Taipei-based startup Health2Sync has raised $3 million in a Series A round led by cross market venture firm WI Harper Group, according to a news release. In a phone interview, Ed Deng, CEO and co-founder of the digital health startup, said it will use the funding to grow the customer base for its diabetes management app and smart cable business in countries such as China, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia.
Other venture firms that took part in the round include Cherubic Ventures, iSeed Ventures, and SparkLabs Global Ventures. Cherubic has invested in women’s health startup Bellabeat and stress reduction app Calm, both based in the U.S. ISeed’s investments include 1DocWay, mySugr, Neurotrack and DoctoronDemand, among others. DocDoc, Iodine and Lifesum are some of SparkLabs’ previous healthcare investments. Alibaba is also an investor, according to a Bloomberg article published last month. Deng declined to comment or confirm whether Alibaba is an investor.
When Deng started the company in 2013, he reasoned that since the majority of countries have few diabetes patient educators, it would put together a smart analytics service based in the cloud to transmit reminders and alerts to Type 2 diabetes patients to help them manage their condition. The platform syncs data from the user’s blood glucose meter through a “smart cable” that can gather data from legacy glucose meters. The app allows users to view this data over time though graphs contextualized with diary info such as medication, diet and activity.
“Though we still need educators, we are hoping that an automated service can serve a need for diabetes education.”
The app provides personalized alerts and analyzes patterns for each user. Users log medication, foods eaten, and their activity. For example, if a user were trending towards a hypoglycemic event, the app would transmit an alert to that user.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
“We realized that once we solved the problem of data availability and integrity that patients needed to close the loop on data and care, so we built a patient management platform.”
Deng said the company has partnered with drug companies to support pilots at different regional hospitals such as NovoNordisk and Sanofi. Deng said he considers MySugr a competitor. The Austria-based business uses gamification to support its diabetes management tools and has focused on the U.S. market, although it has also partnered with pharma companies, like Roche.
Deng said about 80 percent of the company’s app users are 40 to 65 years old. Although he says the company has fewer users older than 65, Deng said that older parents typically live with their adult children, they can step in to help them navigate the app. He added that the company also makes use of social media messaging from LINE in Taiwan and WeChat in China.
A 2013 study published in Journal of the American Medical Association estimated that there are 113.9 million people with diabetes in China alone.
