MedAware Raises $8M to Eradicate Catastrophic Prescription Errors
The Dreamit Health 2016 startup leverages advanced machine learning algorithms to help prevent medication mistakes, improving patient safety and saving lives.
MedAware, a provider of algorithm-rich solutions for the detection and elimination of prescription errors, has raised $8 million in Series A funding. Investors participating in the round included BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company), Gefen Capital, OurCrowd and Yingcheng City Fubon Technology Co. In addition, MedAware has received grants from Israel's Innovation Authority and the BIRD Foundation, as well as from the European Commission as part of its Horizon2020 program, bringing the company's total funding raised to date to $12 million. The startup also graduated from the Dreamit Health accelerator in 2016. The capital will be used to advance the company's unique approach to identifying the most consequential medication mistakes, thus improving patient safety and saving lives.
Nearly 8 million people in the United States alone are exposed to serious and preventable prescription errors on an annual basis. MedAware is dedicated to eradicating such catastrophic errors by leveraging its patented software to perform a real-time evaluation of a prescribed drug against a specific and up-to-date patient profile. The company's advanced machine-learning algorithms mine data gathered from millions of EMRs to detect outliers in prescription behavior that could potentially be fatal and immediately flag them as life threatening.
"OurCrowd is proud to be investing again in MedAware, a company whose product is changing the way that medicine is prescribed," said Jon Medved, CEO of OurCrowd. "The ability to ensure that prescriptions will heal rather than harm by utilizing machine learning and big data analysis, is about as good as it gets in impact investing. It gives me goosebumps to realize that by investing in this revolutionary company we will indeed save lives."
"This collaboration with MedAware exemplifies BD's commitment of advancing the world of health by working towards a common goal of creating innovative solutions that may help clinicians deliver safer and more efficient care," said David Icke, vice president and general manager of Digital Health for BD. "By combining the MedAware solution into BD's portfolio of medication and surveillance solutions, we have the unique opportunity to identify and help prevent medication errors from prescription through administration."
MedAware intends to use the Series A funding to enhance its offering, including developing additional machine learning-enabled decision support solutions as well as making ongoing product enhancements to cover more catastrophic types of errors. Further establishing the company's North American footprint as well as expanding its number of EMR integrations in the United States are also top corporate priorities for the remainder of 2017.
"MedAware was purpose built around our commitment to patient safety," said Gidi Stein, CEO of MedAware. "Every catastrophic error we identify is a patient saved. Through this round of Series A funding we will be able to build on the successes we've achieved to date and scale our approach to protect physicians and their patients all over the world."
The company has already demonstrated considerable success in the United States over the past year, opening its new North American headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut and earning validation for its solution from a recent Harvard Medical School research study. MedAware has also generated positive results from a live implementation at The Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer, a 2,000-bed university-affiliated tertiary referral hospital in Israel. In addition, the company has numerous EMR integrations already underway.
About MedAware
Each year, hundreds of thousands of Americans are injured or fatally harmed by adverse drug events (ADEs) and erroneous prescriptions. MedAware's medication surveillance technology identifies ADEs and eradicates catastrophic medication errors by applying advanced machine-learning algorithms, and outlier detection mechanisms similar to fraud detection solutions in use by financial institutions worldwide. By continuously mining data gathered via millions of electronic health records, the software is able to accurately flag potentially life-threatening prescriptions that are in conflict with the profile of the patient, physician, or institution. In addition, MedAware actively monitors each patient to identify and warn of situations in which changes in a patient's diagnostic results renders one of his/her active medications a dangerous outlier. These difficult or nearly impossible to anticipate errors would otherwise go undetected by current rule-based solutions. The company's unique, real-time approach to identifying ADEs and preventing medication errors saves lives, improves patient safety and outcomes, and significantly reduces avoidable risks and costs.
