Hawthorne Effect Secures $20M to Decentralize Clinical Trials

Hawthorne Effect Secures $20M to Decentralize Clinical Trials

What You Should Know:

Hawthorne Effect, a San Francisco-based solution for decentralizing clinical trials, today announced it has raised $20M in Series A funding led by Northpond Ventures with participation from SignalFire and P5 Health Ventures.

– Founded in 2015, Hawthrone Effect alleviates key issues related to patient recruitment and retention via its tech-driven platform and expansive network of medical professionals.

Hawthrone’s key offerings include:

– Hawthorne Cloud: The 21CFR, GDPR-compliant platform has been used to complete more than 25,000 assessments in more than 15,000 in-person or virtual visits for over 50 clinical trials across a wide variety of therapeutic areas and phases. Its novel architecture manages all aspects of the clinical trial journey for patients and investigators from recruitment through study exit, including clinical assessment development, visit choreography, data acquisition via patient-reported outcomes, devices, interoperability with health system databases and directly from all forms of clinical visit modalities (in-person, via telepresence and in remote geographies).

– HawthorneHeroes: Hawthorne Effect’s robust specialty network of multi-disciplinary medical professionals is made up of more than 2,200 highly-vetted and highly-trained HawthorneHeroesSM. Heroes are geographically distributed in North America, Europe and Africa to deliver compassionate care to patients and are equipped to facilitate complex assessments and support the patient experience throughout the study lifecycle. Capabilities include complex clinical and physical treatments and assessments such as medical histories, consenting, ultrasound imaging, neurological, cognitive and  functional assessments; complex blood draw and sample management; adverse event reporting and more. These medical professionals shape the future of medicine by playing a role in clinical trial research that enables them to have an impact on individual patients while improving health care for humanity. 

Recent Traction/Milestones

Since launching in 2015, the Hawthorne Effect solution has been used across 55 clinical trials, of which 99% of visits and assessments were completed within the trial window, even for the most complex of visit requirements. Hawthorne Effect is actively engaged with more than 260 clinical sites and also runs trials as a single virtual site. Hawthorne Effect is collaborating with NIH Operation Warp Speed COVID-19 clinical trials and works with some of the largest names in healthcare and pharmaceuticals. The company plans to use the funding to accelerate growth and help scale the company’s operations.

“We figured out that clinical trial continuity has the same root cause as equity gaps in healthcare delivery — accessibility and convenience for patients,” said Jodi Akin, CEO and founder of Hawthorne Effect. “While there is great momentum in the adoption of decentralized clinical trials, apps just don’t draw blood, nor do they reach the equity divide. Hawthorne Effect uniquely offers the only technology-enabled distributed professionals model that addresses these common barriers in clinical research. As a result, we help sponsors deliver complete and accurate trial assessments to benefit the entire clinical trial ecosystem. Our solution also addresses the historical disparities in representation when it comes to patient populations, and the future of public health hinges on closing this gap.”