LEXINGTON, Mass., March 4, 2019 – iSpecimen today announced that researchers and suppliers are joining the iSpecimen Marketplace at a robust rate, with both populations more than doubling yearly since the Marketplace was introduced in mid-2017.
The announcement caps 20 months of rapid growth since the company began connecting researchers with the human biospecimens they need through the iSpecimen Marketplace. The online exchange saves researchers time, money, and frustration by streamlining the compliant procurement of biofluids, tissue and cells for use in research, diagnostics, and drug development.
iSpecimen, founded in 2012, has signed up more than 100 new marketplace suppliers – hospitals, labs, biobanks, blood centers and other healthcare organizations – in the last two years. Nearly 1,000 research organizations have also joined the marketplace, more than three times the total of 2017.
“Researchers are steadily discovering that the iSpecimen Marketplace streamlines and centralizes the entire procurement process, and suppliers are discovering that the marketplace helps them fulfill their missions while strengthening their sustainability through incremental revenue,” said iSpecimen Founder and CEO Christopher Ianelli, MD, PhD. “We’ve reached critical mass on both sides of the biospecimen procurement transaction, bringing great efficiencies to both researchers and specimen providers.”
Growth in inventory, partners and data
In addition to adding suppliers and researchers, iSpecimen has expanded its biospecimen inventory by volume, geography, and variety.
The iSpecimen Marketplace now enables access to more than 25 million human biospecimens, including banked research samples and clinical remnant samples, and access to millions of patients from whom samples can be prospectively collected. The company has also expanded its line of fresh primary hematopoietic cells.
iSpecimen has expanded its specimen provider network to include organizations from Central America, South America, Asia and Europe. Since researchers need extensive data about their biospecimen samples, iSpecimen has also amassed a database of clinical information including results from more than 300 million laboratory tests from more than 8 million patients.
Revenue climbs
The iSpecimen Marketplace’s increased activity has translated into income growth, with sales of banked biospecimens contributing to a greater than 100-percent annualized increase in company revenue over the past three years. Prospective collections have also significantly increased in number and size as the company has built expertise around custom collections of biofluids from both healthy donors and disease-state patients with a wide range of medical conditions. Staff has grown by nearly 33% in the past year to support the revenue growth, with resources targeted at enhancing the iSpecimen Marketplace to improve researcher and partner experiences.
Closing the specimen gap
The iSpecimen Marketplace was created to close the specimen gap between researchers who need human biofluids, tissue, and cells, and the biorepositories that have them. Difficulty in procuring sufficient quantities of high-quality biospecimens has traditionally held back research. At the same time, biobanks have amassed large, underutilized inventories of samples, with roughly 95% of collected biospecimens still sitting in inventory. With the help of marketplace technology, better sharing of biospecimens can provide biorepositories with new revenue to support their operations while helping scientists accelerate medical research.
“This new era of precision medicine puts increasing demands on researchers who need very specific specimens that have been difficult to procure,” said iSpecimen Chief Operating Officer Jill Mullan. “We’re addressing the obstacles head-on, steadily aggregating suppliers, inventories, and data so that scientists can spend less time searching for biospecimens and more time on their critically important research. We expect our robust growth to continue for the foreseeable future and believe that our success ultimately translates into better healthcare for all.”
About iSpecimen
Headquartered in Lexington, MA, iSpecimen is the marketplace for human biospecimens, providing researchers with the specimens they need from the patients they want. The privately held company has developed the iSpecimen Marketplace, an online platform connecting healthcare organizations that have access to patients and specimens with the scientists who need them. Proprietary, cloud-based technology enables researchers to intuitively search for specimens and patients across a federated partner network of hospitals, labs, biobanks, blood centers, and other healthcare organizations. Researchers easily and compliantly gain access to specimens to drive scientific discovery. Partner sites gain an opportunity to contribute to biomedical discovery as well as their bottom line. Ultimately, healthcare advances for all. For more information about iSpecimen, please visit www.ispecimen.com.
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SOURCE iSpecimen