(Yicai Global) Jan. 20 -- Shanghai Yaocheng Health Technology, which runs a clinical research management platform called Aurora NEXUS as Software as a Service, has secured seed capital of tens of millions of Chinese yuan, equivalent to millions of US dollars, the firm said today.

The financing was led by venture capital firm Lightspeed China Partners and the Hankang Biotech Fund, said the company, also known as Aurora, without revealing exact investment amounts.

The funds will be used to advance the output, promotion and international deployment of its clinical research solutions, it added.

“The firm hopes to offer high-quality R&D SaaS solutions by leveraging its advantages in software, cloud technology, internet, Big Data, artificial intelligence and mobile phone apps as well as experience in life sciences to meet the surging demand in China’s medium and high-end healthcare markets,” Aurora’s founder and Chairman Chen Xiao said. The Shanghai-based firm’s solutions are in line with global norms and local data regulations, he added.

“Life sciences R&D has entered an era of digital innovation. Aurora’s clinical research management platform plays an active role in raising R&D efficiency and advancing industrial upgrading in the face of the complicated demands of clinical research periods,” said Fu Qun, founding partner of Shanghai-based Lightspeed.

Aurora was set up in August last year by a team from US tech giant Alphabet’s search engine Google and its health arm Verily Life Sciences. Its Aurora NEXUS platform helps scientists collect data and manage their clinical research. Well-known drugmakers in Beijing and Shanghai will start using the platform after the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday next month.

SaaS is a distribution model in which software programs are hosted by a third party on external servers. Users pay a subscription fee to access the program over the Internet, rather than downloading them onto their own computers, which can be a time-consuming endeavor and requires a lot of storage space.

Editor: Kim Taylor