San Francisco-based startup Clara Health announced Tuesday that it raised $11 million in its latest financing round, led by Founders Fund.
The company plans on using the new funding to support the launch of its new “World Without COVID” initiative. Once patients register on the company’s website, they can access a wide variety of experimental treatments for COVID-19, completely free. Clara Health then presents patients with opportunities to participate in clinical trials for vaccines, treatments, antibody testing and blood plasma transfusion.
“In this pandemic, timing is crucial to flatten the curve and we see broadly across clinical trials that 86 percent are delayed because of difficulty recruiting the right volunteers to take part in the study,” Evan Ehrenberg, Clara Health’s CEO, wrote in an email to Built In.
Over 300 COVID-19 studies are accessible via the new initiative, according to the company.
“For many clinical trials, it falls to physicians to source potential study participants and recommend clinical trials to their patients,” Ehrenberg said. “With the current onslaught of COVID-19 cases stretching doctors and healthcare providers to their limits, this task has become even more burdensome and ultimately deprioritized among the many competing tasks to be done.”
According to the company, over 10,000 patients have been led through more than 60,000 clinical trials using the company’s platform so far, for a variety of health conditions.
“We wanted to create a complete solution, not just make incremental changes. The product is a seamless integration of automation and person-to-person interaction,” Ehrenberg continued. “With the rapidly increasing need for more participation in COVID-19 research, we’re aiming to similarly boost study enrollment and bring new solutions to bear on the pandemic faster than ever.”
According to Ehrenberg, the company now plans on hiring across all departments, including senior roles in product, engineering, design, clinical trial operations management, patient support, content creation and marketing.
