MDisrupt raises $3M seed to bring medical expertise to healthtech innovators

It's the people, platform, and data that make a successful product

These days, you don’t have to have a medical degree to develop innovative health technology. But you still need lots of in-depth medical intelligence. Well, for that, you can now connect to healthcare experts for help on all stages of product development with MDisrupt.

MDisrupt just announced it closed its $3 million seed fundraising. The Venture Collective in NYC led the round, with Cat Middleton joining MDisrupt’s board of directors. Several VC investors in women-run startups participated in the round; these were Capita3 in Minneapolis, Mindshift Capital in Dubai, 3+ Ventures headed by Sara Ledterman, and Emmeline Ventures in LA. Other participants were immigrant investment firm Geek Ventures, The BFM Fund in Portland, Zane Venture Fund in Atlanta, and Growth Factory in Rocklin, California.

MDisrupt was founded by Ruby Gadelrab in 2020. A seasoned digital health executive, she was previously the VP of commercial marketing at 23andMe. Overall, Gadelrab consulted, advised, and mentored more than 25 digital health companies. Now, she took on the task of applying digital health intelligence to the task of serving all stakeholders through MDisrupt’s platform.

In short, MDisrupt connects healthcare experts – physicians, lab clinicians, and scientists – with innovative digital health companies. The new capital will help expand its client roster and fuel the launch of MDisrupt’s Expert Marketplace platform for on-demand access to top clinicians and health experts. Gadelrab told Vator in writing that the launch of the marketplace is planned to occur before the year end.

“In an ever-evolving healthcare landscape, having healthcare domain experts at your fingertips is the key to building solutions that can enable widespread adoption and scale,” MDisrupt said in a release.

So far, according to MDisrupt’s website, more than 100 companies are in its network, either launched or scaled by its experts. These include genomics and data analytics provider Clear Labs, medical equipment and software company Thermo Scientific, SaaS digital health communications platform Artera, the maker of medical devices for neurodegenerative diseases Cognito Therapeutics, virtual care provider Everly Health, and others.

MDisrupt monetizes its services via subscriptions, where every expert joining the platform sets his/her rates for consultations. In addition, MDisrupt has a take rate like a typical marketplace, Gadelrab said.

The company stands on three pillars: the people, platform, and data. For the first, MDisrupt notes that human intelligence remains the most valuable in digital health and focuses on the top-tier experts in their fields to provide input to the developers of health solutions at all stages.

This would include regulatory compliance, clinical studies and evidence generation, payor strategies, commercialization, and channel strategies. Through a so-called “clinical crowdsourcing,” product developers get performance data from clinicians’ evaluations to succeed with production in a faster and less costly manner.

Gadelrab said in a release on Monday: “For healthtech and life science companies, accessing domain experts at every step of the development and commercialization journey is the key to success in this arena.”

In regards to the second pillar, MDisrupt said its platform will become the source of trustworthy information for all stakeholders in a market flooded by digital health products. Lastly, it’s the data generated by the experts on MDisrupt’s platform that will drive stakeholders to make informed, evidence-based choices.

TVC’s Cat Middleton, who is joining MDisrupt’s board, said in a release: "The future of healthcare innovation finally has the expertise infrastructure it direly needs to help the industry build, commercialize, and scale products. We believe that MDisrupt's pioneering role in healthcare will set a new standard for innovation, and will ultimately drive better health outcomes."

Image: MDisrupt