Yonalink is a technology company specializing in clinical trial data management. They provide a platform that streamlines the process of collecting, managing, and transferring clinical trial data, particularly between Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and Electronic Data Capture (EDC) systems. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Yonalink co-founder and CEO Iddo Peleg to gain a deeper understanding of the company.
Iddo Peleg’s Background
What is Iddo Peleg’s background? Peleg said:
“I have 20 years of experience in clinical trials and the biotech industry. During my professional career, I’ve moved back and forth between positions with pharmaceutical companies and clinical trial providers. I’ve managed large oncology trials when working for IQVIA, trials that included 3,000 patients, 70 site locations and were conducted in 20 countries. For the last 7 years, I’ve focused mainly on the technology side of clinical trial solutions, and founded Yonalink.”
Formation Of The Company
How did the idea for Yonalink come together? Peleg shared:
“Many years ago when I was managing clinical trials, I sat in my office and said to myself, ‘I know that the patient is now being treated at the medical center (in Duke Medical Center, for example) and I know the medical monitor wants to see the data but it will take days or weeks until the data is in our system and will be available to see the clinical outcome of the treatment.’ I knew the data is being captured and saved in the medical center electronic health record system electronically so I kept thinking – why is it so complicated to transfer it electronically into the clinical trial database? Why do I need to wait until someone will manually copy the data from the medical center system into the Pharma company system? There has to be a better way so I set out to solve it.”
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory building Yonalink so far? Peleg reflected:
“My co-founder Gav Martell and I met when we ran together in a running group every Saturday night in Toronto (running outdoors in the dead of winter in Toronto is no laughing matter – it was cold!). Instead of focusing on how freezing we were, I started to speak with Gav about how inefficient it is that data is still being copied manually from the EHR to the EDC and how I have this idea that I want to stream data from one end to the other.”
“Our running discussions then continued into Sunday morning coffee when we would meet in an Italian coffee shop in Toronto. It’s a great memory to think about how it all started now that we have a real company with dozens of employees and clients all over the world.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Peleg explained:
“Yonalink is an electronic health record (EHR) to electronic data capture (EDC) streaming technology, or as we call it EHR-to-EDC. Our main product can connect to any EHR around the globe, extract the relevant data, harmonize it, filter it and transfer it to the EDC or the clinical trial database. This differs from big data and the metadata companies because we do not provide synthetic data or aggregate data – it’s only specific data in specific intervals for specific patients.”
Challenges Faced
What challenges have Peleg and the team face in building the company? Peleg acknowledged:
“The main challenge that we face is how to change the mindset of our market. It’s like the old adage – no one was ever fired for choosing IBM.”
“So much money is poured into getting a company to the point that it can run clinical trials, often hundreds of millions of dollars, so there is a fear of trying anything new that isn’t tried and true. People feel that if a large pharma, say Pfizer, is copying data manually, then they also should copy data manually, even if it will be more expensive, take longer, and be less accurate. It’s the process they know, even though it doesn’t make sense to copy data manually for one screen to another in 2025, this is a ‘safe’ process. So, changing the sector’s mindset into streaming data instead of manual data transfer is the main challenge.”
Evolution Of The Company’s Technology
How has Yonalink’s technology evolved since launching? Peleg noted:
“When Yonalink started the AI and LLM revolution was very, very young and we started with a relatively basic machine learning algorithm. As the years have progressed, we’ve implemented a lot of advanced technologies into our core technology and now the system is much more efficient and accurate. This leap in AI and LLM has really accelerated during the last 3 years.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of Yonalink’s most significant milestones? Peleg cited:
“The most significant milestone was when we shifted from small clients and small biotech companies to the market leaders. This is obviously a game changer for any startup. The ability to work with the top companies in our sector is a dramatic shift.”
Funding
When asking Peleg about the company’s funding details, he revealed:
“I can share information that is already public – Yonalink has raised a seed round of $6 million and we’ve won $4.5 million in non-dilutive grants.”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? Peleg assessed:
“Yonalink’s TAM is about $16 billion”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates Yonalink from its competitors? Peleg affirmed:
“Yonalink is the only EHR-to-EDC streaming technology that was designed from day zero to be able to integrate with any EHR globally. We have the largest Medical Center Network, more than 7,000 medical centers across the globe.Yonlink can also be a standalone solution or can connect to any other system, so we are independent but we can work with any vendor.”
Future Goals
What are some of the future goals for Yonalink? Peleg emphasized:
“We have two main goals: firstly, on the technology side we plan to add more unstructured data mapping into our system and secondly, we are going to expand to medical centers across Europe over the next few years.”
Additional Thoughts
Any other topics you would like to discuss? Peleg concluded:
“Innovation is never easy. The main thing that I keep reminding myself is that you need to keep pushing forward. Even when people are skeptical, you have to maintain the confidence in your mission because no one else will do the work for you. I think at Yonalink we are very fortunate to be in an exciting time of growth for our sector when the technology, the regulation, and the acceptance of the biggest players in our industry have all converged and are ready for this innovation.”
