Concerto HealthAI: Bringing safer and faster access to therapeutics through real-world data
By Ambar Bhattacharyya and Prateesh Maheshwari
We’re proud to announce our investment in Concerto HealthAI, a market leader for real-world data (RWD) and enterprise AI technology, as part of its latest $150 million Series B raise.
We’ve been pursuing a “pharma 2.0” theme since 2015, where pharmaceutical companies better utilize data and technology to enable the era of precision medicine. Over the last few years, our conversations with pharmaceutical companies have highlighted the growing necessity of real-world evidence. Concerto HealthAI has been a company we have been talking to since 2017. Over the past few years, as we forged a strong relationship with the management team, we believe Concerto HealthAI has emerged as a leader in this space. We’re excited to partner with them as they continue to scale.
The first generation of real-world evidence (RWE), which began in the early part of the last decade, was primarily focused on commercial use cases such as comparative effectiveness, market access, and active safety monitoring. Now, use cases have gone beyond health economics and outcomes research and into core development areas across the product lifecycle, including creating external control arms, targeting rare diseases, and accelerating patient recruitment. The application of real-world evidence better serves patients by bringing faster access to safe therapeutics.
One area where real-world evidence is having a growing impact is cancer drug development, which has received continued R&D investment; spending on cancer drugs in the United States has doubled since 2012 and reached close to $50B in 2017. Increased regulatory support like HITECH has provided incentives to adopt electronic medical records, which underpins the real-world evidence data infrastructure. The 21st Century Cures Act and the FDA’s RWE Program has also opened the door to regulatory use cases that make prospective trials more efficient and reflective of how care is delivered in the real world. As a result, we will see better cost management, better patient tracking, improved decision-making and more.
Concerto HealthAI recently signed multi-year partnerships with BMS, Pfizer, and Janssen, and continues to innovate on how best to collect and make sense of today’s fragmented data landscape. Most importantly, the company has a strong team including Romesh Wadhwani, Jeff Elton, and Chris Codeanne, who are well-regarded in their fields, mission-oriented, and fantastic at seeing the long game in real-world evidence. We have seen their focus on the customer and are excited to partner with Concerto HealthAI to accelerate oncology therapeutics to market.
Congratulations to Jeff, Chris, Romesh, and the entire team at Concerto HealthAI, we can’t wait to see what the future has in store. Our investment in pharma 2.0 now includes Concerto HealthAI and Elektra Labs. If you are working on a company that is revolutionizing how pharma companies work, please get in touch!
The views expressed herein are solely the views of the author(s) and are not necessarily the views of Maverick Capital, Ltd. or any of its affiliates. They are not intended to provide, and should not be relied upon for, investment advice.
