160 million rubles invested in software for automation of CI

The Internet Initiatives Development Fund (IIDF, FRII in Russian) is investing 150 million rubles into the Russian clinical trial (CT) processing system Data MATRIX. The project has also attracted 10 million rubles from the venture capital fund Primer Capital, reports the Data MATRIX press service.

According to the statement, the Data MATRIX project is the first specialized software in Russia for organizing and managing clinical drug trials.

"Our product solves complex tasks of patient randomization, drug supply management, collected data processing, and drug safety monitoring. In the future, new modules will enable tracking the financial part of a study, quality control, project management, and much more," says Ivan Dobromyslov, General Director of Data MATRIX.

As noted in the company's press service, the received investment of 160 million rubles will be used to develop the project and enter foreign markets.

"The number of medical drug developments worldwide grows by 5% annually. In recent years, the share of oncology drug studies has increased significantly, which requires more complex study designs and increases their cost – about 20% of trials in the US already require the use of adaptive design. We see market interest in this solution – the project team is already working with large companies and showing successful results," said Sergey Negodyaev, Investment Portfolio Manager at IIDF.

Data Matrix LLC was created in 2014 by spinning off the data processing department of the company OCT into a separate organization. The company specializes in providing data processing and biostatistics services for clinical trials and develops cloud-based software for clinical research.

According to SPARK data, the company's revenue for 2015 amounted to 52.9 million rubles, with a net profit of 759 thousand rubles.

The Internet Initiatives Development Fund (IIDF) is a Russian venture investment fund established in March 2013 by the Agency for Strategic Initiatives. The Fund provides investments to technology companies at early stages of development, offers consulting and educational support to startups in its own accelerator, and participates in developing methods for the legal regulation of internet business and the venture industry. The volume of the investment budget under IIDF's management is 6 billion rubles. The fund's portfolio includes over 170 projects.

As reported in early November of this year, the government approved passports for priority projects in healthcare, for which implementation nearly 75 billion rubles from various sources are expected to be allocated in 2017. Plans include primarily supporting the creation of a system of perinatal centers, the informatization of medicine, organizing medical care in remote areas, and creating a system for monitoring state drug procurement.