its website.
In that field, Medrio is pitting itself against industry giant Medidata, which offers a more comprehensive collection of cloud-based technologies for clinical trials in almost every aspect, from patient recruitment, randomization and study design to site management and statistical analytics, among others.
Focused on EDC, Medrio touts its CloudEDC as better than Medidata’s counterpart cornerstone system Rave, noting that it is less expensive, easier to initiate and less cumbersome to maintain since it uses a master form to avoid building multiple versions of similar forms and doesn’t require programming.
The San Francisco-based software company takes pride in being profitable, which means it’s not reliant on funding from a venture capital firm to make decisions, the company says on its website. Although that might still be true, Questa Capital, a VC itself, will certainly have a say in Medrio’s future, as it has put its two managing directors Ryan Drant and Brad Sloan on the latter’s board.
"Mike and his team have done a remarkable job building Medrio into a vibrant growth company in a capital-efficient manner," said Drant, founder of Questa Capital, in a statement. He also categorized Medrio’s leadership team as “exceptionally driven” and “high-integrity.”
Questa is focusing its investments in growth-stage healthcare companies, especially those with disruptive, technology-enabled business models. A fairly young company founded just in 2016, Questa is led by a managed team of industry veterans who combined have advised more than 40 startups in the past 20 years.