Could NantHealth be done with its string of acquisitions for now?
In announcing this week’s purchase of NaviNet, maker of a payer-provider communications platform, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, CEO of NantHealth and parent company NantWorks, said the following in a press release:
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“The acquisition of NaviNet completes our 10-year vision at NantWorks and NantHealth to integrate and coordinate our complex healthcare ecosystem from the knowledge domain, to the care delivery domain and now to the payer domain, as a single sign-on, seamless, cloud-based, secure adaptive learning system for patients, payers and providers.”
In a subsequent interview with MedCity News, Soon-Shiong made it sound like he finally had all the pieces in place to create a healthcare analytics and precision-medicine powerhouse that incorporates genomics, health records, patient history and claims data to produce prospective, actionable decision support across the whole healthcare continuum.
Soon-Shiong discussed the “access” NaviNet gives NantHealth. “I needed to integrate the three domains: knowledge, care delivery and payers,” he reinterated. “In my mind, this would all come together within the portal,” Soon-Shiong said.
NaviNet historically had been a claims processor, but added secure communications for clinical collaboration in 2014 through a service called NaviNet Open. The NaviNet portal allows document sharing with a single sign-on, Soon-Shiong said. With the technology Nant already has, this platform will give Soon-Shiong’s company the ability to conduct prospective analysis on all kinds of health data, including genomics.
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Soon-Shiong said he was not aware of anyone else doing this with both genomics and payment authorizations. For example, NaviNet can get drug authorizations after determining, though genomics, that a medication is necessary.
“Healthcare systems have been working retrospective analyses,” Soon-Shiong said. He chastised electronic health records systems built on MUMPS architecture that dates back 50 years. Though Soon-Shiong didn’t name names, Epic Systems, Allscripts Healthcare Solutions, GE Healthcare, Sunquest Information Systems and Meditech are among those that rely on MUMPS.
He said NaviNet will continue to be payer-focused, but Nant plans on launching a provider portal as well, “Ultimately, it could become consumer-facing,” Soon-Shiong said.
First, though, NantHealth will continue integrating the technology from its many acquisitions onto a single platform, a process simplified by the fact that every piece is service-oriented architecture, according to Soon-Shiong. He expects this to be complete by midyear, and then NantHealth can concentrate on execution.
“It’s been a methodical plan that we’ve been working through since 2005,” Soon-Shiong said. For more than a decade, Nant and its predecessor companies have been building front- and back-end architecture “deep into data centers,” he said.
With NaviNet now in the fold, NantHealth also can turn its attention back to a planned initial public offering. “We delayed the IPO because we were going through this acquisition,” Soon-Shiong confessed.
Photo: Neil Versel
