Dascena closes $50 million series B financing

Dascena Inc., a machine learning diagnostic algorithm company that is targeting early disease intervention to improve patient care outcomes, has closed a $50 million Series B financing led by Frazier Healthcare Partners with participation from Longitude Capital, existing investor Euclidean Capital, and an undisclosed investor.

“At Dascena, we believe in the power of machine learning to improve patient care and outcomes, and we continue to develop algorithms to do just that,” said Ritankar Das, founder and CEO of Dascena. “Machine learning is transforming how we solve problems across industries, and by applying this technology to healthcare, we will enhance the quality and efficiency of patient care. Our flagship sepsis algorithm, InSight, has produced significant decreases in mortality and hospital length of stay among patients with sepsis. In U.S. hospitals, over a quarter million patients die of sepsis each year. We believe that our InSight® algorithm can have a substantial impact in this arena.”

Diagnostic Algorithm Engine
The Series B financing will enable Dascena to advance a suite of machine learning algorithms to inform patient care strategies and improve outcomes. Dascena algorithms have been validated through 18 peer-reviewed publications in several studies funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.

In a randomized controlled trial of hospitalized patients in the intensive care unit (ICU), Dascena’s InSight algorithm resulted in a 58 percent reduction in patient mortality and a 21 percent reduction in length of hospital stay. Data from this prospective study of InSight were published in the BMJ Open Respiratory Research in 2017. In addition, as published in the BMJ, Dascena validated the performance of InSight in a larger real-world outcomes study in both ICU and other hospitalized and emergency department patients.

“We view the InSight sepsis product as just scratching the surface of how machine learning can improve patient care, and Dascena is committed to continued innovation for the benefit of patients,” added Das.

“Sepsis kills an American every two minutes, and early detection and treatment are critical to patient survival,” said Matthew Fine, M.D., chief medical officer of Oroville Hospital. “To combat this deadly condition, we have used Dascena’s sepsis prediction technology over the past two years and have found it very helpful for the care of our patients.”