Pharma supply chain firm raises $93m to expand digital services

A pharma supply chain information company TraceLink has raised $93 million to expand its digital technology into new areas such as personalised medicine, predictive care, and gene therapies.

TraceLink said it had closed an investment round led by Georgian Partners, with new investors Vulcan Capital and Willett Advisors LLC, and participation by all existing investors: FirstMark Capital, Volition Capital, F-Prime Capital and Goldman Sachs.

The company also announced that Tyson Baber, a partner from Georgian Partners has joined its board of directors. Since its founding in 2009, TraceLink has attracted a total of $167 million in investments.

This latest investment will help TraceLink in its quest to create a more predictable pharma supply chain, using digital technology to allow real-time information sharing.

This will enable TraceLink to expand its offering to areas such as supplier collaboration, patient communities, personalised medicine, predictive care and gene therapies.

Fragmented and manual information-sharing processes cause over $100 billion in annual losses from drug diversion, revenue leakage, and operational inefficiencies due to a lack of effective information exchange capabilities, TraceLink said.

TraceLink will also use the funds to further reinforce its R&D and services organisations to support its rapidly growing customer base of more than 930 pharmaceutical manufacturers, contract manufacturers (CMO), wholesaler distributors, third party logistic providers (3PL), hospitals and pharmacies.

[caption id="attachment_46102" align="alignleft" width="66"] Shabbir Dahod[/caption]

Shabbir Dahod, president and CEO of TraceLink, said: “As we continue to execute on our vision to build the digital supply chain, we are making strategic investments in machine learning, artificial intelligence and blockchain, ultimately delivering an open development platform for information sharing and predictive analytics.”

“Georgian Partners’ deep expertise will significantly aid our efforts in bringing global information-sharing applications to market, driving the entire industry forward to solve critical business challenges through supply chain digitalisation.”

Tyson Baber said: “The pharmaceutical industry is at a digital tipping point and TraceLink is in an ideal position to drive major advancements in this transformation with its information-sharing network platform. We are very excited to partner with TraceLink on its next phase of growth and look forward to helping guide the company on its journey.”

TraceLink’s network connects over 270,000 pharmaceutical companies, care management organisations, wholesale distributors, 3PLs, parallel importers, repackagers, hospitals and pharmacies worldwide.