Health tech company SEQSTER and consumer engagement platform PatientsLikeMe have partnered to advance clinical research and engage patients, the companies announced Thursday.
San Diego, California-based SEQSTER is a company focused on breaking down healthcare data silos. Its operating system consolidates various health data sources into a unified view of patients. It has nationwide access to electronic health records of hospitals, medical groups, genomic DNA, wearables, pharmacies and social determinants of health data.
PatientsLikeMe, based in Boston, is a personalized health network. People join the platform to track their symptoms, treatments and labs in one place; better understand their condition and find others like them; and find treatments. It also partners with healthcare organizations to support clinical trials or research. The company has more than 1 million members with 2,900 conditions and has created more than 43 million data points.
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Through the new partnership, SEQSTER will be PatientsLikeMe’s electronic health record provider. Members of PatientsLikeMe will be able to access their medical records to better understand their condition and make informed decisions about their healthcare.
“Patients come to us first to share data and to experience what others who’ve been on similar trajectories look like… The more data that we have, and the more complete the data that we have, the better that experience is for members,” said John Hervey, CEO of PatientsLikeMe, in an interview. “In the past, it’s always been very difficult to get online data, your own medical records … so that you can use it to compare yourself and to have a better perspective as to what’s going on. Also having that data gives us a better sense of how to help patients along their journey, whether it’s making their next doctor’s appointment or finding a doctor or participating in research, whether that be pharmaceutical research or other research and clinical trials, etc.”
In addition, the partnership will bring to market three commercial products to serve life science and healthcare organizations: clinical trial recruiting, real-world evidence generation and patient support programs, according to Ardy Arianpour, CEO and co-founder of SEQSTER.
By serving as PatientsLikeMe’s electronic health record provider, SEQSTER will help screen and onboard patients for clinical trial opportunities. The real-world evidence generation will support the collection of both medical data and patient experience data. With the patient support programs, the companies aim to “support digital engagement and educational efforts at various key points across the patient journey, as well as to meet patient registry needs,” Arianpour said. Patient registries are databases with information about patients and their medical history.
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The companies declined to share the financial model of the partnership.
Through the partnership, the companies ultimately aim to expand access to high quality and accurate data.
“I think about the fact that your average grocery store knows more about a patient than the medical system does, just on the way we’ve siloed data and the way we’ve kept it from being integrated and provided back to the patient,” Hervey said. “Having a platform that brings that together for the benefit of the patient is critical, and it allows us then to bring new efficiencies and accuracies to clinical trial recruiting, to provide better, more holistic datasets of real-world data, and develop the new long-term patient support models.”
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