Showing posts with label GreenPhire. Show all posts
Showing posts with label GreenPhire. Show all posts

Bioclinica continues expansion under PE ownership, acquires Clinverse


Tom Paine



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Considerable change has occurred since New York-based PE firm JLL Partners acquired Doylestown-based clinical trial management system (CTMS) vendor Bioclinica in early 2013.

In its latest move announced last week, Bioclinica acquired Edison Ventures-backed Clinverse, which is based in North Carolina.


Bioclinica, which had been a publicly traded company, reported revenue of nearly $100 million in 2012, and was acquired by JLL for $ 123 million.

It was also merged with CoreLab Partners of Princeton when the acqusition closed. In 2014, it merged with California-based SYNARC. At that time, the combined company said it would be a leader in four specialized areas of outsourced CTMS:


  • medical imaging services that track the effectiveness of new drugs across multiple therapeutic areas, including oncology, neurology and musculoskeletal.



  • an extensive worldwide network of research centers dedicated to recruiting patients for global trials.



  • state-of-the-art technology and consulting services to support the overall drug development process, as well as services to monitor the cardiac safety of compounds under development.



  • It also will offer central lab capabilities to analyze biological samples originating from clinical trials.


Bioclinica also made some smaller acquisitions in 2014-15, and one presumably reliable source reported 2014 revenue at over $200 million. At the end of 2014, long-time CEO Marc Weinsten departed, to be replaced by Dr. John Hubbard, who joined from Pfizer.

Last week, BioClinica announced it was acquiring Clinverse, a Durham, North Carolina-based provider of automated payment systems for clinical trial participants, as well as medical professionals making or receiving payments through involvement with trials. No terms were disclosed, and no financial data has been found for Clinverse.

New Jersey-based Edison Partners had led a $9.1 million Series C round in Clinverse in August 2014.

While some other payment tech firms dabble in the clinical trials market, the two main direct competitors to Clinverse are King of Prussia-based Greenphire and CFS Clinical of Audubon, which was acquired by DrugDev in 2013.

The 'Sunshine Act' reporting requirements, which went into effect in 2013, requires manufacturers of drugs, medical devices and biologicals that participate in U.S. federal health care programs to report certain payments and items of value given to physicians and teaching hospitals. This reporting need is the other side of the value proposition for the clinical trial payments vendors. Similar regulations are expected worldwide, although they may have been slower to materialize than expected.

Its not clear who is leading among the three clinical payment competitors, though Bioclinca must have liked what it saw in Clinverse's numbers. Greenphire ( see my 2013 profile )  in which PE firm The Riverside Company owns a controlling stake, reported revenue of $8.5 million in 2014, according to the Inc. 5000, up from $5.4 million in 2012. It moved into larger King of Prussia quarters in early 2015 and announced a goal to increase employment from 65 to 100 by year's end (LinkedIn currently shows 85). It just issued a release claimng "unprecedented year over year growth." CFS Clinical had 2012 revenue of $11 million, according to the Inc. 5000, though its a somewhat older business with a different revenue mix.

The Triangle Business Journal describes how the match between Bioclinica and Clinverse came to be. One issue that comes to mind is to what extent Clinverse will be able to serve the external market, rather than having all its energy sucked up by internal Bioclinica issues.


King of Prussia-based Greenphire recieves growth investment from Riverside Company, but its not an acquistion



Tom Paine



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Greenphire, the King of Prussia-based SaaS clinical trial payments platform company, which I profiled in 2013, received an undisclosed growth investment from the Riverside Company, Cleveland-based Riverside announced today.

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Jones Day and Deloitte advised Riverside on the transaction and Ares Capital provided debt financing. Pepper Hamilton advised Greenphire.

Greenphire, founded in 2008, made the Inc. 5000 in 2013 with 2012 revenue of $5.4 million, and again in 2014 with 2013 revenue of $6.8 million, up from $803,000 in 2010.

“Software and Healthcare are two of Riverside’s most active specializations,” said Riverside Principal Joe Manning in a statement. “This investment exemplifies Riverside’s strategy of partnering with best-in-class companies with strong management teams.”

