Elligo raises $20m to help close clinical research and health care gap

09-May-2019 - Last updated on 09-May-2019 at 13:04 GMT

(Image: Getty/marchmeena29)

Elligo Health Research raises $20m in Series C funding to expand into more states, as part of the company’s goal to connect more physicians and their patients to clinical trials.

The Series C funding round was led by Piper Jaffray Merchant Banking, a division of Piper Jaffray, with participation from all lead Series A and B investors.

The funds will directly support the integrated research organization’s (IRO) expansion into more states as well as further development of its IntElligo Research Stack clinical technology. It also will fund investments in its data sciences services and other general operations, said John Potthoff, PhD, CEO of Elligo Health Research.

Potthoff said this will help the company achieve its goal of closing “the gap between clinical research and clinical health care by connecting more physicians and their patients to more research.”

“Patients deserve to have access to clinical trials as a health care option and they are more likely to participate when their trusted, local physician is conducting the trial at their practice,” he told us.

“Too often, when we ‘disrupt’ clinical trials, we actually end up disrupting the patient. Being patient-centric also means not burdening the patient with the logistics of a trial. Trial conduct should be synchronous with health care – that is patient centricity.”

By connecting patients to clinical trials through their electronic health record (EHR) data, and by investing further in research as a care option, the company aims to increase the availability of clinical trials “for patients seeking novel therapies through their trusted, local physicians,” said Potthoff.

Elligo closed its Series B funding round in March 2018. Led by Hatteras Venture Partners and Noro-Moseley Partners with participation from FS Healthcare LLC and Excelerate Health Ventures, the funding round brought in $16m to scale the business.

In the same month, the company also announced a partnership with Saama Technologies through which the companies are building new technology platforms to help sponsors achieve their objectives faster, Potthoff told us at the time.

Additionally, earlier this year, the company acquired Protenium Clinical Research, a TX-based research group, the addition of which grew Elligo’s network to more than one million patients.