Google Ventures has made its largest medical software investment yet, providing the bulk of a $130 million financing for Flatiron Health Inc., which aggregates cancer-patient data from a wide variety of sources to help doctors make treatment decisions.
First Round Capital, Laboratory Corporation of America and angel investors also contributed to the Series B financing, which will partially be used to acquire electronic medical records company Altos Solutions Inc. Valuation was not disclosed.
Fortune earlier reported Flatiron was raising a nine-digit round led by Google Ventures.
“We don’t generally make investments of $100-plus million,” said Bill Maris, managing partner with Google Ventures. “When we do make an investment of this size, it means we really believe in the team, and the product, and the good that it can do for the world.”
Only 4% of cancer patients participate in clinical trials, the company says, meaning that information about treatments and patient outcomes for 96% of patients is not easily accessible.
New York-based Flatiron, founded in 2012, makes software that taps a wide variety of sources to aggregate clinical and genomic data, information on patient outcomes, doctors’ notes, billing information and other data, and presents the information to oncologists.
Doctors pondering a course of treatment for cancer patients use Flatiron to review other cases, and can see what outcomes various treatments have brought in the past, Mr. Maris said. Flatiron complies with privacy laws, meaning that doctors using the platform do not learn the identities of patients who are not their own.
Between 500 and 1,000 oncologists are currently using Flatiron’s data platform, said Flatiron co-founder Nathaniel Turner, who with co-founder Zach Weinberg sold their previous company, Invite Media, to Google in 2010.
The new funding enables Flatiron to acquire Altos Solutions, a company offering cloud-based electronic medical records for oncology. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
By adding Altos’ technology, doctors will have access to the Flatiron database as they treat patients, entering information into their electronic medical record, Mr. Maris said.
“This acquisition of Altos is like rocket fuel for Flatiron,” Mr. Maris said. “Here you have two companies with very complementary technologies, both working in oncology. It’s a significant step forward for cancer care.”
Altos, which is not funded by venture capitalists, has some 1,300 clinicians regularly using its electronic health records, said Flatiron’s Mr. Turner. The company’s staff of 60 will join Flatiron when the deal is finalized by the end of this month, he added.
Flatiron also plans to hire as many as 30 more staff, many of them engineers, by the end of the year, he said.
Google Ventures has targeted medical software companies with a Big Data focus with several of its investments. The firm has backed DNAnexus Inc., which brings analytics to genomic information in an attempt to build the world’s first searchable archive of DNA information. It has also backed Foundation Medicine, which uses big-data tools to analyze turmors, and Predilytics Inc., which offers health insurers a tool to track hospital discharges and readmissions.
Dow Jones VentureSource records show that the Flatiron Health deal is the fourth largest round Google Ventures has participated in. The firm confirmed it’s the largest medical software deal.
Flatiron Health previously raised an $8 million Series A round from Google Ventures, First Round Capital, Great Oaks Capital, IA Ventures, Lab Corp, Social+Capital Partnership, SV Angel and other angel investors, VentureWire records show.
The Series B brings Andrew Conrad, a director at Google[X], to Flatiron’s board of directors.