“Greenphire has experienced exponential growth each year since its inception. The management team has worked hard to grow while scaling its operations to ensure continued quality. After an extensive search for an investment partner, Greenphire was excited to select The Riverside Company as its partner to ensure continued success into the future,” said Greenphire CEO Samuel Whitaker in the same release.

Fortune's Term Sheet described the tranaction as an acquisition. Although not knowing the exact nature of the deal, Philly Tech News has learned that the transaction was an investment only, and not a full buyout. I couldn't confirm whether early investor FirstMark Capital, whose other Philly area investments included Boomi, Artisan Mobile, and Guru, had exited, as Term Sheet reported.

Last month, John Blakeley, who was formerly chief commercial officer at Greenphire, joined CRF Health in Plymouth Meeting as chief business officer.

The Riverside Company is a global private equity firm focused on acquiring and investing in growing businesses valued at up to $250 million.


Links 4/10/2014: Comcast touts 1 million hotspot nodes; Charter still weighing TWC options







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Comcast’s hotspot network grows to 1M nodes, driven by crowdsourced Wi-Fi (Gigaom)
Interesting map showing how dense coverage is in the Philly area. Of course, many of the hotspots are in subcribers' homes.

Cablevision names Kristin Dolan COO (Multichannel News)

Charter Weighs Consequences of Time Warner Cable Bidding War (Bloomberg)


Aereo Plans To Launch Chromecast Support On May 29th (TechCrunch)


Newtown Square Company Submits Proposal To Post Digital, 3-D Ads In Center City (CBS Philly)


Building the Future of Marketing: Monetate Launches New Platform; Democratizes Digital Marketing
(PR Newswire)

IBM acquires Silverpop to boost its online marketing personalization products (PC World)

ADP Dealer Services to spin-off and go public (Automotive News)

Greenphire, ERT Tie Patient Reporting and Compensation (Applied Clinical Trials)


Heartland Payment Systems Acquires MCS Software, Signaling Ongoing Growth of Heartland School Solutions Division
(Business Wire)

EPAM EVP Karl Robb to Retire in Early 2015 -- Expected to Remain on Board; Comments on First Quarter 2014 Results (Thomson Reuters ONE)








King of Prussia-based Greenphire builds alliances to reach large global clinical trial payments market, as Sunshine Act takes effect
Ranked #191 on Inc. 500



Tom Paine



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King of Prussia-based Greenphire is rapidly building key strategic alliances to expand its reach and capabilities in the global clinical trials payment market. Founded in 2008, Greenphire has built what appears to be a talented and balanced team of payment technology and clinical research professionals to create what it believes is a superior, cloud-based solution to expedite payments, and perhaps more importantly, to fulfill the increasingly detailed and complex regulatory reporting requirements on clinical trial-related expenditures.

The clinical trials market is huge; estimates vary, but expenditures are certainly in the tens of billions and perhaps more than $100 billion. Over the past few decades the regulatory process for gaining approval for a drug or device has become more rigorous, and the need to recruit and also provide appropriate compensation for trial participants has intensified. This is the case not only in the US, but globally.

The need for a better technology solution to track clinical spending was heightened by the Physician Payments Sunshine Act, which became effective August 1. The Sunshine Act requires extensive, detailed reporting on almost all payments or gifts given to physicians, patients and trial participants. While this is US legislation, it is expected to rapidly become the model for a standard in much of the world, Greenphire co-founder and CEO Sam Whitaker told me in a phone interview.

Sam Whitaker
Whitaker, who majored in Philosophy at Penn, got a taste of the healthcare profession by working at different jobs within the Penn Medicine system while a student there. After an investment banking stint, he got his experience in payment technology by joining Conshohocken-based startup eCount after it was acquired by Citi (and later rebranded as Citi Prepaid). There he met and worked with Greenphire co-founder and CFO John Samar. After leaving Citi, Whitaker, along with his wife, co-founder and Chief Experience Officer Jennifer Peters and Samar looked for venture opportunities that they could apply their skills to. They found the idea of combining their payment technology skills with information technology needs in the clinical trial space compelling. Prior to Greenphire, Peters worked closely with pharmaceutical industry clients as an executive for a communications firm.
John Samar
As CFO, Samar (a Lehigh graduate) plays a broader role in the company's product offering than that title sometimes implies. His responsibilities include designing the back-end functionality to support Greenphire's commercial technologies, and managing its relationships with its major financial partners.

