PeakData, the AI platform that identifies and collates the most relevant and impactful healthcare professionals (HCPs) for pharmaceutical companies, has raised €12.1m ($12.1) in a Series A funding round led by AlbionVC and including Octopus Ventures and Heal Capital.
Launched in 2018, PeakData enables pharmaceutical companies to enhance the depth and breadth of their customer base and learn more about HCPs that are most relevant to their target market, and in turn, ensure patients benefit from innovative new medicines much sooner. With PeakData pharma companies can enhance the effectiveness of commercial and medical teams and, for the first time, uncover the whole HCP universe for any given therapeutic area to focus resources only on those HCPs that matter most.
The platform uses AI algorithms to rank these HCPs in terms of their digital impact, influence and relevance to their target market and uses dynamic data to observe changes in HCP status over time. This means that not only can pharma companies find and personalise their communications with the top-tier experts, as the market changes, but the platform also enables them to identify emerging influencers among local treating physicians who are managing patients on a daily basis and may previously not have been on their radar. This is crucial because it gives pharma companies the ability to focus their limited resources on those most relevant HCPs.
The Series A funding follows rapid 6x growth for the company in 2021. PeakData’s platform is now being used by over half of Europe’s largest pharmaceutical companies and the company has grown from 12 to 70 employees since 2021.
Patrick De Boer, co-founder of PeakData said: “We started PeakData after a dawning realisation that AI could help provide better patient outcomes. In order to ensure healthcare professionals are aware of the latest medicines, pharmaceutical companies must be provided with the latest data about them and their key focus areas. We see PeakData as filling a key gap in the way our customers receive and analyse this data in order to improve the conversations they are having with a much wider variety of HCPs in their area. Combining our AI approach and platform with the global presence of a number of pharmaceutical companies will have an immediate and long-term positive impact for our customers and the patients they serve. We’re delighted that Albion shares this vision and look forward to working with them in the future.”
PeakData’s team of data scientists have built a technology that is able to trawl through millions of digital records to find information about HCPs and map their professional interests as well as their connections to peers. What sets PeakData apart is the scope of this mapping, with up to 90% of HCPs in any therapeutic area covered, giving pharma companies much greater insight into all levels of healthcare provision. Similarly, new and emerging influencers are also much more easily uncovered with PeakData, as the platform gives users constant insights on digital activators – a practicing HCP who has a robust and established digital presence and actively shapes clinical opinion. As the COVID-19 pandemic has shown, it is critical for pharmaceutical companies to find and engage digital activators, so they can reach more healthcare professionals, earlier and quicker, and steepen the product adoption curve.
PeakData provides support to pharma companies throughout the lifecycle of their medicine, from giving them greater insight into their target market ahead of a medicine’s launch to then boosting the medicine’s growth through insights and information on a much larger potential customer base.
PeakData will use the funding to expand all aspects of the business to support their growth plans as well as continue to develop the platform. The company aims to have its platform used by the vast majority of pharmaceutical companies around the globe and in as many drug markets as possible in the next five years.