Sonara Health Raises $3 Million to Fight the Opioid Crisis, Bringing Total Funding to Over $5 Million

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Oct 04, 2022, 07:34 ET

Financing led by First Trust Capital Partners and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas

DALLAS, Oct. 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Sonara Health today announced $3 million in seed round funding led by First Trust Capital Partners and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas. Sonara is a patented medication monitoring system that allows people to more safely consume methadone from home, eliminating daily clinic visits.

Sonara Health's plans for the funds include further developing its platform and partnering with more opioid treatment programs to help more people on their path to recovery.

"We receive messages from patients all the time letting us know that we have made their lives easier to stay on course with their recovery, those notes keep us going," said Michael Giles, M.D., and CEO of Sonara Health.

Sonara conducted preliminary market research with OHSU and Stanford earlier this year, and found that use of the Sonara system was associated with improved quality of life, and early signs pointed to better treatment retention. The company received a US patent for its novel technology in September 2022.

Sonara Health's remote medication monitoring system includes a tamper-evident label, a patient-facing web application to guide the patient's daily consumption of methadone at home and a clinician-facing web application to remotely, asynchronously, observe patients dosing. Sonara Health partners with opioid treatment programs to preserve the success of a proven delivery system and the patients' connection to their care teams.

One of the first backers of Sonara Health was Mark Cuban.

Methadone is among the most effective medications approved by the FDA to treat opioid use disorder. According to the National Institute of Health (NIH), methadone has the longest history of use for opioid disorder treatment, and significantly reduces opioid abuse.

Early adopters of Sonara include the following opioid treatment programs:

BayMark Health Services, Inc.