Medtronic (NYSE:MDT) got in on a $16.5 million Series B round for Glooko and its diabetes management platform, joining fellow new investor Canaan Partners and existing backers The Social + Capital Partnership and Samsung.
Palo Alto, Calif.-based Glooko’s platform is designed to link more than 30 blood glucose testing systems with Apple‘s (NSDQ:AAPL) iPhone or Google‘s (NSDQ:GOOG) Android smartphones. Data from the glucometers is then sent to Glooko’s cloud-based Population Tracker, where healthcare providers receive a "simple-to-interpret, risk-stratified" view, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company said.
The data can also be integrated into electronic health records, Glooko said. The system is designed to give providers a shot at helping at-risk diabetics before an incident occurs, according to a press release. The Series B round will also see Canaan Partners’ Wende Hutton join Glooko’s board.
"The healthcare industry is at an inflection point with the advent of the Affordable Care Act and increased demand for better-quality care without raising costs. Companies that are able to offer unprecedented access to actionable patient information combined with intuitive mobile applications are poised to meet those demands," Hutton said in prepared remarks. "Glooko is the perfect example of a company that goes beyond developing a simple wearable or mobile phone app – they have delivered a solution that improves patient outcomes by engaging both patients and their healthcare providers to more easily manage and gain insights from the often complex web of diabetes devices.”
“Glooko has taken the power of mobile, cloud and analytics innovation to deliver an application that has real, daily use in helping improve the health of patients with diabetes," CEO Rick Altinger added. "We have successfully attracted partnerships and investments from leaders in diabetes healthcare to join our mission in creating easy-to-use and intelligent software that adds utility for patients, healthcare providers, pharmaceutical companies and payers. The new investment will further bolster our leadership position in this area."
The proceeds will go toward expanding Glooko’s reach to insulin pumps, continuous glucose monitoring systems and to the integration of personalized predictive algorithms, Altinger told Vator News.
"We want to do more with analytics and machine learning. It’s not just about getting data, but turning it into actionable data," said Altinger. "We want to be doing more with real time pumps and analytics for both the provider and patient, so they can see when there are issues and they can see what patients over the weekend have had dangerously low hyperglycemic readings."
Glooko is seeking FDA clearance to integrate its platform with pumps and CGMs from medical device companies including Medtronic and DexCom, he told Mobihealthnews.
"Just as we do with lots of other device companies, we’ll be partnering with [Medtronic] to integrate data from their pump and CGM into the Glooko platform," Altinger said. "And we’ll be announcing numerous other partnerships in this area, one of which is already public. Dexcom announced at the JP Morgan conference that they are working with Glooko."