InnaMed

InnaMed is using at-home blood testing technology to enable personalized medicine.

This medical technology company has created a device that captures, analyzes, and distributes blood test data from the home. It’s also developing a one-stop platform through which users can access digital health services.

We featured InnaMed through our premium research service, Private Market Profits, in May 2019. At the time, the company was raising funds at a $12 million valuation.

Now InnaMed is conducting a new funding round, this time at a $25 million valuation.

InnaMed has achieved significant progress. It’s raised $2 million from investors including Y Combinator, Data Collective (a venture capital firm that’s invested in Square and Zoom), Matadero Capital, and the GWC Innovator Fund.

In addition, it’s received grants from NASA and the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. And its technology has been supported with nine patent applications and five peer-reviewed publications.

The focus of this company is on a crucial part of the healthcare system: blood monitoring. Simply put, monitoring and analyzing blood data is essential to several healthcare-related decisions.

For example, clinical trials rely on blood monitoring to determine safety, efficacy, and optimal dosing of new therapies. (Notably, each patient that is non-adherent during a trial costs companies more than $25,000.)

While discovering new therapies is important, using those therapies properly is just as critical.

Patients with complex conditions like heart failure and organ transplants are typically on several drugs at once. If these drugs aren’t taken at the right time or at the proper dosage, they can have life-threatening consequences.

Compounding this problem is that optimally dosing and monitoring therapies is tedious. As a result, chronic therapies are often mismanaged. This creates poor patient outcomes, lost pharmaceutical revenues, and higher costs for insurance providers.

Blood monitoring is a key component of getting the right patients on the right therapies at the right doses. InnaMed can make a difference with respect to the way blood samples are monitored and analyzed. Essentially, it enables users to measure, monitor, and analyze their blood from the comfort and privacy of home.

The company’s flagship product, the HomeLab system, enables at-home blood testing with the push of a button.

There are three components to the system:

• A disposable single-use blood collector for self-sampling.

• A disposable single-use cartridge for sample analysis.

• And a countertop Internet of Things (IoT) device that reads results, conducts symptom surveys, and handles communication with “cloud” services.

Here’s how the process works for someone submitting a sample:

First, the user inserts a cartridge into the countertop device. This insertion begins the process of ensuring clinical-grade analysis.

Second, the user collects the blood sample. To do this, they place the blood collector (which is equipped with microneedle technology) on their arm and push a button on the device. This initiates a virtually painless blood collection.

Finally, they transfer that sample by removing it from their arm and inserting it into the cartridge, which is already waiting inside the IoT device. Once inserted, an immediate blood sample analysis begins.

A single HomeLab cartridge can perform up to 24 unique tests. Its first cartridge, HomeLab RMX, tests for a panel of metabolic markers commonly used in clinical decision making. It’s useful in monitoring patients in clinical trials, or patients with chronic illnesses who are undergoing therapeutic changes.

InnaMed has several additional cartridges in its pipeline, targeting conditions such as organ transplant, rare diseases, and autoimmune diseases. Several of these cartridges have pharma-related collaborators funding their development and pre-ordering units.

InnaMed’s system is powered by biosensor technology. The cartridges function using proprietary fluidics and electrochemistry. These technologies can measure proteins and peptides, as well as small molecule drugs, hormones, antibodies, and standard clinical chemistries. Samples can be analyzed in as little as 10 minutes.

In addition to blood testing, InnaMed’s HomeLab system has features such as bluetooth, wi-fi, and cellular technology. This ensures reliable connectivity.

Blood test data, along with survey information, is packaged into a comprehensive “e-report,” which can be integrated into existing clinical and research workflows, or viewed on the company’s custom web application.

These reports enable quick analysis of patients. The de-identified data generated by HomeLab devices could one day become a monetizable asset on its own.

In the meantime, to generate revenue, InnaMed is targeting pharma companies and contract research organizations (CROs). These companies provide support for research and clinical trials.

Its initial business model involves selling the HomeLab and HomeLab cartridges to these customers on a subscription basis to enhance and digitize clinical trials. The virtual clinical trial market is expected to reach $14 billion by 2027.

