On Monday, One Drop, a startup that helps folks with diabetes and other chronic conditions manage their health, announced that it closed on a $34.7 million Series C funding round led by pharmaceutical giant Bayer in addition to landing $64 million in development fees and potential commercial milestone payments.
This $98.7 million total in new financing will be used to expand One Drop’s technology to other therapeutic areas. The company is also hiring, with dozens of open positions listed for its offices in NYC and Austin, as well as remote.
One Drop’s app aims to help people with diabetes log, learn and share information to better manage the disease. Users input information about their insulin levels, medication side effects, physical activity and diet, and then the platform uses that information to predict what users need to do to stay healthy. The key here is data, something other similar platforms lack, according to CEO Jeff Dachis.
“Diabetes is a data-driven disease,” Dachis told Built In in a 2017 interview. “Managing diabetes requires individuals to understand carbohydrates, medications, insulin, physical activity and glucose information all in one place. There’s not one platform on the market that allows you to have all that data in one place, except One Drop. We have medication information, all of our users’ glucose readings, all of their insulin doses, the different kinds of insulin they use, all of their physical fitness activity — all that information is what’s required to live with diabetes.”
Dachis, a veteran tech entrepreneur, was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in 2013 at the age of 47. He noticed there was a lot of room for improvement when it came to caring for diabetic patients, so he made it his mission to help. Now, with the support of Bayer, One Drop’s predictive technology will be used in cardiology, oncology and women’s health too. In the end, the goal is to support all chronic conditions a given user might be managing, making healthcare more accessible, affordable and individualized.
“Building new digital business models is a key element of our business strategy with the ambition to actively shape the future of healthcare,” Jeanne Kehren, a senior VP of digital and commercial innovation at Bayer, said in a statement. “We are convinced that a data-driven approach will empower patients to drive better outcomes for themselves and will bring back the person, not the disease, as the point of focus. The new collaboration with One Drop allows Bayer to further accelerate its evolution toward a digital health business and paves the way for new integrated care patient service offerings.”
