Omcare’s Home Health Hub, which is designed to dispense medications and ensure patients have taken them. Photo courtesy of Omcare

As anybody in the startup scene will tell you these days, raising investor money has gotten considerably harder. Venture capital investments have all but dried up within recent history, and the new year hasn’t looked any more promising: According to investment intelligence company Pitchbook, global venture capital investments fell to a near five-year low in the first quarter of 2024.

Still, Lisa Lavin, founder and CEO of Bloomington-based Omcare, has managed to pull off a fresh $8.2 million funding round this year, and she didn’t even have to go to the coasts to do it. Omcare sells an at-home medication dispensing product billed as a “Home Health Hub.” With a three-camera system, it remotely verifies when patients have taken their needed drugs. The company is primarily targeting senior care providers and “at risk” provider groups for now; it already counts Shoreview-based Ecumen among its customer base.

In a Tuesday interview, Lavin said Omcare’s product is designed to help seniors and others live independently, and avoid costly hospitalizations. Complications due to medication non-adherence, she said, are the primary reason many folks end up in hospitals today.

Her company’s latest funding round, completed in late March, came exclusively from Minnesota-based angel investors, Lavin said. To date, Omcare has raised $12 million in total, and all of that has come from Minnesota investors.

So, what’s the key to capturing investor attention today? Lavin said it boils down to three basic things: Having a product that works, that the market wants, and that consumers are willing to buy. “When you have those three proof points,” Lavin said, “it makes it a lot easier to be able to raise money.”

In 2022, Omcare partnered with Ecumen and Thrifty White Pharmacy on a pilot of the Home Health Hub; the pilot showed a “98% dose-level medication adherence,” according to results published late that year.

Lavin does acknowledge that it’s been “really tough” to raise capital right now. But she said she’s been able to win over investors with a product that’s likely to become more relevant amid a rapidly aging population. Each day, about 11,000 more Americans turn 65. Many of them will have chronic health issues that require strict medication adherence.

“You can kind of do the math, and you see that this is a relevant topic for a lot of daughters and sons that have aging parents,” Lavin said. “What I’ve found is that you’ve got to find the people who get what you’re doing. Most often, they have a story in their life that is relevant to what we’re doing.”

In 2022, TCB recognized past Omcare board member Jodi Hubler for her service on the company’s board.