Oncora Medical raised $1.3 million to hire more tech staff

Center City health IT company Oncora Medical just announced it raised some follow-on capital to the tune of $1.3 million to build out its tech team.

The realLIST company, based out of Center City, is calling the raise a Series Seed, a term that cofounder David Lindsay says is in reference to it being Oncora’s first equity financing.

The round isn’t closed, though: Lindsay said it was aiming to finalize a total of $2.5 million in funding. Investors include Philly’s BioAdvance and San Francisco’s iSeed Ventures, which backed the company in 2016 with a 1.2 million seed round.

“The raise will let us grow our engineering and product teams, hiring more developers to continue building our platform,” said Lindsay.

The search includes bringing aboard a VP of Engineering, someone with experience in leading tech teams before. “These people are already at great jobs,” said Lindsay, but the lure will be the chance to work on something with lasting impact: fighting cancer.

(As a refresher: Oncora Medical’s health IT platform helps radiation oncologists learn from past treatment data and use that knowledge to improve the efficacy of radiology.)

This spring, it locked down an agreement to install its platform Precision Radiation Oncology Platform at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. It wasn’t a paid deal, but Lindsay said the focus was on the partnership, the connection to an institution like MD Anderson and build new software based on the experience.

By 2018, the company hopes to perform clinical studies to back the efficacy of its offering with (more) hard numbers.

“But also, we’re looking forward to building the team,” Lindsay said. “We’ve been fortunate to get support from the ecosystem and are excited to get this infusion of capital.”