Dr. Neil Rotherham, who serves as Executive Director of Greenphire's board, founded ClinPhone, the pioneer in Interactive Voice Response Systems (IVRS) for use in clinical trials, later acquired by Parexel for $182 million in 2008.

Greenphire currently has two product offerings: ClinCard, the payment platform, and eClinicalGPS, which facilitates accurate payment calculation, manages complex payment approval processes, and automates payment execution in local currencies.

Greenphire was just named to the 2013 Inc. 500, ranked #191 nationally and 4th in the Philadelphia metro area, with 2012 revenue of $5.4 million and a growth rate over three years in excess of 2000%. Whitaker said Greenphire had tripled its revenue in each year since 2009. It has over 300 customers and some 50 employees. Greenphire is establishing a beachhead in Europe, with one employee in the UK and another coming onboard shortly there.

Greenphire recieved early funding from angels and Ben Franklin Technology Partners. In September 2011, Greenphire closed a Series A financing of $1.5 million in growth capital led by FirstMark Capital. FirstMark also participated in a $4.3 million Series B round for Greenphire in October of last year, according to data from the PWC Moneytree report. FirstMark is the New York VC firm that backed Boomi and again backed Bob Moul at Artisan Mobile. Its portfolio also includes Aereo, Pinterest and Shopify.

Perhaps Greenphire's closest competitor in terms of technology is Raleigh-based Clinverse.
New York-based Payoneer is also a competitor in some ways, though it is not entirely focused on clinical trials.
Audubon-based CFS Clinical, which also was on Inc. 5000 (#2110), provides a combination of consulting, services and
technology to the clinical payments industry.

The clinical trials technology sector is composed of many firms (including several in the Philadelphia area) who specialize in specific parts of the process and others who integrate various pieces to different extents. Examples of integrators are Parexel, Greenphire partner Oracle Health Sciences, Medidata Solutions (which has a presence in Conshohocken), and Accenture. Last year, Accenture acquired Wayne-based Octagon Research Solutions, and last month it announced the formation of Accenture Accelerated R&D Services, which includes Octagon, and "will leverage capabilities of the cloud, mobility and analytics to deliver integrated functions across clinical development, regulatory submissions, pharmacovigilance and market launch," the company said in its release.

An open question is what role these integrators will ultimately play in the clinical payments tracking & reporting market; will they partner, buy, or build their own solutions?

Another approach is that of Veeva Systems, the Silicon Valley-based life sciences software company with a significant presence in the Philly area.

Veeva, which has indicated it is planning to file for an IPO, is launching a new product, Veeva Network, later this year. Built in part around its acquisition of Fort Washington-based AdvantageMS announced in July in combination with Veeva's proprietary software, Veeva Network will provide an extensive database of providers and use Master Data Management (MDM) to enhance data quality and match detailed expenditure reports to the correct master records, Dan Goldsmith, general manager of Veeva Network, told Philly Tech News. Veeva will use data supplied from its own CRM clients and other partners to supply aggregate spend data to help meet Sunshine Act requirements.



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Daily Links 7/9/2013: Perelman sues Milken over educational software deal








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Comcast Expands Prepaid Internet Trial (Multichannel News)
Trial began in Philadelphia area.

Universal Sports Inks Time Warner Cable Carriage, TV Everywhere Pact (Multichannel News)


What’s next for Dish? It’s got a lot of options centered around broadband (Gigaom)

Perelman Sues Old Friend Milken (Not to Worry. It Isn’t Personal.) (New York Times via CNBC)

Why the big city still lures young founders (Philadelphia Business Journal via Upstart)

SAP, Esri Step Up Geospatial Analysis (Information Week)

Ex-Business Objects CEO's startup focuses on workforce analytics
Visier's approach to BI starts from 'a clean sheet of paper,' says CEO John Schwarz

(Computerworld)

Get Ready for More Tech Acquisitions This Year, Just Not Big Ones
(All Things D)
Mentions Radnor-based QlikTech as one of the possible targets.

