Medical data mining company Treato Ltd. has raised $14.5 million. OrbiMed Israel LP led the round, and was joined by New Leaf Venture Partners, a specialist in healthcare IT investments, and Reed Elsevier Ventures, the investment arm of professional information solutions provider Reed Elsevier plc (NYSE; LSE: ELN). The company previously raised $5.5 million from Reed Elsevier Ventures, Western Technology Investments, and Dr. Shmuel Kavili.
Treato collates medical information from online sources, including forums and social networks, providing patients with information about medications and pharmaceutical companies with information about what patients think about them and their competitors.
Gideon Mantel, the former CEO of information security company Commtouch Software Ltd. (Nasdaq: CTCH; TASE: CTCH) founded Treato in 2007. He once told "Globes", "I looked for an area that the Internet has not yet revolutionized." He said that medical scandals, such as the Remedia affair in which several infants died after being fed faulty formula, could have been prevented through close monitoring of health issues online. "In almost every field in the world, the consumer's voice is being heard," he said. "Everyone wants to know what other people are saying."
Treato CEO Ido Hadari said, "In late 2011, we launched the site for consumers, and without any marketing, it crossed the 100,000 daily hits threshold. We recently launched a for-pay site for more sophisticated data mining, mainly for pharmaceutical companies. We already have several subscribers and hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue."
Hadari added, "Until now, everyone wanted to hear the doctor's voice. Now, because of social changes and even legislation, everyone wants to hear the patient's opinion. Regulation no longer pays for the doctor to treat, but for the patient to heal."
Hadari said that the investment would be used initially to expand in the US.
Orbimed Israel managing director Anat Naschitz said, "The healthcare IT industry is one of the fastest growing fields in medicine. $500 million was invested in the sector in the first quarter of 2013, more than in all of 2011, and at least 46 large M&A deals were made in it in the US alone. Israel is ready to exploit this breakthrough, because we have outstanding life science and IT experts, such as the people who founded Treato."
Treato mines data about 24,000 diseases and medical conditions from 1.3 billion sources. Nashitz said, "When a company conducts market research, it is limited and constrained by the questions asked. This product tells companies things they don’t know, such a company which discovered that patients preferred its competitor's product because of its delivery mechanism, which the company did not think was important."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on April 23, 2013
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