Samsung, Sony, Hitachi invest in UK healthtech firm Huma

Leaps by Bayer and Hitachi Ventures led the Series C funding round, which also saw strategic and financial investors like Samsung Next, Sony Innovation Fund by IGV, Unilever Ventures and HAT Technology & Innovation Fund by HAT

London: Samsung, Sony and Hitachi have invested in UK heathtech company Huma Therapeutics Limited in its latest Series C funding round with financing of approximately $130 million, the company said on Wednesday.

Leaps by Bayer and Hitachi Ventures led the Series C funding round, which also saw strategic and financial investors like 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).

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The investment will scale Huma’s modular platform which can power digital ‘hospitals at home’ nationally, and support the pharmaceutical and research industries to run the largest ever decentralised clinical trials, the company said in a statement.

The company said an additional $70 million can be raised at a later date as part of the Series C funding, taking the total financing to more than $200 million.

“We’re already demonstrating how ‘hospital at home’ can transform healthcare, and how decentralized 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.,” said Dan Vahdat, Founder and CEO of Huma.

The new investment will be used to expand Huma’s digital platform in the US, Asia and the Middle East.

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 per cent.

“The service is supporting governments’ pandemic responses on a not-for-profit basis and is now used for a range of patients,” the company said.

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.

“We are excited to explore how the Huma platform and its digital biomarkers portfolio could work with the Samsung ecosystem for lasting impact in proactive care across hospitals, life sciences and population health initiatives,” said Jonathan Machado, Senior Investment Director of Samsung Next.