Walnut Health Secures Tens of Millions in Series A+ Funding to Advance Innovative CRO Services and Compliant Healthcare Data Solutions

VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) recently learned that Walnut, a national high-tech enterprise in the fields of medical big data and artificial intelligence, completed its RMB tens-of-millions Series A+ financing round this August.

This financing round saw joint investment from new investors Sinovation Ventures and Yijing Capital.Walnut Company stated that the funds from this financing round will be used to further focus on the core business development of innovative CROs and digital therapeutics.

It is reported that Walnut Company previously secured tens of millions of yuan in Series A financing in 2020, led by Mifang Capital and participated in by Anlong Fund as the angel-round investor.

Walnut Company is a national high-tech enterprise focused on life data science, dedicated to developing and providing informatics tools, analytical software, platform application technologies, and other derivative products, services, and solutions based on life and health data.

Adopting a “data + technology + platform + services” model, Walnut provides services to medical institutions, industry regulators, governments at all levels, pharmaceutical companies, insurance institutions, and other users.

The application prospects of big data in healthcare are vast, with niche scenarios such as assisted diagnosis and treatment, health management, and emerging digital therapeutics being closely related to people's lives. However, two major pain points currently persist:

First, the data sources are highly complex, encompassing not only routine laboratory tests and imaging examinations as well as physician-documented medical records, but also genetic testing results and health information from physical examinations.

The diversity of in-hospital systems generating production data (including dozens of systems such as HIS, EMR, LIS, and PACS), along with the variety of vendors and model versions, results in high application costs and unreliable data quality.

The pain points of non-standardized and unstructured data make it impossible to solve all problems at once with a single technical method. It is necessary to construct a comprehensive automated structuring engine by integrating manual structuring, template-matching-based automated structuring, and statistical models including statistical learning and deep learning, so that clinical data can be truly utilized for clinical research in the future.

Second, whether for hospital-initiated research projects, pharmaceutical company-sponsored prospective randomized controlled trials (RCTs), or real-world study (RWS) projects, the design, execution, and statistical analysis rely entirely on substantial manual labor. Meanwhile, clinical standards for auxiliary diagnosis are stringent, requiring robust causal relationships between medical data and conclusions. Consequently, success rates, quality, timelines, and costs cannot be guaranteed; project delays or even failure to deliver are common, as is the prevalence of fabricated data being detected and penalized.

Therefore, the application and product design based on correlation findings in the field of clinical big data for healthcare differ to some extent from those in the general big data domain, necessitating designs that account for its unique characteristics. Empowering through informatization is imperative, and replacing low-efficiency capacity is the only way forward for enhancing pharmaceutical and medical services.

Based on these two major issues,Walnut Company provides customers with KRM-Ecosystem, an integrated, data-driven pharmaceutical service solution for data archiving, data governance, and data applications. Its products include an intelligent data governance system, an integrated clinical trial operations platform, and a patient health management platform.

Currently,Walnut Company has secured long-term orders from multiple leading pharmaceutical companies, served over 400 medical service institutions, and provided services to more than ten international top-tier pharmaceutical enterprises, including Sanofi, Novo Nordisk, Johnson & Johnson, and Takeda.

Furthermore, Walnut Company holds joint intellectual property rights with multiple national-level authorities and research institutions, including the National Institute of Health Research under the National Health Commission and the National Center for Infectious Diseases, for a number of data governance and digital research products.

Walnut Company’s KRM-Ecosystem was developed through continuous refinement based on long-term medical data and scientific research collaboration with the Research Institute of the National Health Commission, establishing a comprehensive and efficient medical big data governance platform and application service system in 2020.

Walnut Company was co-founded by four founders. Ren Wei and Zhang Yu, with backgrounds in computer technology, have many years of IT service experience in the pharmaceutical industry. Qi Jinhui and Shan Manlin have deep roots in the pharmaceutical marketing industry, with nearly 20 years of channel management and marketing experience in HIT (Healthcare Information Technology).

This is also due to extensive industry service experience, grounded in the execution of numerous clinical research projects and patient management and service initiatives, as well as a deep understanding of the industry.The founding team of Walnut Computer Technology recognized the urgent customer demand for next-generation clinical data processing and data service solutions, and launched the “KRM-Ecosystem” portfolio of solutions.

The KRM Ecosystem is the core component of Walnut’s innovative CRO services.Including four major modules: data archiving, data governance, data analysis, and application services.Optimize processes and improve the efficiency of clinical research data processing through three technical features: standardization, automation, and intelligence.Provide analyzable standard data from medical and statistical perspectives, while helping health administrative agencies, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies fully utilize and analyze data to deliver medical insights and in-depth services for clinical research.

In this combined solution,KRM-MDP Digital Distribution is a Structured Medical Record Management System, complete the structured archiving quality control and statistics of medical records;KRM-PHR Medical Data Sourcethen establish patient health records by organizing patient data from different medical institutions along a timeline;KRM-LAB Research Data Services is responsible for integrating business systems to establish a data warehouse., providing research support such as data funnels and disease journeys for clinical medical research.

The content archived by these three systems can cover most of the data dimensions required for research.The three share a unified backend technology stack, whereby data generated by in-hospital operational systems is offloaded to a data warehouse, thereby avoiding the pitfalls commonly encountered in current big data initiatives during the data integration phase.It plays a crucial role in data archiving throughout the entire big data application lifecycle, serving as the starting point for data-driven pharmaceutical services.

Overall,KRM-Ecosystem is a next-generation solution for clinical data processing and a data-driven digital pharmaceutical service system serving health regulatory authorities, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies.More efficiently address the challenges faced by health regulatory agencies, hospitals, and enterprises in clinical research data archiving, processing, and patient services.

Ren Wei, founder of Walnut Company, stated when discussing the company’s future development plans:In the future, Walnut will further enhance the intelligence of its integrated digital pharmaceutical services, improve collaboration efficiency between pharmaceutical companies and hospitals on a legally compliant basis, and provide digital CRO services.

Building on this foundation, by the end of 2022, we will cover at least seven therapeutic areas; further expand digital CRO services; and strengthen our teams in artificial intelligence, medical affairs, and R&D operations.

Innovation Works was founded by Dr. Kai-Fu Lee in September 2009. As a venture capital firm in China, Innovation Works has deeply cultivated fields such as artificial intelligence & frontier technologies, automation, B2B enterprise services, healthcare, consumer sectors, and education. It continuously explores and innovates, striving to build a comprehensive ecological investment service platform that integrates entrepreneurial support platforms, financial backing, and post-investment services.

Yijing Capital was established in 2015 and is headquartered in Shanghai. It is a professional investment firm focused on global healthcare, hard technology, TMT, and major consumer sectors, while also managing funds of funds in these areas.

Adhering to the philosophy of “empowering enterprises to innovate and grow, facilitating industrial optimization and upgrading, and driving social development and progress,” the company has expanded its assets under management to RMB 5 billion, with seven portfolio companies recognized as industry-certified unicorns.

Among Yijing Capital’s portfolio companies, many have grown into influential leaders in their respective niche sectors. In the healthcare sector, these include Hanyu Medical, Taiyi Group, OPM Biotech, ZhiDao Bio, Weirnuo Pediatrics, and MedSci; in the hard-tech sector, they include Biren Technology, Qianxun SI, Leapmotor, and Lightelligence; and in the TMT and mass consumer sectors, they include Tasogare Coffee, Zhiketong, and Kaijie E-commerce.