Huma Therapeutics has raised £92 million to scale its modular platform for powering digital ‘hospitals at home’ nationally.
A further commitment of £50m that can be exercised at a later date has also been agreed as part of the Series C funding round and takes the total financing raised to almost £150m.
Leaps by Bayer and Hitachi Ventures led the Series C funding round, which also saw new strategic and financial investors become shareholders.
Samsung Next, Sony Innovation Fund by IGV, Unilever Ventures and HAT Technology & Innovation Fund by HAT, as well as individuals Nikesh Arora (former president of SoftBank) and Michael Diekmann (Chairman of Allianz) are also new shareholders.
The new investment will also be used to expand Huma’s digital platform in the US, Asia and the Middle East, with Huma having recently been named Europe’s fastest growing healthcare company by the Financial Times.
It will also support the pharmaceutical and research industries to run the largest ever decentralised clinical trials. Huma’s platform combines predictive algorithms, digital biomarkers and real-world data to advance proactive care and research.
Huma is an innovation partner to four national governments – England’s NHS, Wales, Germany and UAE – and its digital ‘hospital at home’ was co-created with clinicians and has been independently shown to almost double clinical capacity, reduce hospital readmissions by over a third and has patient adherence levels of over 90%.
The service is supporting governments’ pandemic responses on a not-for-profit basis and is now used for a range of patients including those going through knee- and hip-replacement surgery.
Huma advanced its work in the US in 2021 with an experienced leadership team that has fostered new partnerships with clinical research organisations, health care providers, payers, research organisations, and technology companies.
Huma works with leading life science companies including AstraZeneca, Bayer and Janssen and academic institutions such as Stanford Medicine, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the University of Cambridge.
“This is a pivotal moment in Huma’s development,” said founder and CEO Dan Vahdat. “We have exceptional partners and strategic investors who will support us in our mission to help people worldwide live longer and fuller lives.
“We’re already demonstrating how ‘hospital at home’ can transform healthcare, and how decentralised 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.’’
Alan Milburn, former UK Health Secretary and Chairman of Huma’s Board, said: “This is a significant moment in Huma’s history and I will work to build enduring, trusted relationships with our new partners.
“We are living through unprecedented times and the importance of health and well-being is underlined as never before. Together with our partners we can use our expertise, technology, and innovation to change the face of healthcare and research and impact people’s health everywhere.”
Dr Claudia Suessmuth Dyckerhoff, Huma Board Director, said: “The pandemic has exposed weaknesses across health systems around the world but through collaboration, innovation, and compassionate leadership Huma can support faster and safer care for patients through digital technologies and rapid access to treatments by accelerating clinical research.”