The global clinical trial market is expected to grow to ~$70B by 2028 according to Grand View Research. This growth is fueled by the introduction of technologies to manage clinical trials at scale. While clinical trials can lead to groundbreaking healthcare discoveries that provide hope and treatment for many ailing patients, many physicians are reluctant or unable to participate due to a host of factors including logistical concerns, inadequate data management, barriers to recruitment, and more. Topography Health is a turn-key software-driven platform for clinical trials. Think of it as an operating system for clinical trials that allows physicians and organizations to efficiently recruit patients and manage all clinical data in a centralized platform. By breaking down barriers and administrative hurdles, Topography is able to empower community physicians to better serve historically underserved populations as well as increase the velocity at which pharmaceutical companies are able to bring therapeutics to market.
LA TechWatch caught up with Topography Health Cofounder Andrew Kirchner to learn more about the inspiration for the business, the company’s strategic plans, the state of the clinical trial market that’s poised for significant technology adoption, the company’s latest round of funding, which brings the total funding raised to $27.5M, and much, much more..
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
We raised $21.5M Series A funding. This round was led by led by Bain Capital Ventures, with participation from existing investor Andreessen Horowitz, which led Topography’s initial $6M seed round in 2020. One Medical Founder Tom Lee, former Flatiron Health Chief Medical Officer Bobby Green, and Zillow Cofounder Spencer Rascoff are also investors.
Tell us about your product or service.
We offer a full-stack, white-glove clinical trials platform. Our focus is identifying, training, and supporting community physicians in creating or expanding their clinical research capabilities. Our digital workflow technology allows physicians to reduce process friction and manage all clinical data in one place. Our data science platform analyzes patient records to help physicians across diverse communities recommend and personalize research for their patients, many of whom may have historically been excluded from or overlooked by promising drug trials.
What inspired the start of Topography Health?
Many of us know someone who has benefitted or could benefit, from a clinical trial. Yet many of us also understand that chronic access issues hamper our healthcare system, particularly in trials. With today’s technology, and how the pandemic has forced our society to rethink research, that no longer has to be true. We believe every physician can contribute to research on some scale, so we built Topography Health to be on the front lines of building tools and services that enable them to overcome the existing barriers to entry. We believe that the physician experience has been overlooked, and that has led to an undersupply of physician-investigators that slows progress in medicine and entrenches disparities in access and participation.
How is it different?
Currently, the clinical trials ecosystem is mainly slow-moving and expensive studies that are managed by a few elite, inaccessible academic centers. Topography is equalizing the ecosystem by getting community physicians involved. Those physicians leverage Topography’s plug-and-play trials platform. There is not enough focus on flexible investigative capacity, and helping community-based doctors offer trials to their patients in a robust, full-stack manner. Almost everything else is tech-first, remote, decentralized stuff (think: AI for patient finding, or telehealth+trials) that only solves a small slice of the trial access issue.
What market are you targeting and how big is it?
The clinical trials (i.e. drug and therapy development) market is quite large, as you might expect. The pandemic has continued to fuel investment in this space, and some reports have the market more than 30% bigger than pre-pandemic levels. Science continues to deliver amazing breakthroughs, and those breakthroughs require the sort of operational capacity that we’re building.
What are your post-COVID office plans??
TBD! There’s too much uncertainty to say specific plans at this point.
What was the funding process like?
It was really exciting and we feel grateful to have the support that we have. We worked with many folks we already knew well, and have built relationships with. That makes the process smoother.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
The pandemic didn’t allow for many in-person meetings, which we missed. It’s a great way to build trust and rapport across some really important relationships.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
There were presumably many factors, but one of the key factors is that we shared a thesis about a key problem that could be solved in the drug development process. Everything is easier once you see the problem the same from the 30,000-foot level, and have developed the same theory of how that can be addressed.
There were presumably many factors, but one of the key factors is that we shared a thesis about a key problem that could be solved in the drug development process. Everything is easier once you see the problem the same from the 30,000-foot level, and have developed the same theory of how that can be addressed.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
We aren’t publishing targets or metrics of this kind. Progress against our mission typically looks like empowering more and more physicians, and opening access to trials to populations that did not previously have access.
What advice can you offer companies in Los Angeles that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
That’s a great question. In our experience, patience pays. If you believe in what you’re doing, play the long game. A lot of things have to align for a great fundraise to come together, many of which you can’t control. Chief among those is timing.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
In the near term, we’re hiring and hiring fast! That’s a priority for a lot of companies in the near term, but we think we have a lot of really unique opportunities to get in early and have a lot of responsibility.
What’s your favorite outdoor activity in LA?
Another great question! A couple of the members of the team are rock climbers. And we love getting out in Malibu, Joshua Tree, or other places across SoCal.
