Astarte Medical, a clinical intelligence company, using software and predictive analytics to improve infant care, secured $7.6 million in Series A-1 financing.
Investors in the round include Viking Global Investors LP, Lunsford Capital, Ben Franklin Technology Partners, OCA Ventures, Next Act Fund, Capita3, Leatherneck Ventures, and Social Venture Circle.
Astarte Medical plans to use the new funds to scale the sales of NICUtrition, its EMR-integrated, clinical decision support platform addressing critical, unmet needs in the NICU like malnutrition, suboptimal growth, and racial disparities in care.
According to data from the company, every year, 1 in 10 babies are born prematurely – more than 380,000 in the United States.
“NICUtrition can reduce the complexity and variability in preterm infant feeding and, with this round of capital, we’re focusing our efforts on expanding our customer base and improving the impact we can have for infants and their families,” said Tracy Warren, CEO, and Co-founder, Astarte Medical.
Tracy Warren added: “Having signed contracts and implementations underway at our initial NICU sites, we are excited to announce the addition of Wendy Slatery to our Board to help provide strategic direction and insight to these efforts.”
Jennifer Hartt, Managing Director, Healthcare Investment Group, Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern PA, said: “As an investor who is also a mother who once had a preterm infant in the NICU, I understand what it means to have a fragile baby who we hope grows up to have a meal just be a meal. For these babies, however, every feeding and its composition and timing is of critical importance, and they are handling feedings often months before their bodies were designed to do. Astarte Medical is tackling these exact issues with real-time tools and analysis.”
Venture capital (VC) funding into Clinical Decision Support software companies doubled to $1.1 billion in the First Half (1H) of 2021, compared to $545 million in 1H 2020, according to the latest Mercom Digital Health Funding and M&A Report. PathAI, a provider of AI-powered clinical decision support tools for pathology laboratories, announced the closing of its $165 million Series C financing round.
