Milpitas, CA, February 15, 2017 – Bigfoot Biomedical, Inc., a highly anticipated machine learning company founded by people directly impacted by Type 1 Diabetes (T1D), today announced a significant investment from T1D Exchange, a nonprofit organization driving faster, more informed research and commercialization efforts to improve outcomes for people with T1D. As a result of this agreement, T1D Exchange will financially contribute to Bigfoot Biomedical for the final development activities of Bigfoot’s smartloop™ automated insulin delivery (AID) service. The collaboration with Bigfoot marks the first investment out of T1D Exchange’s multi-million dollar initiative to accelerate the development and delivery of automated insulin delivery technology and solutions. Terms of the financing are not being disclosed.
The Bigfoot team used data from the T1D Exchange clinic registry database, which includes data collected from 26,000 individuals with T1D, to enhance understanding of patient population and subpopulation distributions of blood glucose and insulin therapy data. This data informed how the Bigfoot data science team models insulin delivery parameters and blood glucose variation in the Bigfoot smartloop™ system. It also supported the build-out of a robust simulation framework that Bigfoot uses to support ongoing development efforts.
Jeffrey Brewer, president and chief executive officer of Bigfoot, stated “We appreciate the investment that T1D Exchange has made in Bigfoot. We are fortunate to have found a forward-looking supporter who shares our vision to improve the lives of people with diabetes. The T1D Exchange truly understands the need for novel and disruptive approaches to delivering insulin and we are excited to expand the level and depth of our already successful relationship.”
“Our AID investment initiative aims to significantly advance automated insulin delivery solutions by investing in systems and components that enable automated insulin delivery and, in the example of Bigfoot Biomedical, differentiated approaches that we believe are well-positioned for commercialization,” states Henry Anhalt, DO and chief medical officer of T1D Exchange.