Despite the development of groundbreaking specialty medicines, a startling 20% of new prescriptions go unfilled. Even more concerning, over half of patients deviate from their prescribed regimen within six months. This medication nonadherence not only jeopardizes patient health but also strains healthcare resources, accounting for $1 out of every $9 spent in the system. Courier Health is on a mission to solve this problem with its patient-focused CRM system for life sciences. Pharma and biotech companies can use the platform to directly engage and develop personalized adherence programs using a robust predictive analytics engine that synthesizes disparate data. Focused on the end-to-end experience from prescription to ongoing therapy, Courier Health facilitates seamless information sharing among physicians, payers, and pharmacies, fostering a collaborative environment to enhance patient outcomes. The company’s pharma clients have seen a significant impact including a 67% reduction in the time to start treatments and a 5x efficiency gain for field access and support teams.
AlleyWatch caught up with Courier Health Founder and CEO Danny Sigurdson to learn more about the business, the company’s strategic plans, latest round of funding, which brings the company’s total funding to raised to $20.5M, and much, much more…
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
We raised a $16.5M Series A led by Norwest Venture Partners with participation from our seed investor, Work-Bench, a firm based in New York City. We’re excited to partner with Irem Rami and Norwest Venture Partners and to continue our relationship with Jessica Lin and the team at Work-Bench!
Tell us about the product or service that Courier Health offers.
Courier Health provides the first patient-focused CRM solution designed specifically for the life sciences industry. Biotech and pharma (biopharma) companies use our software to engage and personalize support for patients who rely on their medicines. The patient journey from diagnosis to prescription to initiating and staying on therapy can be complex, especially for chronic conditions or rare diseases. Sadly, this complexity results in 60-70% of patients never starting or discontinuing therapy within the first few months. Courier Health brings together disparate data sets to provide a single source of truth with automation to support patients. We work across a wide range of clients and therapeutic areas, from small biotechs launching their first therapy to large pharma companies.
What inspired the start of Courier Health?
For years, the life sciences industry has been evolving with more specialty therapies, which are generally considered drugs for rare diseases, injectable biologics, gene therapies, cell therapies, etc., and other exciting innovations. Specialty therapies accounted for 93% of all drug approvals last year and comprise most R&D pipelines today, so the market is huge and growing rapidly. With that, biopharma companies require connected data and systems to coordinate the more complex patient journey to access and staying on therapy. Traditional CRMs aren’t built to synthesize patient datasets and power omnichannel patient programs at scale. We saw an opportunity to bring much-needed innovation to a critical industry that directly impacts patient lives and health outcomes.
How is Courier Health different?
We’re 100% focused on the patient experience for biopharma. Market Access, Patient Services, Patient Marketing, and Analytics teams require purpose-built solutions for patient engagement, and we’ll continue to invest in core functionality and an overall user experience that is designed specifically for the needs of these teams. The ability to connect patient information alongside physician, payer, pharmacy, and more information is critical to supporting patients, and we’ve built a robust platform to reflect that. This includes compliant coordination across internal and external partners, workflow automation, and proactive insights to reduce operational complexity and minimize the likelihood of patients falling through the cracks.
What market does Courier Health target and how big is it?
We’re purpose-built for life sciences. There are hundreds of biopharma companies, thousands of specialty therapies, and most importantly, hundreds of millions of patients and loved ones that need to be supported and can be positively impacted by our technology. That’s what drives us forward every day.
What’s your business model?
We are a SaaS company that also provides support services to ensure our customers are successful. The product is developed and supported entirely in-house by our amazing team here in the Flatiron district of New York.
How are you preparing for a potential economic slowdown?
We’ve been a capital-efficient business from day one. We have been disciplined and methodical with our team structure, and we have a great product in a market that is very excited about what we’re doing. The most important thing we can do to prepare for a potential economic slowdown is to continue ensuring our customers are satisfied and successful with our solution. The best part for us is that when our customers are successful, patients are successful!
What was the funding process like?
Our capital efficiency and product market fit helped catch the eye of several investors. There’s also great appreciation for the opportunity with specialty therapies, evolving biopharma commercial models, and how our technology uniquely addresses that. Most importantly, we’re proud to have extremely happy client partners, all of which helped make this an efficient process.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
Time is the scarcest resource in a start-up environment, so we’re happy to have the process completed and to have such thoughtful, collaborative partners like Norwest and Work-Bench!
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
Irem Rami and the team at Norwest Venture Partners have a deep understanding of our market and remain some of the strongest advocates for innovation in healthcare and life sciences. Specialty therapies are exploding, manufacturers are investing in internal access and support teams to manage access, affordability, and adherence, and there is growing demand for a solution like ours. We’re fortunate that our technology, combined with our world-class team and community of client partners and patient experience innovators, speaks volumes.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
We remain laser-focused on biopharma Field Access, Patient Services, and Marketing and making our customers successful. In the next six months, we’ll continue to advance our core platform, including some exciting developments in our Market Access solution. We’ll also continue to grow and invest in our team across all functions!
What advice can you offer companies in New York that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
Every company’s situation is nuanced, but staying focused on your customers and the unique needs of your market is critical. The market will tell you the challenges and pain points if you listen, then it is on companies like Courier Health to develop thoughtful, innovative, and scalable solutions. The exercise requires brutal honesty though.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
Ensuring our customers are successful is and always will be number one. We will stay focused on powering the end-to-end patient experience and accelerating investment in our core platform. We’re also keenly focused on growing our team, particularly across sales, product, and engineering, I’d be remiss not to mention our Careers page with open opportunities!
What’s your favorite summer destination in and around the city?
Courier Health HQ! More personally though, my wife and I have a young daughter, so we enjoy spending time in the Hudson River Park on the west side of Manhattan.
