Incredible Medable:Changing the World of Clinical Trials
By Sunny Kumar, MD, Partner at GSR Ventures
October 26, 2021
We’re delighted to share the news that GSR Ventures is co-leading Medable’s $304 million Series D funding round, at a $2.1 billion valuation.
We first met the Medable team in 2019 and proceeded to lead their $25 million Series B round in April 2020. We then participated significantly in both the company’s $91 million Series C round in November 2020 and in the $78 million Series C extension in April of this year. Now, we are extremely proud to co-lead this latest round and expand our investment in the company.
Why we’re excited about Medable
GSR Ventures is a firm that looks for opportunities to use emerging technologies to meaningfully transform how healthcare is delivered. And when we say “meaningfully transform,” we’re not talking about 2% or 3% gains in efficiency. We aim to deliver healthcare solutions that are 5X, 10X, even 100X better than what was previously possible.
One area we’re particularly excited about is clinical trials, because this is a sector that historically has not been disrupted. Most clinical trials are being done today more or less the same way they’ve been done for decades.
Medable is a decentralized clinical trial platform that has proven it can get effective therapies to patients faster. We love Medable’s decentralized trial technology because it has the power to align incentives across all the key stakeholders in the space, while providing ubiquitous access to trials regardless of geography, income or race. Their patient-centric approach allows them to deliver the best tech-enabled experience for patients participating in clinical trials. Medable’s approach also makes the clinical trial experience better for key pharmaceutical and biotech sponsors by enabling them to bring their therapeutics candidates to market faster and more efficiently than previously possible.
As it stands, the time to get from discovery to approval often takes a dozen years or longer, and Medable has proven that they can dramatically accelerate this development period – getting more new therapies to patients faster than ever before possible.
Why Medable stands out
Before investing in Medable, we looked at over 40 different companies in the space. Medable stood out for a number of reasons. First and foremost, unlike other companies in the space, Medable is a tech-oriented integrated platform. The company is not merely a single point solution or a services offering, but rather a comprehensive technology platform.
We were also deeply impressed by the founding team. Co-Founder and CEO Michelle Longmire is a Stanford-trained physician who is passionate about improving human health. Prior to founding Medable, she herself conducted clinical trials, so she has an intimate understanding of the challenges and pain points, which gives Medable a significant advantage in the space. This level of insight and personal experience is true across the entire Medable team.
And Medable truly sets itself apart with their focus on meaningful and scalable impact. From the start, it was clear that this team is committed to building a solution that is not only disruptive but massive in scale. Medable aims to fundamentally revolutionize the industry, and we believe they are positioned for tremendous success.
Why now is the time for Medable
COVID-19 accelerated digital transformation in the healthcare industry. The past 18 months have led to a willingness to adopt healthcare technology that has altered the status quo and changed the way that care is delivered and consumed. During the early period of the pandemic, COVID added significant uncertainty to the vast majority of clinical trials. Ongoing studies faced challenges with site visits, due to site closures and stay-at-home orders, while new studies had recruitment challenges. The combination of these factors opened the floodgates for adoption of Medable’s remote technology for clinical trials.
Over this period, Medable continued to grow rapidly and has now deployed its platform across more than 150 clinical trials in over 60 countries. Meanwhile, the market for new clinical trial solutions is changing faster than anyone could have imagined prior to COVID. Prior to 2020, only a small fraction of all clinical trials had some level of decentralization. Today, over 90% of trials incorporate or plan to incorporate decentralization[1].
That is a dramatic shift, and while it was greatly accelerated over the past year and a half, the core value proposition of decentralization continues to drive ever greater adoption of digital and mobile technology across clinical trials. That gives us tremendous confidence in the future of this sector, and particularly in Medable. Indeed, independent research firm Everest Group has named Medable the number one leader in the shift to decentralized clinical trials.
Why the sky is the limit for Medable
It is becoming clearer every day that Medable is uniquely positioned to capture outsized market share and dominate the decentralized clinical trial technology market. Going forward, we are excited to see Medable continue to make trials accessible for everyone, everywhere as it pursues its core goal of using technology to dramatically improve the research experience and bring novel treatments to patients faster than ever before possible.
[1] WCG Avoca. “Insights from June 4, 2021: Decentralized Trial Activities and Patient Engagement Technologies.” https://www.wcgclinical.com/covid-19/covid-19-trial-insights/
GSR Ventures
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