Magnolia Broadband Secures $3 Million from SCP Partners (Business Wire)
Magnolia Broadband is based in North Jersey; SCP Partners is based outside Philadelphia.

Greenphire and Ernst & Young Announce Strategic Partnership (GreenPhire Press Release)



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Daily Links 6/24/2013: Oracle, Microsoft meet in the cloud





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Suite revenge
Rutledge a ‘Charter’ member of move to merge
(Claire Atkinson/New York Post)

Vodafone in $10.1 Billion Deal for German Cable Giant Kabel Deutschland (Hollywood Reporter)

Oracle databases head to Microsoft's Hyper-V, Azure (ZDNet)

Microsoft Joins Oracle in Cloud-Computing, Rivalry Thaws (Bloomberg)


Solve Media Launches Effective Mobile Advertising Platform That Delivers Measurable Results Across All Screens (Business Wire)
Could be significant expansion of product line; Solve also entering EMEA market.

Greenphire and Oracle Work Together to Automate Clinical Trial Planning, Budgeting and Payments (Applied Clinical Trials)

New Cloud-Based Investigator Portal from Veeva Systems Speeds Clinical Study Start-Up
Single source for sponsor, CRO and investigator collaboration
(PR Newswire)



Fab.com’s Ascent to $1 Billion Valuation Brings Missteps (Bloomberg)

Zeebox Gets Personal with Digitalsmiths
Digitlasmiths Brings Video Discovery to the Zeebox TV Companion App
(Multichannel
News)

US tech firms look abroad for engineers (BBC News)

AgileSwitch helps lead digital energy revolution (Philadelphia Daily News)

Clear Align Acquires irZoom, Computer Optics, and Hudson Machining (PR Newswire)



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Philly Tech News VentureWatch 10/11/2012



Tom Paine




Some interesting venture activity in the Philly area lately:

RightCare Solutions said yesterday it had raised a $1.75M Series A financing round. It was led by Compass Partners of New York and Domain Associates of Princeton. RightCare's Discharge Decision Support System, D2S2, was developed during a decade of research at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. D2S2 seeks to reduce hospital readmissions by revolutionize the discharge planning process, which is critical not only for patient health but also because the new healthcare act penalizes hospitals for readmissions.

RightCare won the 2012 Wharton Business Plan Competition, and also the Janssen Connected Care Challenge this past spring.

PublicStuff, the First Round Capital-backed startup that is providing the software for the Philly311 system that launched last month, has raised another $5 million, TechCrunch reported. FirstMark Capital (investor in Boomi and appRenaissance) and the Knight Foundation led the round, with previous investors also participating. Although now based out of New York, PublicStuff has some Philly roots, having started out in the GoodCompany Ventures incubator program in 2009.

CorpU announced late last month it had received $4.5 million in funding to help "revolutionize talent development with Virtual Learning Communities (VLCs)". The round was led by Global Silicon Valley Capital (GSVC), Red Eagle Ventures, and Penn Venture Partners. CorpU also announced the addition of two new board members, David Pottruck, former CEO of Charles Schwab, and investor Michael Moe. Pottruck, who also teaches at the Wharton School, will serve as CorpU's Chairman of the Board. Integrating high-definition video, social media, web 2.0, and cloud delivery with live instructor and student interaction, CorpU VLC's include The Art of Negotiation; Leaders-as-Teachers; Leading and Managing People; Leading Bold Change, and Total Leadership.

Although the company is officially headquartered in Mechanicsburg, a company spokesperson told Philly Tech News that "the Philly office is a core center for CorpU and has a dual purpose of being a Customer Visit Center and the company’s primary studio for building course content for our mission critical business applications." Right now CorpU has ten people working out of the Philly office, the spokesperson added.

Digital Life Technologies, whose website indicates it is based in Bala Cynwyd and Bellevue, Washington, says it has received investments from Ben Franklin Technology Partners Southeastern Pennsylvania (although I don't think Ben Franklin has announced it yet), JumpStart NJ Angel Network, and St. John's Capital LLC. The company claims to have "developed the first reprogrammable magnetic stripe card that communicates with an eWallet on a mobile phone via Near Field Communications (NFC)", the GoNow eWallet Card. President & CEO Doug Spodak has had tenures at TruePosition among other places.

