(Yicai Global) July 22 -- Shanghai Yaocheng Health Technology, which runs a clinical research management platform called Aurora Nexus as Software as a Service, has secured CNY100 million (USD15.5 million) in its latest fundraising round led by the state-backed Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Industry Investment Fund.

Other participants in the Series A round include existing investors Lightspeed China Partners and the Hankang Biotech Fund, the company, also known as Aurora, said today. The proceeds will be used to develop cutting-edge technologies in AI, Big Data and cloud computing to support clinical trials, it said.

Aurora will continue to focus on building a multi-functional and highly intelligent SaaS platform serving clinical research of life sciences, said Chairman and co-Chief Executive Officer Xu Pengcheng.

Shanghai-based Aurora was set up in August last year by a team from US tech giant Alphabet’s search engine Google and its health arm Verily Life Sciences. Xu was Google China’s first native Chinese engineer and co-CEO Chen Xiao used to be head of Google’s research center in Shanghai. Its Aurora Nexus and Aurora Prime platforms help scientists collect data and manage their clinical research.

SaaS is a distribution model in which software programs are hosted by a third party on external servers. Users pay a subscription fee to access the program over the internet, rather than downloading them on their own computers, which can be a time-consuming endeavor and requires a lot of storage space.

Editor: Kim Taylor