Huma Therapeutics
Huma (London) started as Medopad, a digital company that used remote monitoring to help patients with rare diseases and has evolved into digital biomarkers and therapeutics. In 2020, it acquired a pair of U.K. AI and wearable technology businesses, BioBeats and TLT and changed to its current moniker.
The company’s digital “hospital at home” platform showed its colors during the COVID-19 pandemic. Huma worked with the governments of the U.K., Wales, Germany and the United Arab Emirates to monitor patients at home, tracking vital signs and symptoms, giving clinicians real-time feedback about them and flagging any deterioration in their health. Huma’s technology also assisted in enabling remote clinical trials to proceed during the pandemic, according to the company.
Huma landed the 20th spot on the Financial Times‘ 1,000 fastest growing companies in Europe earlier this year. It announced a partnership with Smith+Nephew to develop an app to monitor orthopedic surgery patients in the U.K. as elective surgeries resume. And it has set its sights on the U.S., hiring a team that includes Bayer’s former chief digital officer, the former VP of data science and engineering at Rakuten, a former VP of sales and marketing for Novo Nordisk and a former VP of portfolio and program management at Sage Therapeutics.
Huma pulled in $130 million in a Series C round this month, led by Leaps by Bayer and Hitachi Ventures and followed by new shareholders Samsung Next, Sony Innovation Fund by IGV, Unilever Ventures and HAT Technology & Innovation Fund by HAT. An additional $70 million can be exercised later, bringing the total raised to more than $200 million. The new investment will be used to expand Huma’s digital platform in the U.S., Asia and the Middle East, and support the pharmaceutical and research industries to run decentralized clinical trials.
“This is a pivotal moment in Huma’s development. We have exceptional partners and strategic investors who will support us in our mission to help people worldwide live longer and fuller lives,” company founder and CEO Dan Vahdat said in a news release. “We’re already demonstrating how ‘hospital at home’ can transform healthcare, and how decentralized clinical trials can advance research in ways that weren’t imaginable even one year ago. Now we want to accelerate the pace of change and continue to innovate for better care and research worldwide.’’