TripAdvisors has acquired Wanderfly, a neat site that is like a Pinterest for travel. Co-founder Christy Liu is a Penn grad, and its backers included Penn-associated MentorTech Ventures. Terms were not disclosed.

ThingWorx, the Exton-based M2M, "Internet of Things" startup, announced on Tuesday that it had raised a Series C financing , led by previous investor Safeguard Scientifics. The size of the financing was not disclosed; the Series B was for $5 million. (Update: the SEC filing dated yesterday was for an offering of $8 million of which $5.4 million has already been sold.)

Also, King of Prussia-based clinical trial tracking and payments firm Greenphire said in an SEC filing it had raised another $4.3 million.

Jerry Baker has left Halfpenny Technologies, the Blue Bell-based provider of a SaaS Health Information Exchange platform, were he served as president and chief executive officer, to take an executive position with Wayne-based Medecision. Which may lead some to wonder what is going on at Halfpenny Technologies, which received $2.6 million in funding from Osage Venture Partners, Milestone Venture Partners, and LORE Associates two years ago.



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Daily Links 2/6/2012: NBC's Super Bowl most watched TV program ever



Kenexa Agrees To Acquire OutStart, a Leading Provider of Next Generation e-Learning Solutions (Business Wire)

Kenexa Announces Financial Results for Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2011 (Business Wire)
Company says it paid $38.9 million for OutStart, from which it expects $13.5 million in GAAP revenue for 2012.

Local company's acquisition puts it on the global map (Wilmington News Journal)

NBC's Super Bowl XLVI most-watched show in TV history (USA Today)
What kind of bounce will NBC get?

Verizon to set up streaming service with Redbox (AP via LA Times)

Verizon teams up with Redbox to cash in on video (Gigaom)

Hands on with AnyPlay: Live Comcast video on your iPad (The Unofficial Apple Weblog)

Is Workday Silicon Valley's Next Big IPO? (Daily Beast)
Workday certainly deserves some hype, although this article perhaps provides too much of it.

Be everywhere: Google’s real social strategy (ZDNet Blogs)
By Will Reynolds of Philly's SEER Interactive.

Newgrounds Undergoing Redesign (GameKudos.com)
Newgrounds is based in Montgomery County.

Fisker lays off workers in Delaware, California (Wilmington News Journal)

SAP community portal launch date unclear due to bugs (Infoworld)

Greenphire trying for larger place clinical-trial information business (Philadelphia Inquirer)

Someone’s Trying to Frankenstein a Sports Blog Monster That Will Crush Philly.Com (Philly Mag: The Philly Post)

Q&A: Russ Fadel, CEO, ThingWorx – “Hooked on Entrepreneurship” (Safeguard Scientifics Blog)


Daily Links 10/10/2011: Netflix rescinds Qwikster decision


Netflix Abandons Plan to Rent DVDs on Qwikster (New York Times: Media Decoder)
But no change on price increase.

Gov. Markell salutes Archer Group at opening of expanded Wilmington office (The Archer Group)

Sprint's solo LTE plan ignores Clearwire assets (Computerworld)

Slow VC Fund-Raising Portends Hard Winter For Start-Ups (Wall Street Journal: Venture Capital Dispatch)
Also, another set of numbers from Thomson Reuters and National Venture Capital Association (pdf).

vcopious Secures Venture Financing and Announces New Customer: SIEMENS Corporation (PR Newswire)
Emerald Stage 2, Benjamin Franklin Technology Partners, MAG, and Silicon Valley Bank are the investors; no word on how much.

ADERANT Acquires RainMaker Software (Business Wire)
RainMaker Software is based in Blue Bell.

Almac and Greenphire Form Alliance to Deliver Direct-to-Patient Stipend Payments Through IXRS® (Business Wire)

Comcast Welcomes NANOG and ARIN to Philadelphia (Comcast Voices|Official Comcast Blog)

Comcast-Spectacor Completes High-Definition Upgrade to Scoreboard HD Control Room at Wells Fargo Center with Sony Electronics Technology (PR Newswire)

HSN Brings QR Codes to TV Shopping (Mashable)



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Daily Links 9/15/2011: Google said to be spending hundreds of mllions on video content

September 2011 Business Outlook Survey (Philly Fed)
"Responses to the Business Outlook Survey this month suggest that regional manufacturing activity is continuing to contract, but declines are less widespread than in August."

