A Bucks County clinical intelligence company focused on improving outcomes for infants born prematurely has raised $7.6 million in an equity financing.
Investors in Astarte Medical's Series A-1 financing were Viking Global Investors, Lunsford Capital, Ben Franklin Technology Partners, OCA Ventures, Next Act Fund, Capita3, Leatherneck Ventures, and Social Venture Circle.
The Yardley-based company plans to use the funds to scale its NICUtrition clinical decision support platform that addresses critical and unmet needs in hospital neonatal intensive-care units. Those needs include issues such as malnutrition, suboptimal growth, and racial disparities in care.
Astarte, founded in 2016, leverages data and digital tools to improve health outcomes of premature infants in their first 1,000 days. The technology is designed to standardize feeding and optimize nutrition for babies in hospital NICUs.
"NICUtrition can reduce the complexity and variability in preterm infant feeding and, with this round of capital, we're focusing our efforts on expanding our customer base and improving the impact we can have for infants and their families," said Tracy Warren, CEO and co-founder of Astarte Medical.
Warren said the company has an undisclosed number of signed contracts for which the implementation of its platform in hospital NICUs is underway. The company did not identify its initial NICU sites.
"As an investor who is also a mother who once had a preterm infant in the NICU, I understand what it means to have a fragile baby who we hope grows up to have a meal just be a meal," said Jennifer Hartt, managing director of the healthcare investment group at Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pa. "For these babies, however, every feeding and its composition and timing is of critical importance and they are handling feedings often months before their bodies were designed to do. Astarte Medical is tackling these exact issues with real time tools and analysis. The impacts can be life-long to get this right, with these babies. That is the kind of impact we care about and that we know hospitals and their NICUs will care about as well."
In connection with the financing round, Wendy Slatery, chief commercial officer at Aspect Imaging, is joining Astarte's board of directors.