Amalgam Rx, a digital health startup founded by Welldoc’s Ryan Sysko, has raised $17.4 million in Series A funding from Denmark’s Novo Nordisk, alongside an expanded deal to globally market the Wilmington, Del.-based startup’s digital insulin app Dose Check, according to a listing on Pitchbook.
The two companies announced the commercialization deal around Amalgam’s Dose Check, which helps type 2 diabetes patients use basal insulin and manage their medication wirelessly, in the middle of December but did not cite the funding.
Founded in 2017, Amalgam has so far raised $18.6 million. It made two key acquisitions in 2021 — Baltimore-based Avhana Health and the assets of Geetha, a developer of conversational AI — as it aims to digitize healthcare.
“The future of digital health is in delivering highly personalized, scalable and engaging interventions that learn and adapt over time based on an individual’s needs; big data and AI form the foundation of this future,” Amalgam CEO Ryan Sysko, said, after the company bought Geetha’s assets.
Heavyweight Tie-up
Denmark-headquartered Novo Nordisk is a pharmaceutical heavyweight with a $140 billion market cap, and has an especially big share of the global diabetes care market. In 2021, it entered into an initial partnership with Amalgam to commercialize Dose Check in some South American markets. Building on the success of that program the two companies late last year decided to expand that partnership to Europe and Asia.
Sysko termed that decision “incredibly rewarding and validating,” while Novo Nordisk’s Thomas Thestrup-Terp, corporate vice president for Digital Strategy & Solutions, said the expanded partnership comes “with the ambition to use innovative digital health solutions to further improve personalized care for people living with diabetes.”
Other than the partnership with Novo Nordisk, Amalgam has built a portfolio of digital solutions, including patient support programs, therapeutics and digital-pharma combination products. The acquisition of Baltimore-based Avhana brought SaaS-based clinical decision support tools and key integration with electronic health records (EHR) — dubbed the “Holy Grail for digital health solutions” by Sysko. It also helps Amalgam’s path to doctors, simplifying their workflows.
Amalgam’s acquisition of Geetha’s assets sets up its prospects for the longer-term future. It brought data science assets, such as more than 6 billion longitudinal data points on millions of patients, along with cutting-edge Natural Language Understanding and Reinforcement Learning and turnkey psychosocial engine in 40 languages, to evaluate personality, moods, and motivators. Geetha’s founder, Bharath Sudharsan, now serves as Amalgam’s chief data scientist and head of AI.
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Solid Track Record
Amalgam CEO Ryan Sysko previously co-founded Welldoc, which developed one of the earliest FDA-approved digital health devices called BlueStar. The device allows healthcare providers deliver medication to adult patients with type 1 or type 2 diabetes. Before Welldoc, where Sysko served as CEO and chairman, he held senior positions at The Credo Group, a direct-to-consumer health and life insurer, Chase, Bank of America and Conseco.
Last year, CB Insights named Amalgam Rx to its annual Digital Health 150 listing, citing varied factors including R&D activity, tech novelty, market potential and business relationships.
