Two healthtech companies have made announcements on the growth of their firms, announcing new partnerships and key milestones. Here’s the latest on these company updates.
Cyclica releases case study on AI drug design platform
Toronto-based biotechnology company Cyclica has announced its most recent case study, which identified and prospectively validated molecules using the company’s AI-enabled drug design platform Ligand Design.
In a post on LinkedIn, Cyclica’s president and CEO Naheed Kurji said the case study’ represents a validation of Cyclica’s platform.
Cyclica intends to offer the pharmaceutical industry a platform to design more personalized medicines while limiting side effects.
Cyclica aims to decentralize drug discovery by leveraging AI and computational biophysics. The company’s Ligand Design platform, which launched in May 2019, leverages the company’s deep learning model to construct polypharmacological profiles for compounds Polypharmacology involves pharmaceutical compounds that exert an effect on multiple targets in the body.
Through Ligand Design, Cyclica intends to offer the pharmaceutical industry an integrated, end-to-end platform to design more personalized medicines while limiting side effects. In its findings, Cyclica noted that the case study highlights how drug discovery teams can use Ligand Design to rapidly identify molecules to seed their drug discovery programs.
Cyclica raised $2.25 million in its Series A follow-on funding in July 2017. The company was also among the 10 companies that participated in the CAMP Accelerator program’s second cohort in Beijing, China in October 2016.
RBC Ventures acquires mobile billing platform Dr. Bill
RBC Ventures announced it has acquired Dr. Bill, a mobile billing platform for Canada’s medical community. According to a blog post by Dr. Bill, the acquisition actually took place in October.
The acquisition was completed through RBC Ventures’ sister company RBC Medical Billing.
Dr. Bill aims to simplify the billing and payment process by providing doctors with a mobile-billing platform and access to live agents. The platform is meant to modernized physicians’ billing processes to enable a more efficient practice. Dr. Bill is currently available in Ontario, British Columbia, and Alberta.
The acquisition was completed through RBC Ventures’ sister company RBC Medical Billing, a wholly-owned subsidiary of RBC. Dr. Bill is currently owned through RBC Medical Billing.
“Dr. Bill, a best-in-class physician billing platform, helps create a better experience for healthcare providers who are seeking an easier, more convenient billing system,” said Alison Chick, vice president of B2B and Health Ventures at RBC Ventures. “Going beyond banking to provide value-added products, services and capabilities is at the core of RBC Ventures. The acquisition of Dr. Bill differentiates how RBC is supporting the medical community.”
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Steve Lionais, the co-founder of Dr. Bill, said the startup was developed with the goal of making medical billing simple and pain-free by helping physicians save time and spend more time on patients. Lionais was inspired to develop the platform after seeing his wife spend significant time on billing.
“Physician billing is often still paper-based and inefficient, which can lead to errors and unnecessary administrative overhead,” said Lionais. “I saw this first-hand watching my wife do her billing in the evenings. Instead of enjoying her time away from work, she was spending hours sorting through stacks of paper.”
The acquisition of Dr. Bill brings a billing solution for physicians to RBC Healthcare’s offerings. RBC Healthcare recently launched RBC Healthcare Advantage, a membership program designed to support healthcare professionals at all stages of their careers. RBC noted that the program’s members are eligible to receive a discount on Dr. Bill’s services.
RBC Ventures has previously participated in the funding of healthcare companies, including League, which raised $62 million in a Series B round in July 2018.