Truveta adds Ochsner, St. Luke’s, UnityPoint to data network
Hospital-backed Truveta’s network of health system data is growing, the company announced Tuesday.
Ochsner Health of New Orleans, Saint Luke’s Health System of Kansas City, Missouri, and UnityPoint Health of West Des Moines, Iowa, have joined the 17 health systems that founded Truveta this year, giving the company access to patient data from 20 systems in 42 states, CEO Terry Myerson said.
“With each health system that joins and brings together their de-identified data, the data becomes more representative of our country,” Myerson said. Truveta’s founding partners and investors include Cincinnati-based Bon Secours Mercy Health, New Hyde Park, New York-based Northwell Health and Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare.
Truveta raised $95 million from health systems in a Series A round announced in July. Microsoft invested an undisclosed amount in September. Truveta has raised nearly $200 million in total, the company disclosed Tuesday.
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The company wouldn’t reveal the identities of its newer investors and wouldn’t say whether the three health systems that have joined its network contributed funding. Truveta continues to be governed and majority-owned by health systems, according to the company.
“It is a crucial time to join Truveta and be part of the solution to leverage our clinical data to advance care for our patients and for patients around the world,” Dr. Melinda Estes, president and CEO of Saint Luke’s Health System, said in a news release. Large-scale data analysis can lead to insights that inform public health and healthcare delivery, she said.
Truveta also unveiled a data platform, built on Microsoft’s Azure cloud, that allows researchers and life sciences companies to analyze aggregated and de-identified patient data from the company’s health system members. Truveta uses artificial intelligence to de-identify and structure data so that it can be uploaded from health systems to Truveta daily.
The company declined to disclose how much it will charge researchers to access its data. Participating health systems can tap utilize the tool as part of their memberships.
Truveta will license the data platform for “ethical medical research” and the information will not be used to target advertising toward patients or physicians, according to the company. Researchers and life science companies can use these data to monitor the safety and effectiveness of drugs and medical devices and to explore new uses for those products, according to Truveta.
In an initial study conducted on the platform, Truveta researchers analyzed patient data to assess adverse events and breakthrough infection rates associated with the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines. The project took less than two weeks to complete, according to Truveta.
Less than 1% of fully vaccinated patients experienced adverse events, according to Truveta’s findings. There were roughly 17,500 breakthrough cases out of 1.7 million fully vaccinated patients included in the Truveta data. Of fully vaccinated patients who became infected, between 9% and 15% were hospitalized.