Hikma Ventures announced today their participation in a $47.6 million Series B round for Chrono Therapeutics.

Chrono is a US-based company that has developed a smoking cessation product that takes into account a user's individual craving patterns, and they are Hikma Ventures' first investment. The amount they have contributed has not been disclosed.

Hikma Ventures was launched in August 2015 and is the venture capital arm of pharmaceutical company Hikma International Ventures and Development LLC.

They spoke to Wamda in April about their fund and ambitions, saying that of the $30 million fund dedicated to the digital health sector, ticket sizes would be about $3 million with the opportunity for follow-on funding. Managing director Lana Ghanem also said they were “geographically agnostic” when it came to where they would make investments.

Hikma Ventures told Wamda today that while the Chrono product was still in the R&D phase and won’t be commercialised for several years, they plan to launch the product globally starting in the US and EU, before moving to other markets.

According to Medcity News the round was led by Kaiser Permanente Ventures and other participants came from Switzerland, Malaysia and Japan, along with US-based investors.  

According to CB Insights, investments in the digital health sector were at $5.8 billion in 2015. They also mention that a trend for the sector will be that “the hype around consumer wearables will cool, but condition-specific and enterprise health wearables will thrive”, an example of which is Chrono Therapeutics.

“We believe that this investment – which is our first in a startup company – has significant potential and is aligned with our strategy of investing in the exciting consumer and digital health segments,” Ghanem said in a statement released today.