Startups

Cohero Health expansion includes collaboration with pharma partners to support remote monitoring

The company raised an oversubscribed Series A round in November and recently made a final close for the round, adding two strategic investors to investors that include companies such as GIS Strategic Ventures, Heitkamp & Thumann Group, and P5 Health Ventures.

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When Cohero Health launched a little more than three years ago, the medical device developer sought to develop a connected device that could track lung function and medication adherence in real time. The goal was twofold: engage asthma, COPD and cystic fibrosis patients in their own healthcare and help health systems and payers achieve these goals. But as the company has grown, Cohero Health’s target customers have widened to include not only health systems but also pharma companies, pharma benefit managers and even groups in the life insurance space.

Melissa Manice, Cohero Health cofounder and CEO, confirmed in a phone interview that the company recently completed a final close of an oversubscribed Series A round, as an amended Form D filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission suggested. Although the amount in the filing was more than $10.8 million — anorth of the $9 million Cohero announced for the first close of its Series A round in November — Manice declined to confirm the amount raised in the final close.

The funding will be used to help Cohero continue to grow and scale commercially, said Manice.

Two new strategic investors took part in the final close, Manice said. Companies that joined established investors in the Series A round last year included GIS Strategic Ventures, Heitkamp & Thumann Group, and P5 Health Ventures. Three Leaf Ventures, an affiliate of the Broe Group, led the Series A. Zaffre Investments, the investment arm of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, and BioAdvance took part as well.

In December 2016, H&T Presspart worked with Cohero to launch a market-ready embedded and connected metered dose inhaler.

Asked to describe what kind of year Cohero had in 2016, Manice highlighted some milestones, from winning Impact Pediatric Pitch at the SXSW Interactive conference to bringing its product to market.

“We really got to a point where we have significant active user traction,” she said.

The interest in using connect devices to enable remote patient monitoring for clinical trials has led to some interesting collaborations with pharma companies, which Manice declined to name.

“Validated connected health platforms are something [pharma companies] are really latching onto,” said Manice. Among the companies Cohero is working with are Koneksa Health and Entra Health — businesses that are powering clinical trials using connected devices. Manice noted in a follow-up email that Cohero plugs into Koneksa’s and Entra Health’s platforms for remote patient monitoring for clinical studies — both in pharma pipeline programs and at academic medical centers.

 

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