An Irish company that designs software to simplify clinical trials has raised $25m in new funding.
Teckro said it will use the money to speed up its product development and international expansion.
The Series C round brings to $43mthe amount raised by the Limerick-based business.
The investment has come from Northpond Ventures with participation from Founders Fund, Sands Capital Ventures, Bill Maris2 Section 32 venture fund and Borealis Ventures.
Founded by brothers Gary and Nigel Hughes, as well as Jacek Skrzypiec in 2015, Teckro has over 100 employees across its three offices in Limerick, Dublin and Nashville in the US.
The platform, which uses machine learning technologies to improve the speed and accuracy of clinical trials, is used by 10,000 people in 80 countries, including at top pharma and biotech companies.
Garry Hughes said the firm's vision is to improve all site and patient interactions during clinical trials, which he said are still overly reliant on paper-based data that is not fully up to date.
"Ultimately Teckro is about ensuring that effective drugs are efficiently and effectively moved from the lab to the patient so that lives be saved,' he said.
In 2011, the founders sold their previous company Firecrest to global clinical research giant ICON.
Because of its ongoing growth, the firm is currently recruiting engineering, product, clinical operations and sales and marketing staff.
Testing on humans is by far the most expensive part of bringing experimental drugs to market.
Those costs are rising as the science behind the drug becomes more complex and Teckro says it can simplify the process by moving some of the paperwork into digital form and by allowing doctors to quickly retrieve information.
The healthcare industry is quickly adopting digital business models, using tools from computer-aided molecular drug design to artificial intelligence to analyse patients' treatment history or genetic code.
Pharma majors Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer have created the role of chief digital officer over the past two years.
Teckro's system is already used by more than 10,000 healthcare practitioners and its commercial customers include global pharma majors as well as smaller biotech firms, Gary Hughes said.
He declined to provide names.
The latest round takes Teckro's total funding to $43m.
Mr Hughes declined to say what percentage in the company the investors received in return or what price tag the transaction puts on the entire company.
If the administrative hassle of clinical trials can be reduced more community hospitals will eventually be able to participate in them, he added.
Additional reporting by Reuters
