Our Investment In Elektra Labs

A pharmacy for digital and connected devices

Today we are announcing our investment in Elektra Labs — a healthcare-security company building a platform to review and dispense connected technologies remotely. More recently software has been finding its way into many aspects of the healthcare system, with examples such as EMR deployments from Epic, tracking biomarkers with wearables in clinical trials, and digital therapeutics. Most of the software today was created to service big pharma and hospitals but very little has been purpose built for digital medicine.

Last year, Lux was first institutional investor to join Andy and Elektra Labs, and now we are excited to invest in her $2.9M seed round with great coinvestors such as Maverick, Founders Collective, Arkitekt Ventures, Boost VC, SV Angel and an all star group of angels. Many people say venture capital is business about finding incredible individuals that can rewire industries. I’ve known Andy for years and as soon as I learned about her vision for Elektra Labs, I wanted Lux to be part of the journey. We invested behind the belief that managing connected devices in healthcare is a growing and underserved problem. We have seen the zeitgeist of privacy when it comes to applications on mobile phones, and now just starting to see the spotlight shine on our most sensitive information — personal healthcare data.

The “Why now?” for Elektra couldn’t be more timely. In the past few weeks alone, Google announced an acquisition of Fitbit, Sony announced a remote monitoring platform, AliveCor and Huanmi (wearable affiliate for Xiaomi) are partnering on medical wearables, and the Congressional Report on the regulation of medical software and the pre-cert program broke news.

With more advances forward, more questions arise. How do we deal with accuracy and bias in software and data? How should we think about cybersecurity vulnerabilities? How will the research and clinical communities manage these complexities? The more interdisciplinary the field, the more diverse the team required to solve the problems are. With a team at the intersection of healthcare, security, and technology, Elektra is positioned to deploy a critical layer of infrastructure in healthcare to equip the community to address these questions.

We are entering a new phase in healthcare that is much more digital and connected — the Elektra team is at the forefront of ushering it in a safe and responsible manner. We are thrilled to partner with them on their mission to build a pharmacy for digital medicine and connected technologies.

The team is also hiring across San Francisco, Boston, and Philadelphia — open roles here!