Florence Healthcare, a workflow automation software for clinical trial sites, announced today that it has raised $1.7 million in seed funding. Participating in the round were leading venture firms Bee Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Dartmouth’s Green D Angel Fund. Will Crawford, VP of engineering at Fitbit, is also an investor.
Florence Healthcare was founded in 2014 by Andres Garcia and Ryan Jones, the latter of whom was previously president at Pubget.com, a cloud-based site that helps healthcare professionals access research papers and other industry content. According to Florence Healthcare’s funding announcement, clinical trial sites and the pharmaceutical companies that use them to develop new drugs and devices together spend $35 billion each year on logistical requirements. Many of these costs could be saved or lowered by helping the clinical research community better manage documents and paperwork.
Ryan Jones, co-founder and CEO of Florence Healthcare
Florence Healthcare addressed this challenge by developing the eBinder Suite, a platform that allows all parties involved in a clinical trial process to access, transfer, and manage documents remotely while meeting all compliance and regulatory requirements. According to Florence, eBinder’s market adoption has grown more than 150 percent month-over-month since its launch in January. The company has signed agreements with some of the nation’s most prominent healthcare institutions, including UCSF, Mt. Sinai, and Sloan Kettering’s Prostate Cancer Clinical Trials Consortium.
“Unfortunately, the majority of software innovation in the space has skipped over the clinics and trial sites that see the patients,” said Ryan Jones, Florence’s co-founder and CEO, in the funding announcement “However, the work underlying a clinical trial has tripled in volume and complexity since 2000.” Jones believes that, by helping the clinical research community handle paperwork procedures in a more efficient and cost-effective way, the company helps new therapies reach market faster and benefit those in need sooner.