Manufacturing in Philadelphia-area Contracted in September
(Bloomberg)

Netflix Cuts Its Guidance By 1 Million Subscribers (All Things Digital)
Netflix ended the day down 19%.

Big cable is facing an ‘affordability crisis’ (Gigaom)

Google Is Secretly Spending Hundreds Of Millions Of Dollars Turning YouTube Into A Cable Alternative (Silicon Alley Insider)


NBCU's conference highlights the growing buzz of social media (Philadelphia Inquirer)

Bentley Invests in Philadelphia-based TEEC, Developer of SpecWave Software to Intelligently Manage AEC Project Specifications (Business Wire)

ISGN Stresses Smartphone/Tablet-Access (National Mortgage News)

Growing Greenphire: KOP clinical research firm doubling staff (Flying Kite)

Integromics Announces New Version Of SeqSolve™ NGS Analysis Software (Integromics Press Release)

SAP's HANA Is Hot, but Still in Early Days (PC World)

Philly's Startup Scene: A New Underdog Story? (Keystone Edge)

Health IT: Is the U.S. in the middle of a bubble? (MedCity News)



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Philly Tech News VentureWatch: 8/19/2011

Tom Paine


With companies such as QVC, GSI Commerce, Urban Outfitters and Monetate, the Philly area has a strong E-commerce ecosystem. And it is a sector that seems to be generating a good deal of startup activity, with a particular recent emphasis on "social shopping".


ChoozOn, a startup with offices in King of Prussia and Bellevue, Washington, recently reported raising $3.2 million. ChoozOn provides its members with a single platform where they can track deal and coupon offers available to them, and also offers social tools for members to communicate with each other about deals.

ChoozOn was founded by ex-Yahoo execs; one of them, Nick Weir, formerly Yahoo’s VP of Data Strategy, is a ChoozOn co-founder and its CEO, based in King of Prussia. Although ChoozOn is still in Alpha, it currently has 40 employees and expects to have about 50 by year end. King of Prussia houses what a company spokesperson told Philly Tech News by email is "a significant part of our business and product development team", which also includes June Oakes, Director of Product Management. The spokesperson also said that ChoozOn opened a King of Prussia office in part because Nick was already located in the area and also because it provides excellent access to key East Coast markets.


                                                ChoozOn CEO Nick Weir



Snipi, the Philadelphia-based social shopping app which helps users track down and compare price infomation, recently reported raising $530,00 out of a total offering of $1.5 million, according to an SEC filing. I hadn't really heard that much about Snipi in a while.

Keystone Edge's Joe Petrucci has a piece on co-founder Brandon Yoshimura and his Philly/Wilmington-based startup Loffles, which provides awards to consumers for watching promotional videos. The Loffles team has been coached by Morgan Lewis' Stephen Goodman and has raised $500,000 in seed funding.

Villanova grad and ex-IBM E-commerce developer Todd McNeal has a new startup, Snapline. It helps retailers reach and taget customers using Facebook data and other demographic sources. Consumers can opt in through Facebook Connect. Snapline features a SaaS platform built using Python and other open stack tools. McNeal, who does some of his work out of Indy Hall, said in a conversation with Philly Tech News that he hopes to get some testing done with major e-retailers during the Holiday season and then use those results as a basis for ramping up.

Two area startups seek to make it easier to manage clinical trials. Philadelphia-based myClin, founded in 2008 by James Denmark, helps physicians and their staffs to facilitate patient particiapation in clinical research. MyClin uses Amazon Web Services, among other tools, in its cloud stack. GreenPhire, of King of Prussia, just announced in an SEC filing that it had raised $1.5 million. GreenPhire, founded in 2007, has a system for managing electronic payments to clinical trial participants.

GreenLight Technologies of Flemington, NJ (not too far down the road from Washington Crossing), announced it had closed Series A expansion funding led by Storm Ventures; the amount was not disclosed. GreenLight makes GRC (Governance, risk management, and compliance) solutions that run in environments like SAP and Oracle.



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