Durham’s Velocity Clinical Research buys India-based company, adds new CTO

DURHAM – Velocity Clinical Research is expanding its footprint, again.

The company today announced that it has bought TrierHealth, which is based in Hyderabad, India. The company’s founder, Raghu Punnamraju, will become Velocity’s chief technology officer, according to a company statement.

The company also announced a partnership with Advarra in its statement, noting that the partnership will allow the firm to access data from more than 500,000 patients across its national site network.

“We’re building a global community of patients who are engaged, advocate for participation in clinical research, and actively take part in multiple studies,” said Dr. G. Paul Evans, the president and CEO of Velocity Clinical Research, in the statement. “Building and scaling a truly integrated clinical site business to support this requires a common technology stack to achieve consistency,” said Evans.

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Behind the deal

The clinical research organization (CRO) collaborated with TrierHealth some 18 months ago, Velocity noted, in an effort to build a platform to support what it called “decentralized visits.”

As a part of the deal, the TrierHealth research and development team, also based in Hyderabad, will add additional capacity and focus on patient recruitment following the acquisition.

“Velocity is setting a new standard of integration for the research site industry to better recruit and retain patients into clinical research. As the biggest clinical trials market, the U.S. has been the right home for building a world-class integrated site business first, before we take our model international this year.

The acquisition of TrierHealth means Velocity can develop patient-focused tech that harnesses the power of AI and data science to improve clinical research. The acquisition comes 18 months after collaborating with TrierHealth to build a patient-focused platform to support decentralized visits. The R&D team, based in Hyderabad, will expand to focus on patient recruitment because of the acquisition.

“Technology touches every part of our lives and clinical research is no different,” said Punnamraju in a statement. “TrierHealth agreed to be acquired by Velocity because of our firmly held belief that a hybrid model between brick-and-mortar sites, integrated with tech options, will emerge as the premier solution in clinical trials.

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Global expansion?

The firm had expanded to 29 sites as of September 2021, as reported by WRAL TechWire, growing through other acquisitions the company has made.

In 2019, the firm raised $20 million in capital and announced that it had used that capital raise to buy three companies, though Evans noted at the time the firm wasn’t done raising money.

The company was founded in 2017 by Bruce Tomason, the former CEO of One Call Medical, Alterna, and Copernicus. Evans joined the company in October 2018, relocating from the United Kingdom to Durham to do so. Evans had previously served as corporate vice president of Global Site Solutions at PAREXEL and vice president, Global Site Management at IQVIA, among other roles.

Later in 2019, the firm made two additional acquisitions, resulting in doubling in size.

The company would go on to acquire two additional companies in June 2020, then buying another in July 2021 with plans to expand to Europe.