Healthcare data services provider Zephyr Health raised $17.5 million in Series C funding from Google Ventures and two of its existing investors this week, the company announced in a statement.
“We are looking at the intersection of where data science and healthcare meet, (which can include) everything from primary care to devices to patients,” Google Ventures Partner Blake Byers told VCJ. “Zephyr was one of the top companies we identified.”
Zephyr’s existing investors Kleiner Perkins Caulfied & Byers and Icon Ventures also participated in the round. Joe Horowitz and Paul Sallaberry of Icon hold seats on Zephyr’s board, as does Kleiner Perkins co-founder (and Blake’s father) Brook Byers, according to the company’s website.
San Francisco-based Zephyr, which previously raised $16 million in funding, collects data on epidemiology, medical sales and treatments from public and private sources and connects it to a single platform using an algorithm. That platform is then used by pharmaceutical and medical device companies to facilitate the research and development of new therapies, and to target their sales efforts to specific markets and care providers.
“We think about data coordination and the ability to link public, private and vendor data sets, and to do so at scale … historically that’s been done manually, and frankly, inefficiently,” William King, the company’s founder and CEO, told VCJ.
That’s particularly true in the healthcare sector, where companies and providers harvest reams of data but lack the tools to extract any insight from that information, Blake Byers said. The data aggregation and analysis element of Zephyr’s business model made the company a natural fit for Google’s venture arm.
“We are huge proponents, given our background, of the power of unlocking existing data sets,” he said.
For now, Zephyr’s efforts remain on using their data to connect new therapies with the healthcare marketplace. In the future, however, Byers believes Zephyr’s may be able to leverage its data to help drug companies identify diseases that lack suitable treatment.
While it’s clear there are no cures for certain major diseases, such as Parkinson’s disease, “there’s more granular disease sets, so you could help companies identify what diseases to go after,” Byers said.
“That’s not something Zephyr does now, but that’s something Zephyr or future companies could do,” he said.
