This story has been updated with additional comments from Datavant.
Health tech company Datavant is making moves to be a bigger player in the real-world data space. The company announced Thursday that it plans to acquire real-world evidence company Aetion.
The acquisition will significantly boost Datavant's capabilities for life sciences companies and will build an end-to-end RWE platform, according to the company. The combination of Datavant and Aetion enables healthcare and life sciences companies to "more efficiently answer research questions about the clinical impact of therapies in development and in market," executives said.
Aetion provides RWE solutions to biopharmaceutical companies, medical device manufacturers, payers and regulators. The company has 220 employees and works with more than 40 leading biopharma organizations and 80-plus data partners.
Datavant offers a data exchange network that connects more than 70,000 hospitals and clinics, 75% of the 100 largest health systems and an ecosystem of 300-plus real-world data partners. Its platform connects data sets across electronic health records, claims, specialty pharmacy, registries, imaging, labs and social determinants of health.
In an interview earlier this month, Arnaub Chatterjee, president and general manager of life sciences, ecosystem and public sector at Datavant, referred to the company as a "connector, protector and deliverer of healthcare data." The company's technology is not just about linking the data but also making those data usable and actionable, he noted.
In 2021, Datavant merged with clinical data network Ciox Health in a deal valued at $7 billion. Last fall, the company acquired Apixio's connected care platform and value-based care solutions and released its Clinical Insights Platform for providers and payers in value-based care arrangements.
The Aetion deal is the latest milestone in Datavant’s "continued evolution from logistics company to a comprehensive health data platform focused on making connected data actionable," Chatterjee told Fierce Healthcare.
"The acquisition of Aetion is directly aligned with what our life sciences customers have been asking for—deeper, more fit-for-purpose insights from research through post-market analysis—and is a key step in Datavant’s strategy to expand our life sciences business," Chatterjee said.
"By combining Datavant’s network and technology with Aetion’s advanced analytics and scientific expertise, we are creating a true end-to-end product," Chatterjee said. "This empowers every stakeholder across the healthcare value chain to collaborate more seamlessly and accelerate the delivery of insights that drive better patient outcomes and unlock significant value for our ecosystem partners and customers.
Datavant is on track to see more than $1 billion in revenue in 2025, Chatterjee said. The company is profitable and cash-flow positive, he noted.
There might be more M&A in the company's near-term future.
"We are fortunate to be in a strong financial position to be able to fund M&A where we see a strong opportunity to accelerate growth and alignment with our mission and culture. We’ll continue to evaluate opportunities and invest in areas that align with our strategic vision to accelerate the delivery of end solutions that meet the needs of our customers," Chatterjee said.
Datavant’s acquisition of Aetion is major vote on the growth and value of real-world evidence, said Brigham Hyde, CEO and co-founder of Atropos Health, the maker of a real-world data platform.
“We applaud the direction here. I think we're just at the beginning. I think Datavant realizes that and is voting behind it,” he said.
But the acquisition will likely make waves in the data market. Datavant is shifting from a neutral data linkage platform to a bigger competitor in the real-world data platform market, Hyde noted. Atropos Health has an ongoing partnership with Datavant.
“What does this mean for the real-world data and healthcare data ecosystem for Datavant to leave their neutral position and begin competing with their own network and companies that have trusted and built with them for years? Will that lead to a shift in those networks and what tokens are used for de-identification? That's an unknown, but that's the question in everybody's mind,” Hyde said.
Datavant said its acquisition of Aetion hasn’t changed its neutrality position “one bit.”
“In fact, we expect that it will only improve exposure to the data partners in our ecosystem, which will include Aetion’s more than 80 data partners,” executives said in a statement to Fierce Healthcare.
“Datavant’s entire approach is based on being data neutral and fostering a healthy data ecosystem that is open to everyone and creates equitable access to that data. One important way we maintain neutrality is by our strict practice to not buy, license or sell data. Our commitment to neutrality is one important reason why we have more than 300 data partners in our ecosystem and why we have earned the trust of 18 of the top 20 largest pharmaceutical companies,” executives said.
The company said it will continue to partner and work closely with data producers, aggregators and analytics companies to “help create a bridge between different datasets.”
The company plans to use its complementary capabilities to enable sharper queries, better feasibility, and assessment experience for end users, both ecosystem and life sciences.
“We will leverage Aetion’s world class epidemiology team to help end users calibrate the value of linked data. This is particularly important in areas Datavant is playing in today, such as trial tokenization, where we are aiming to change the way data is being collected and leveraged across drug development,” company executives said.
The company has been growing its partnerships with pharmaceutical companies. Last week, Boehringer Ingelheim announced it was expanding its collaboration with Datavant to bolster its real-world evidence initiatives. The drugmaker plans to use Datavant's privacy-preserving tokenization and data connectivity technologies to support more than 75 clinical trials and multiple new molecular entities with a scalable RWE infrastructure, the companies said.
That partnership marks a shift from pilot-stage RWE efforts toward industrialized, data-driven clinical development. Biopharma companies are exploring how to operationalize real-world data at scale, Chatterjee said.
"It's become a bit more of an industry standard now where people are starting to adopt tokenization into their [clinical] trials. I think that's the big paradigm shift that's taken place," Chatterjee said in an interview about the BI partnership earlier this month.
"I want to push the envelope on how we think about just making that real-world evidence part and parcel with the trial," he said. "We're creating the long tail of evidence that is enabled by this technology and by our connectivity. BI is putting their foot forward to say, 'We're going to do this for a large portion of our trials,' and that's really exciting."
In 2023, Datavant was linking 97 clinical trials to real-world data. By the end of 2024, that had expanded to 270 clinical trials linking to its real-world data platform, Chatterjee noted.
The health tech company also launched Datavant Connect powered by AWS Clean Rooms to streamline data discovery and evaluation.
Aetion's capabilities will enhance Datavant Connect platform's data discovery features, according to Datavant executives, while also enhancing privacy assessments and give end customers clean data sets and analytics they can leverage for a range of uses.
Aetion also launched Activate, its newest tool for real-world analysts and biostatisticians, data scientists, and data providers. "Together with Datavant’s connectivity and tokenization capabilities, Aetion now offers a more integrated ecosystem for preparing and analyzing real-world data at scale," executives said.
“By joining forces with Datavant, we’ll unlock the full potential of real-world evidence to advance confident, data-driven decisions that improve patient care," Jeremy Rassen, CEO of Aetion, said in a statement.