BOSTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Reify Health, a leading provider of solutions that empower the clinical trial ecosystem, today announced a $220M Series D round co-led by Altimeter Capital and Coatue, joined by Dragoneer Investment Group and existing investors ICONIQ Growth, Adams Street, and Battery Ventures. This round of funding, which brings the company’s valuation to over $4.8 billion, was secured to accelerate the company’s efforts to improve diversity and representation in clinical trial participation.
Our global healthcare system relies on clinical trials to develop new, life-saving treatments for patients. Reify Health powers a more effective research ecosystem—one that is faster, more reliable, more cost efficient, and most importantly, more accessible to patients. Through its business entities, StudyTeam and Care Access, the company delivers best-in-class trial optimization technology and provides a pioneering decentralized clinical trial infrastructure that makes clinical research accessible for anyone, anywhere. With this new funding, Reify Health will aim these proven solutions at a challenge that has plagued the clinical trial industry for decades: improving diversity in clinical trial participation.
Certain minority communities have been heavily underrepresented in clinical trials, which presents a significant health equity issue. Treatments can work differently for different races and ethnicities. Those differences should be understood in the controlled setting of a clinical trial first, not in day-to-day healthcare after the medicine is made available to the public. Over the last several years, key stakeholders that include the FDA, biopharmaceutical companies, medical research institutions, and non-profit organizations have initiated efforts to increase diversity in clinical trial participation. However, meaningful progress has been slow to come.
“As we looked at what needs to be done to bring representation and inclusion to clinical trials, we reached two conclusions,” said Ralph Passarella, CEO of Reify Health. “First, while we all want a quick solution, this is a complex, multi-layered problem that will require significant resource commitments over the next decade to achieve meaningful, long-lasting improvements. Second, we recognized that we are uniquely positioned to do work that can make an impact on this problem through our two businesses, Care Access and StudyTeam. We see what needs to be done and have a way to contribute, so we have the responsibility to act.”
To contribute to this effort, Reify Health is launching BRIDGE (Bringing Representation, Inclusion, and Diversity to Global Enrollment), an initiative aimed at devoting the company’s capabilities in partnership with like-minded organizations to achieve two primary objectives:
- Build a robust understanding, both qualitative and quantitative, of the barriers to underrepresented minority groups participating in clinical trials.
- Deliver solutions that overcome these barriers, so clinical trials are more representative of the patient populations they aim to treat.
Through BRIDGE, Reify and its partners will make commitments to achieve specific goals over the next ten years.
“Our announcement today about capital investment and long-term commitment speaks to the size of the challenge ahead to make clinical trials more representative,” said Michael Lin, Executive Chair of Reify Health. “When we celebrated the ten-year anniversary of our company in March of 2022, the message to our team and partners was: ‘The last ten years have been about building a foundation, and the next ten years are about making an impact at scale.’ BRIDGE represents the magnitude of impact we aim to make in life sciences in our next decade.”
Reify Health has already begun work in this direction through StudyTeam and Care Access. For example, the StudyTeam enrollment management platform recently added its Diversity Reporting capability so research sponsors can measure and understand the gaps in their enrollment strategy and take immediate action to help increase representation where needed. Care Access continues to expand on its capabilities to bring a clinical trial almost anywhere so more communities, including traditionally underrepresented communities, have the option to participate.
“We are building the next generation of clinical trial infrastructure—the roads and highways of where clinical trials can go and who they reach,” said Ahmad Namvargolian, CEO of Care Access. “As we lay this foundation, we have the opportunity to fill historical gaps and have a responsibility to make diversity, inclusion, and representation a foundational element in clinical trials moving forward.”
“Reify Health is making great strides to ensure patient and provider access to clinical trials is more equitable and diverse, working with key industry leaders and stakeholders,” said Pauline Yang, a partner at Altimeter Capital. “Altimeter is excited to be a part of Reify’s journey to modernize clinical trials and address historical barriers to benefit more people in need faster.”
“We are thrilled to increase our investment and further our partnership with Reify,” said Aaron Weiner, Managing Director and Head of Healthcare at Coatue. “Since our initial investment, we believe Reify has strengthened its position as the partner of choice for life science companies seeking to transform clinical trials. Reify’s ability to combine software with patient recruitment and trial delivery can accelerate the adoption of life changing medicines globally. We are excited to support the Company as it seeks to solve representation challenges in the clinical trials ecosystem.”
