The Center for Innovative Technology (CIT) today announced that CIT GAP Funds has invested in Herndon, Va.-based Jeeva Informatics Solutions Inc. (Jeeva), a precision medicine data science company focused on significantly accelerating clinical trial operations by taking trials to patients’ homes. Using AI and digital health technologies, Jeeva fast tracks patient recruitment, improves adherence to trial protocols, and reduces patient burden and dropout rates, solving some of the pressing challenges in bringing innovative medicines to market effectively. Jeeva plans to use the GAP Funds investment to advance customer pilot projects and use cases for further validation.
Traditional clinical trial processes have remained inefficient and fairly unchanged for decades, with only 12% of all candidate drugs entering clinical trial phases ever receiving FDA approvals. Patient recruitment continues to be the biggest hurdle in the biopharma clinical trials process, most of which require patients to travel to brick and mortar sites, making it burdensome or in some cases impossible for eligible patients to enroll. Additionally, nearly 30% of consented patients are likely to drop out before the trial completes. Jeeva’s decentralized clinical trials platform accelerates patient recruitment by 10-15%, reduces drop-out rates to single digit percentages and measurably improves compliance by reducing traditional travel burden by 20-80%.
“Accelerating the process of clinical research will bring critical, innovative treatments to market that we have lacked for decades,” said Harsha Rajasimha, Founder and CEO of Jeeva. “At Jeeva, we believe that access to critical therapies should not be a function of patients’ zip-codes. Our unique solution will enable communities living in rural, mountains, and hard-to-reach remote locations to participate in late stage clinical trials. With CIT GAP Funds’ support, we look forward to further developing our platform and validating the value propositions with early adopters who share our vision.”
Jeeva’s central coordination of e-visits, or videoconferencing visits, can be applied to a wide variety of clinical trials including real-world evidence studies, cell and gene therapy trials, and trials requiring long-term safety monitoring follow ups. Whether a trial involves daily log entries or monthly follow up visits, Jeeva’s bring-your-own-device (BYOD) for remote visits reduces travel burden for participants, replacing up to 80% of in-person visits with e-visits. The platform’s technology architecture is scalable and flexible enough to anticipate and handle future use cases across therapeutic areas, and will leverage existing mobile technologies to aggregate patient health information on smart phones.
“It is clear that the current state of clinical trials is not efficient, and medicines could benefit from the speed of innovation. Jeeva’s approach to optimizing clinical trials operations through virtual means will have a significant impact on many lives,” said Tom Weithman, Managing Director of CIT GAP Funds and Virginia Founders Fund. “Harsha and his team have done great work developing scalable technology for an unmet need, and the use of artificial intelligence to recommend real-time adjustments for an ongoing trial based on lessons learned from past clinical trials data is a remarkable advantage. We look forward to following their success.”
About Jeeva ("Life") Informatics Solutions Inc (Jeeva)
Jeeva is a premier AI-driven decentralized clinical trials platform company with a core focus on reducing travel burden for participants and maximizing operational efficiency for sponsors. Jeeva’s innovative solution to replace 20% to 80% of brick and mortar site visits for participants with centrally coordinated eVisits. Jeeva’s unique approach is particularly suitable for cell and gene therapies and vaccines trials that involve upfront therapy administration and long-term follow ups for safety monitoring. Jeeva is actively discussing pilot projects with clinical researchers interested in post-market real-world evidence studies, cohort studies, and gene therapy trials. Jeeva has successfully delivered BioHealthIT solutions to customers including the Catholic Health Initiatives, Morehouse School of Medicine, and Lockheed Martin. The Founder's background includes over 15 years of award-winning track record in academia, NIH, FDA, and healthcare life sciences industry involving Bioinformatics, precision medicine, , and Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) data analysis with 15+ publications in cancer genomics, retinal diseases, and rare diseases. For more information, please visit: www.jeevatrials.com.
Jeeva successfully completed the nationally competitive NSF I-Corps program following several hundred discovery interviews with key stakeholders in 2019 to lead the life science industry transformation with a focus on patients and sponsors. Harsha will be at the upcoming JP Morgan Healthcare conference in San Francisco from Jan. 11-17. Consultations can be scheduled using the Bio Partnering app or at www.jeevatrials.com.
About CIT GAP Funds
CIT GAP Funds makes seed-stage equity investments in Virginia-based technology, clean tech and life science companies with a high potential for achieving rapid growth and generating significant economic return for entrepreneurs, co-investors and the Commonwealth of Virginia. CIT GAP Funds’ investments are overseen by the CIT GAP Funds Investment Advisory Board (IAB). This independent, third-party panel consists of leading regional entrepreneurs, angel and strategic investors, and venture capital firms such as New Enterprise Associates, Grotech Ventures, Valhalla Partners, Harbert Venture Partners HIG Ventures, Edison Ventures, In-Q-Tel, Intersouth Partners, SJF Ventures, Carilion Health Systems, Johnson & Johnson, General Electric, and Alpha Natural Resources. For more information, please visit www.citgapfunds.org.
About the Center for Innovative Technology (CIT)
Investing for Commonwealth Growth | CIT concentrates on the early commercialization and seed funding stages of innovation, helping innovators and tech entrepreneurs launch and grow new companies, create high paying jobs and accelerate economic growth throughout the entire state of Virginia. Founded in 1985, CIT accelerates next generation technologies and technology companies through commercialization, capital formation, market development initiatives, and expansion of broadband throughout Virginia. Our programs include | CIT GAP Funds | Commonwealth Research Commercialization Fund (CRCF) | Virginia Founders Fund | Broadband/Rural Broadband | Smart Communities | Cybersecurity | Unmanned Systems | SBIR/STTR Support (Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) & Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs) | University Partnerships | Startup Company Mentoring & Engagement. CIT’s CAGE Code is 1UP71. Contact: 2214 Rock Hill Road #600, Herndon, VA 20170 | 703.689.3000 | www.cit.org
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