Health data startup Komodo Health secured a structured equity infusion of $200 million in early November as it looks to continue scaling its data-driven "healthcare map" and analytics tools.
Coatue Management led the new investment with Dragoneer Investment Group contributing.
Komodo Health continues to experience strong growth despite volatile market headwinds, Web Sun, company president and co-founder, told Fierce Healthcare in an exclusive interview. The company has raised $514 million to date with $314 million raised as of the series E round last year plus the $200 million in structured equity announced today.
Komodo reported its $220 million series E propelled it to a valuation of $3.3 billion.
But the health tech company, like many others, is feeling pressure from the current macroeconomic environment.
Komodo Health also announced a restructuring plan and will lay off 78 full-time employees, or 9% of its workforce, Sun said. "We are taking steps to set ourselves up for the best possible business success in 2023 and beyond. We identified select key areas to restructure the company, inclusive of a marginal reduction in head count and also investing in efficiencies to ensure that our workforce can focus on strategic priorities based on customer demand," he said.
The restructuring will enable the company to stay nimble and efficient as it moves into an uncertain economic landscape, he noted.
Earlier this year, Komodo co-founders expressed their desire to go public to Fierce Healthcare, noting their excitement about general investor appetite around healthcare.
But the company has puts its IPO plans on hold for the near future amid a rocky market, Business Insider reported. Sun told the publication that the company will be "ready to go" once the market improves.
Founded in 2014, the company has created a massive "healthcare map," an artificial intelligence platform that compiles de-identified healthcare data from hundreds of sources and more than 330 million individual patients. It combines a repository of health data representing a massive trove of anonymized patients with the analytics software necessary to dig through that database.
Komodo uses these data to create software for companies like drugmakers and insurers. The company's platform offers real-time views into patient healthcare journeys so payers and life sciences companies can identify care disparities and conduct interventions.
The company is tapped by a wide range of healthcare stakeholders to accelerate disease research and drug development, strengthen real-world evidence studies, unlock digital health innovation and get new therapies into the hands of patients, company executives said.
Enterprise customers like Neovasc and Chinook Therapeutics buy software applications from Komodo.
The company sees opportunities to dive into new areas of tech and ramp up its work with digital health companies. More than 40 companies are already building net-new solutions on its platform, including Stanford University, AppliedVR and Turquoise Health, among others.
"In 2023, we expect to see ongoing adoption of Komodo’s approach to healthcare insights, which is a fundamental transformation from old, expensive data and analytics workflows," Sun said.
Next year, Komodo plans to roll out a number of new tools and offerings for its platform that enables healthcare stakeholders and technologists including business leaders, data scientists and software engineers to more quickly perform research, build net-new applications and securely connect proprietary and third-party data to Komodo’s platform, he noted.
"Leveraging Komodo’s platform and pre-built analytic modules allows users to ingest data in a form that is already standardized, usable and use-case specific," Sun noted. "Solutions in late stage development are designed for a variety of end users, ranging from low/no-code solutions to fully configurable models and analytics. All this is available directly within Komodo’s full-stack platform, without tapping into third-party players or losing the fidelity of insights that has made Komodo such a valuable technology partner to date."
Komodo also is focused on building out the "breadth, depth and diversity" of its "healthcare map" to provide insights on disease trends, health equity, mortality and rural access.
The company boasts that its map of de-identified, patient-level data currently represents the industry’s largest and most representative and dynamically updated repository of connected healthcare insights on a variety of patient features, ranging from patient journey and disease progression to race and ethnicity.
"We will continue to infuse demographic data in all of our platform offerings, supporting the DEI and health equity efforts of our customers. We are also enhancing mortality insights in the healthcare map, reinforcing the ability to study detailed outcomes," Sun said.
A growing roster of enterprise customers are building artificial intelligence and machine-learning-powered algorithms to support clinical trial feasibility, site selection and protocol design atop Komodo’s platform, with a specific aim to better understand and include patient communities that have historically been underrepresented in research, according to Sun.
Komodo Health has made strategic moves in the past two years to expand its capabilities and notched two acquisitions last year: Mavens, a developer of cloud-based software designed for specialty biotech and pharma companies, and Breakaway Partners, a market access software company targeting the life sciences industry.
Sun said M&A may be on the table in 2023 as well.
"As we continue growing our footprint in the market and building our full-stack platform, we are always evaluating strategic opportunities to accelerate the ability to put our platform applications, tools and real-world insights into the hands of our customers faster," he said.