RxDefine, now Ostro, raises $45M for life science marketing, tracking - Axios

Ostro, precocious rebranded from RxDefine, is getting an e-commerce makeover and $45 cardinal successful Series B funding, CEO Chase Feiger tells Axios exclusively.

Why it matters: Retail and concern companies are accustomed to having a wealthiness of idiosyncratic engagement and tracking tools astatine their fingertips, but that aforesaid innovation has been dilatory to travel to wellness care.

Deal details: Founders Fund, Byers Capital, Caffeinated Capital, Greycroft, Bling Capital, Trust Ventures and RRE Ventures supplied the funding, tipping Ostro’s full superior to conscionable implicit $55 cardinal raised to date.

• Miami-based Ostro is utilizing the funds to grow from selling 3 products to much than 10, Feiger says.
• Ostro's tools usher consumers and clinicians to treatments including aesculapian devices, drugs, diagnostics and integer therapeutics.
• "We’re bringing e-commerce bundle to wellness care," says Feiger, who is besides a physician.

Yes, and: Drugmakers and aesculapian instrumentality developers person a constricted clip to marketplace their tools due to the fact that of patent regulations, underlining Ostro's worth prop adjacent amid a marketplace slowdown.

How it works: Ostro signs software-as-a-service contracts with cause companies and developers of aesculapian devices, integer therapeutics and diagnostics.

• Then it offers tools and accusation to consumers and clinicians to assistance usher them to an due cause oregon device.
• Those tools see online chat and text-based functions powered by AI- and ML-driven bundle and patient-facing CRM tools that seizure and anonymize diligent accusation and respond to questions.

State of play: Publicly traded Veeva Systems, which has a marketplace headdress of $28.54 billion, is Ostro's astir nonstop competitor, though Veeva mostly courts ample and emerging biotech companies.

• There's besides Epicor, which works with companies crossed the aesculapian device, retail and automotive industries and successful 2020 was acquired by Clayton and Dubilier & Rice done a $4.7 cardinal LBO.

Yes, but: When it comes to wellness care-specific companies similar Ostro, determination truly aren't many.

• "It’s been a bluish water for solutions similar ours successful the market," Feiger says.

What they're saying: Along with helping drugmakers and aesculapian instrumentality manufacturers merchantability their products, Feiger says, his tools assistance patients entree treatments sooner and much equitably.

• "We started the institution truthful that careless of your affiliation oregon instauration you tin larn astir caller attraction options," Feiger tells Axios. "And truthful that you don’t person to walk hundreds of hours doing research."

Where it stands: Ostro serves astir 20 companies focused connected specialties including neurology, cardiovascular disease, pulmonology, infectious illness and women’s health. Those companies and treatments include, per Axios' research:

• AstraZeneca, for its Breztri Aerosphere medicine for COPD.
• CooperSurgical, for its Paragard IUD.
• Ortho Dermatologics, for its Jublia medicine for toed fungus.

Be smart: Ethical considerations travel into play erstwhile selling aesculapian products. Feiger says Ostro addresses them some successful penning and successful meetings.

• "When we conscionable selling managers we marque it wide we privation to ethically thrust patients towards getting the close attraction for them, which, by the way, mightiness not beryllium their treatment," Feiger says. "We’ve turned distant astatine slightest 4 customers wherever that was not good understood by the company."
• Company argumentation besides prohibits Ostro from serving immoderate institution with a Schedule 1 cause successful its portfolio, from serving a portfolio that contains a Schedule 2 drug, and from providing its services for immoderate Schedule 3 drug. (These are drugs with imaginable for maltreatment oregon addiction, similar opiates oregon steroids.)

The bottommost line: "I presumption my relation arsenic a doc and doc archetypal and foremost, earlier an entrepreneur," Feiger says.