Mural Health Raises $8M Led by Bessemer Venture Partners to Accelerate Growth

Funding enables Mural Health to expand its Mural Link platform to modernize the clinical trial participant experience

BERWYN, Pa., Sept. 19, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Mural Health Technologies, Inc. a next-generation clinical trial participant management platform, today announced that it has raised $8 million in seed funding, led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from Virtue VC, Operator Partners, Arkitect Ventures, Correlation Ventures, and Project Mayhem Ventures.

The investment empowers the company to accelerate the growth of its Mural Link platform which modernizes the clinical trial experience for both patients and caregivers.

Mural Health was founded in 2022 by Sam Whitaker, Jason Dong, and Shawn Milochik to modernize the clinical trial experience for participants and make it easier to take part in trials. Sam previously founded Greenphire, where he invented and commercialized the world's first clinical trial payments technology, the ClinCard. Mural Health represents both a disruption to Sam's original platform, and an expansion of functionality that leverages payments to manage and engage the participant. The company's software platform, Mural Link, provides a next-generation payment tech that is artfully integrated with transportation, communication, and data collection functionalities.

Being in a clinical trial can often be a burden. The more difficult it is to be in the trial, the fewer people sign up and fewer people will remain in the trial. Today, Mural Link reduces the burden and increases retention of trial participants in three core ways. First, the platform gives participants the power to choose how they receive payment, eliminating the predatory inactivity fees associated with prepaid debit cards that are typically used. Second, Mural Link offers functionality to help patients arrive at site visits without incurring a cash expense through an Uber integration. Finally, Mural Link helps optimize for a positive trial experience through two-way secure participant messaging and real time experiential feedback that informs study personnel on how to optimize operations, and ultimately prevent attrition.

"Participants in clinical trials often get overlooked as the industry, and the world, focuses on study results. But patients and their caregivers represent ground-zero. They are the source of data and without their participation new therapies cannot be safely brought to market," said Sam Whitaker, Mural Health's co-CEO and co-founder. "We believe that as we serve participants well, study sponsors will enjoy improved enrollment, retention, and protocol compliance. And the global community will, consequently, be better served by the new products that are made possible by clinical R&D."

Today, Mural Health has three of the top 15 pharmaceutical companies in the world as customers, as well as several biotechs such as Sonex Health, and research sites. Mural Health has also partnered up with several eClinical platforms such as Clinical ink and Ledger Run to provide an integrated solution. The company's reception by its customers has been overwhelming.

"I have deployed several different participant support systems. Mural Health's platform is exactly what the industry needs. Their product is intuitive, delightful to interact with, and is clearly designed for the patient and caretaker," said Cindy Grabowski, Vice President of Clinical Affairs at Sonex Health. "The Mural team is genuinely passionate about delivering on their promises. Their level of service that follows is refreshing and personal. The Mural team has been an absolute pleasure to work with."

Steve Kraus leads the investment on behalf of Bessemer Venture Partners and has joined the Mural Health board of directors. "The Mural team has been hyper focused on creating value for the clinical research industry," said Kraus. "I have been especially excited by the rapid results achieved within the largest global pharma companies. Mural Health has become the clear product leader in its category and I am excited to watch the story unfold and see what this very experienced and driven team is able to create."

About Mural Health
Mural Health is a next-generation participant management platform. The Company's Mural Link technology platform is designed to make it easier to participate in clinical trials, thereby improving clinical study operations and the quality of clinical data sets. The Mural Link platform improves participant retention and engagement, increases protocol compliance, and increases enrollment rates. Please reach out to us to learn more about our capabilities, at www.muralhealth.com or general@muralhealth.com.

About Bessemer Venture Partners
Bessemer Venture Partners helps entrepreneurs lay strong foundations to build and forge long-standing companies. With more than 145 IPOs and 300 portfolio companies in the enterprise, consumer and healthcare spaces, Bessemer supports founders and CEOs from their early days through every stage of growth. Bessemer's global portfolio has included Pinterest, Shopify, Twilio, Yelp, LinkedIn, PagerDuty, DocuSign, Wix, Fiverr, and Toast and has $20 billion of assets under management. Bessemer has teams of investors and partners located in Tel Aviv, Silicon Valley, San Francisco, New York, London, Hong Kong, Boston, and Bangalore. Born from innovations in steel more than a century ago, Bessemer's storied history has afforded its partners the opportunity to celebrate and scrutinize its best investment decisions (see Memos) and also learn from its mistakes (see Anti-Portfolio).