Diabetes data management company Glooko closed a series C funding round with $35 million in financing, led by Georgian Partners. The Mountain View, Calif., company plans to use the funding to continue growth, including internationally, and invest in analytics.

Georgian Partners, of Toronto, invests in machine learning and applied analytics. Additional investors new to this round are the Mayo Clinic and Insulet Corp. Returning investors include Canaan Partners, Social Capital, Medtronic and Samsung Next.

Expansion, commercialization with funding

Glooko plans to expand its commercialization efforts in Germany, France, the U.K., Asia and the Middle East. Financing also will be used to increase marketing, sales and teams focused on development in analytics. The company will focus efforts in artificial intelligence to enhance its ability to provide personalized information to patients with diabetes, so they can make informed changes in their treatment.

"This additional funding will help us to further our mission: to improve the lives of people with diabetes," said Rick Altinger, CEO of Glooko. "With this capital, we will accelerate our investments in clinical solutions that aim to increase medication adherence, provide personalized insights and prompts that drive behavior change for people with diabetes, and deliver clinical decision support to thousands of clinicians and coaches so they can better support people with diabetes in between office visits."

Glooko web-based and mobile applications can be used with diabetes devices to record data and analyze the information for better disease management. Data is compiled and can be displayed in graphics or reports that can inform care and improve outcomes. More than 50 devices from insulin pumps to continuous glucose monitoring systems (CGMs) are compatible with the system and are synced to a patient's smartphone or other device to deliver information on blood sugar, percent in range and average readings. Patients can then analyze the blood glucose information with food intake and medication, add activity or event notes, and share the data with a care provider to create an overall management plan and potentially optimize their outcomes.

Diabetes by the numbers

An estimated 29.1 million people in the U.S. have diabetes, 21 million who have been diagnosed, according to the CDC's 2014 National Diabetes Statistics Report. Costs for the diabetic population in the U.S. were estimated at $245 billion direct and $176 billion indirectly in 2012. Medical expenses for those with diabetes are estimated at 2.3 times higher on average than patients without the disease, according to the CDC. Proper blood glucose control can limit eye, nerve and kidney damage usually associated with the disease. According to Glooko, 29 percent of users increased their blood sugar testing after using the service.

Hypoglycemia, or low blood sugar, can be a side effect of poor insulin management and is associated with seizures, loss of consciousness or death, according to the CDC. Glooko data suggests 60 percent of its users decreased their risk of developing hypoglycemia by at least 10 percent.

Prior funding rounds

Funding for the company has totaled $71 million, according to Crunchbase. Prior funding rounds for Glooko include an initial seed funding by 10 investors for $1 million in November 2010, followed by $3.5 million of series A financing in January 2012, led by Social Capital. An additional series A funding of $7 million, with five investors, closed in January 2014, and a later series B funding of $16.5 million, led by Canaan Partners and Medtronic, closed in March 2015. A September 2016 series C funding garnered $8 million, also led by Canaan Partners.

Medtronic, Samsung diabetes devices

Dublin-based Medtronic and Glooko began a partnership in 2015 to link the medical device company's insulin pumps and CGMs to Glooko's diabetes management platform. Medtronic also would utilize its food, medication, biometric and fitness information with existing software to bolster the quality of data provided to patients. (See BioWorld MedTech, June 9, 2015.)

"Our goal is to provide people with diabetes, their care teams and health care providers with actionable insights that improve decision-making to optimize care. By partnering with the Glooko diabetes management platform, we can provide safe and secure access to meaningful diabetes information to our customers that goes beyond just device data," said Annette Brüls, Medtronic VP and general manager of Diabetes Services and Solutions, at that time. "Combining the additional data collected by Glooko with our Carelink data will enable further insights into how various health and fitness activities affect insulin therapy."

Medtronic and Samsung, of Seoul, South Korea, also shared plans to collaborate on a similar endeavor which would integrate Samsung devices and insulin pumps and CGMs to provide diabetes data. Information would also be shared with the patient's medical team, who would have access to the insulin pump or CGM.

Later that year, Medtronic added smartphone app access to data from the Minimed CGM device. (See BioWorld MedTech, Dec. 14, 2015.)