January 6, 2021

New York, NY – Kinderhook Industries, LLC (“Kinderhook”) announced today the sale of VirTrial (“VirTrial” or the “Company”) to Signant Health, the leading enabler of evidence generation for modern clinical trials. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, VirTrial was founded by long-time Kinderhook operating partner Mark Hanley in 2018. VirTrial’s platform enables pharmaceutical companies and CROs to empower their preferred clinical research sites to perform virtual visits – a combination of secure video, audio, chat, and messaging, which can be used on any device. Incorporating VirTrial’s virtual visits into study protocols opens the door to a wider participant pool, ultimately yielding improved study outcomes and efficient site performance.

Signant Health is a leading provider of clinical research technologies and solutions focused on leveraging software, deep therapeutic and scientific knowledge, and operational expertise to consistently generate quality evidence for clinical studies across traditional, virtual, and hybrid trial models.

VirTrial’s technology will expand Signant Health’s software stack to further digitally enhance trial sites and offer sponsors superior evidence generation across traditional, decentralized, and hybrid trial models. VirTrial’s telemedicine platform will complement Signant Health’s comprehensive suite of technology and clinical expertise to better support sites as sponsors accelerate their trial strategies toward digital methods during COVID-19 and beyond.

“COVID-19 has created a widespread and urgent need for contingency planning in clinical trial operations and has forever changed how our industry plans and executes trials,” said Roger Smith, Chief Executive Officer of Signant Health. “Signant and VirTrial are passionate about supporting the trial ecosystem with software, analytics, and logistics solutions to conduct studies and generate data across all modalities while improving, respecting, and honoring the role investigators and coordinators play in collaborating with patients to advance clinical research. VirTrial’s platform is a critical component in our strategy to truly digitize the operations of clinical study sites and bring uniform conduct and evidence generation through a comprehensive set of integrated study management software and services.”

“VirTrial’s mission is to ensure sites have the modern technology and tools they need to advance clinical research while the industry shifts toward more virtual visits and trial designs,” said Mark Hanley, President and CEO, VirTrial. “With this announcement we are able to support our customers and their sites better than ever before by leveraging Signant Health’s deep therapeutic and scientific experience, global reach, and operations scalability – and by providing direct access to complementary solutions for eCOA, eConsent, IRT, and more. As a Signant Health company, VirTrial could not be more excited and optimistic about the future of clinical research and the ability of sites to succeed.”

Chris Michalik, Managing Director at Kinderhook, stated, “We are thankful to have had another opportunity to partner with Mark Hanley and work with the amazing team at VirTrial. Our investment in VirTrial highlights one of the key tenets of Kinderhook’s investment strategy – partnering with world class management teams to aggressively grow businesses in niche markets.”

Kirkland & Ellis LLP served as legal counsel to VirTrial.

For additional information about this transaction, please contact: 
Christian Michalik
Managing Director
(212) 201-6782
[email protected]
 
Michael Zoch
Managing Director
(212) 201-6785
[email protected]