Digital health player Seqster has raised $12 million in first-round financing that will be used to develop its data platform, which aims to put all a patient’s medical history in one easily-accessible place.
The Series A was led by OmniHealth Holdings, with repeat investor Takeda and Anne Wojcicki – chief executive and founder of genetic testing firm 23andMe – also contributing to the round.
Seqster pulls in information from electronic health records, pharmacy, lab, and genomic data, as well as data from fitness wearables – irrespective of the healthcare system in which they were generated – placing it in a patient dashboard that the company says is secure and real-time.
Crucially, the patient retains control over data collection, ownership and sharing, to tackle privacy issues, according to the company.
The new money will be used to “grow and evolve” the technology, which aims to tackle the well-established problem of data “silos” in healthcare, where systems struggle to organise information on patients in a way that can help clinical decision-making.
The problem tends to stem either from IT systems that can’t communicate with each other, or incompatible data elements that can’t be linked together easily – both issues referred to as a lack of “interoperability”.
Takeda has already seen the benefit of the approach, making an investment in Seqster early last year and then following that up with a partnership aimed at speeding up patient recruitment for its clinical trial programmes and improving patient engagement.
“Seqster is solving one of healthcare’s biggest challenges – siloed data, and they have done so with a solution that is comprehensive, easy to deploy, and scalable,” said Tim O’Donnell, managing partner of OmniHealth Holdings.
“The company is making significant inroads in the healthcare space, where access to complete longitudinal patient data will lower costs and improve patient outcomes,” he added.
Interoperable health data is a key objective for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) in the US, which published a final rule a year ago on plans to allow patients easy, electronic access to their personal health information.
The document says this can “contribute to better informed decision making, helping to inform the patient’s choice of coverage options and care providers to more effectively manage their own health, care, and costs”.
You can learn more about Seqster’s platform in our podcast interview with CEO Ardy Arianpour here.
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