It’s also collaborating with pharma companies to develop tailor-made cartridges. In many cases, these collaborations don’t require FDA clearance, enabling InnaMed to capture pre-regulatory revenue. InnaMed generated $1.4 million in revenue in 2020.

At the same time, the company is pursuing regulatory clearance for the HomeLab and cartridges for patient use outside of clinical trial settings. InnaMed has had multiple meetings and is working with the FDA for both clinical and research use cases.

With funds raised from this round, InnaMed plans to finish manufacturing of its HomeLab system, conduct FDA 510k clinical studies, and achieve regulatory clearance within a year’s time.

Down the road, the company hopes its technology can be expanded from blood to urine and saliva samples.

Team Background

Anup Singh - Co-Founder & Chief Science Officer

Prior to starting InnaMed, Anup conducted research at UCLA on cancer cell diagnostics, focusing on microfluidic technology that InnaMed uses to extract blood samples.

Before that, he worked at the University of Pennsylvania, developing microfluidic and optofluidic technologies for the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, and for monitoring recovery progress of brain injuries.

Throughout his career, his work has been published in leading peer-reviewed journals. He earned a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Physics from the University of Pennsylvania.

Kenneth Fang - Clinical Development Lead

Ken was previously the Chief Medical Officer for Diadexus, a company focusing on commercializing cardiovascular diagnostics. Prior to that, he held the same position with Integrated Diagnostics, a blood-based lung cancer detection company.

Earlier, he served as Senior Director of Clinical Development at CareDx, where he worked on heart transplant diagnostics. Before that, he was a former assistant clinical professor at the University of California, San Francisco’s School of Medicine.

Ken earned a Bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry and a Doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania.

Chris Easley - Scientific Advisor

Chris is a professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Auburn University. He has more than 20 years of experience in analytical chemistry, and helped develop InnaMed’s core technology.

Throughout his career, his work has been published in prestigious medical journals and backed by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.

Eshwar Inapuri - Co-Founder & CEO

Eshwar is a former researcher who focused on diagnostic testing. More specifically, he concentrated on therapeutics, microfluidic diagnostic devices, and analytical software.

Prior to InnaMed, he worked in R&D at the University of Pennsylvania, focusing on protein and DNA quantitation. Before that, he developed simulations to model the effects of photo-ablative therapy on cardiac tissue while working at the University of Michigan Center for Arrhythmia Research.

He earned a degree in Biomedical Science from the University of Pennsylvania.

Tom Larson - Commercial Development Lead

Tom joined InnaMed in January 2021 after spending more than 25 years at some of the world’s top pharmaceutical and biotech companies.

Most recently, he was Senior Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer at Ascendis Pharma (Nasdaq: ASND). Prior to that, he was Vice President with Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma America, a subsidiary of Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corporation, headquartered in Japan. And before that, he was Vice President of Marketing with Marathon Pharmaceuticals, a biopharmaceutical company specializing in treating rare diseases.

Earlier in his career, he spent three years as Executive Director of Hospital Sales with Boehringer Ingelheim, a privately-held pharmaceutical company. While there, he led the launch of Pradaxa, a drug which generated more than $1.7 billion in sales in 2018.

Before that, Tom spent seven years as a hospital sales director with Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ). He held this role after spending more than a decade with Abbott (NYSE: ABT), a medical device and healthcare company.

While with Abbott, he built the team that launched Humira, a drug intended to treat symptoms of arthritis. In 2019, Humira reached nearly $20 billion in lifetime sales. He also spent time as a marketing manager and region sales director.

He earned a Bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry from Northern Michigan University.

Co-Investors

Y Combinator

Seed-stage accelerator whose alumni include Scribd, Reddit, Airbnb, Dropbox and Stripe

Data Collective

Venture fund focused on "big data."

Matadero Capital

A venture capital firm investing in early-stage startups.

AAF Management

A venture capital firm whose portfolio includes Tru Optik and Spry Health.

GWC Innovator Fund

A venture fund focused on companies that are improving the world.