This Raleigh startup on a mission to end asthma attacks and chronic lung disease is pushing ahead after landing $2.14 million.
VitalFlo, a startup that has developed a lung analytics platform, secured seed funding from the Texas-based Geekdom Fund after growing “17 times over the last 12 months.”
Elevate Capital, Lontra Ventures, Front Porch Venture Partners, and Purpose Built Ventures also joined the round.
The platform assists patients with home respiratory monitoring while also operating allergy and asthma clinics, primary care clinics, and clinical research teams.
“In the wake of COVID-19, it has never been more apparent that predictive medicine products like VitalFlo are needed to improve our ability to deliver care when and where it is needed most,” said Mike Troy, managing partner at Geekdom Fund.
Luke Marshall, VitalFlo’s founder and CEO, said the funds would go towards scaling its team and operations in Raleigh and its new office in Portland, Oregon.
“As a country, we spend $30 billion every year on ER visits, hospitalizations, and hospital readmissions for asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). That’s insane,” he said. “VitalFlo is bringing to market the predictive medicine solutions that allow patients and their doctors to coordinate preventative care before their conditions take a turn for the worse.”
Founded in 2017, VitalFlo is the brainchild of clinical advisors, Dr. Michelle Hernandez and Dr. David Peden of UNC-Chapel Hill School of Medicine, in collaboration with researchers at North Carolina State University.
“We are growing the number of these clinics that we partner with, as well as expanding our offering to larger provider groups,” Marshall said.
There’s also a “robust” channel in clinical research, he added, with customers including UNC School of Medicine, NC State University, University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School, Duke Clinical Research Institute, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and the Centers for Disease Control.
“We have several more institutions like these in our pipeline, and we are also beginning discussions with several pharmaceutical companies who are interested in improving their clinical trials with remotely collected data,” Marshall said.
The company is also hiring. Its team consists of nine full-time and two part-time employees. It has three job openings in marketing and sales, and plans to add another three roles “over the next 12 months.”
In addition to this round, the startup has raised $1.2 million from the National Science Foundation’s SBIR program, the NC IDEA Seed grant, the Daugherty Endowment Award from NC State University’s eGames, and others.
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