Health2047 has spun out a technology company to share health data between patients, physicians, healthcare facilities, payers, pharma and other healthcare enterprises, according to a news release.
Health2047 closed a $10 million Series A round for Health2047 Switch, but the spinout also received another $12 million, the release said.
The move follows the addition of Celgene as a collaboration partner last month. The pharma company was brought on board by Health 2047 to help build the health data transfer business. Doug Given, Health2047 CEO, explained at the time that there was an interest in developing a way to move data more effectively between pharmacies, patients, and physicians.
The deal reflects the driving force behind Health2047. The group is affiliated with the American Medical Association. It seeks to improve the way digital health tools are developed and commercialize them through partnerships with established companies and startups.
In a phone interview with Given, he said the funding would be used in part to boost staff. The team of 14 would expand to 60-80 people over the next 12 to 18 months. The new hires will be mostly software engineers working with pilot customers and driving for scale.
Given said the motivation behind the Switch is to create a common mechanism to share data between more than 100 major healthcare systems. To that end, Switch will work with each of Health2047’s stakeholders. The data transmission network will include Health Information Exchanges and enable personal health records to be transmitted.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Adriaan Ligtenberg, a managing director with Health2047, will head up Switch as the CEO. He previously led cardiovascular medical device monitoring business BMEYE BV, which Edwards Lifesciences acquired in 2012. Charles Aunger will serve as CTO. He previously served as senior executive director of IT at Stanford Health Care.
“We will be at alpha and beta stage and have a minimally viable product during the next year. Then we will be migrating beta users to general availability” in 2019, Given said.
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