2 years post-acquisition, Greenphire appoints a new chief commercial officer and expands its tech team

It’s been nearly two years since clinical trial payment solutions company Greenphire was acquired by private equity firm Thoma Bravo, and its business and technical leaders are acknowledging that a lot has changed about the clinical trial space recently.

Steve Geffon joined the team about two months ago as its chief commercial officer and is leading the company’s go-to-market strategy while it continues to work on matching its clients’ goals with its growing technology team. He said the company is aiming to expand its business operations while making a name for itself as a solution toward “equitable access” within clinical trials.

Like many healthcare-focused companies in the last few years, Greenphire has had to adjust how it operates on the other side of the pandemic. The company produces digital solutions for clients who run clinical trials, including getting patients paid via a digital debit card called ClinCard, helping with payment for patient travel and with a mobile app for trials to engage with patients, among other facets of the clinical trial process.

When the King of Prussia-based company was acquired in 2021, it had 255 employees; it has since grown to about 350. Many of those additions have been on the company’s tech team, which stands at 85 people. Greenphire CTO Alan Matuszak said the pandemic accelerated some of this hiring because they were open to remote candidates, and because they were developing their Patient-Powered Research Registry app, which launched in March.

The mobile app allows foundations and advocacy groups to engage with patients via virtual surveys, through real-time updates and progress on clinical trials. It also gives patients access to information about their disease and helps them connect with others in their disease community.

Geffon said the pandemic changed a lot about the healthcare system and clinical trials, and it’s forced the company to reassess how it operated. It also reinforced how quickly companies and trials must work to produce life-saving medicine.

“Certainly, the pandemic has changed the makeup of how clinical trials are run, and the nature of those trials and the urgency of getting those to run faster,” he said. “And so Greenphire has been talking about [how] much of our marketing literature is focused on allowing people to do hybrid trials that are distributed, and to do that with with the best technology to keep those patients engaged and keep them in the trial.”

As the company’s tech will be an integral part of its growth plan, Matuzak said they’ll continue to expand their team. He said they look for applicants who are willing to learn and move at a fast pace. They always share their existing tech stack in job postings, though they want people who will learn new cloud technologies, and are open to new DevOps constructs.

“So we look for, in general, full stack engineers, people who work all the way from the database out to the front-end and everything in between,” Matuszak said. “And then we want people that are interested in learning.”