Israeli prescription error elimination co startup MedAware has raised $8 million in Series A financing round with investments from BD (Becton, Dickinson & Co.), Gefen Capital, OurCrowd and Yingcheng City Fubon Technology Co. In addition, MedAware has received grants from Israel’s Innovation Authority and the BIRD Foundation, as well as from the European Commission as part of its Horizon2020 program, bringing the company’s total funding raised to date to $12 million.
The Ra'anana-based company has developed algorithm-rich solutions for the detection and elimination of prescription errors, and the new funds will be used to advance the company’s unique approach to identifying the most consequential medication mistakes, thus improving patient safety and saving lives.
Nearly eight million people in the US alone are exposed to serious and preventable prescription errors on an annual basis. MedAware is dedicated to eradicating such catastrophic errors by leveraging its patented software to perform a real-time evaluation of a prescribed drug against a specific and up-to-date patient profile. The company’s advanced machine-learning algorithms mine data gathered from millions of EMRs to detect outliers in prescription behavior that could potentially be fatal and immediately flag them as life threatening.
MedAware CEO Gidi Stein said, "MedAware was purpose built around our commitment to patient safety. Every catastrophic error we identify is a patient saved. Through this round of Series A funding we will be able to build on the successes we’ve achieved to date and scale our approach to protect physicians and their patients all over the world."
The company has already demonstrated considerable success in the US over the past year, opening its new North American headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut and earning validation for its solution from a recent Harvard Medical School research study. MedAware has also generated positive results from a live implementation at The Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer, a 2,000-bed university-affiliated tertiary referral hospital in Israel. In addition, the company has numerous EMR integrations already underway.
OurCrowd CEO Jon Medved said, "OurCrowd is proud to be investing again in MedAware, a company whose product is changing the way that medicine is prescribed. The ability to ensure that prescriptions will heal rather than harm by utilizing machine learning and big data analysis, is about as good as it gets in impact investing. It gives me goosebumps to realize that by investing in this revolutionary company we will indeed save lives."
"This collaboration with MedAware exemplifies BD’s commitment of advancing the world of health by working towards a common goal of creating innovative solutions that may help clinicians deliver safer and more efficient care," said David Icke, vice president and general manager of Digital Health for BD. "By combining the MedAware solution into BD’s portfolio of medication and surveillance solutions, we have the unique opportunity to identify and help prevent medication errors from prescription through administration."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on August 16, 2017
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2017