Healthcare data startup Truveta inked a deal with Microsoft to build a clinical data platform on the cloud.
The software giant also is investing an undisclosed amount in Truveta, which is backed by 17 healthcare systems, including Providence, Novant Health, Northwell Health and Trinity Health.
Truveta has access to health data representing 15% of the U.S. through its health system partnerships. By tapping Microsoft's Azure cloud platform, Truveta and the technology giant will work together to build up Truveta’s customer base and health system membership.
Truveta will also become a Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare partner and enable Microsoft to build up its offerings for healthcare customers.
“The COVID-19 global pandemic illustrates so clearly there is more information, yet less knowledge than ever before. Healthcare providers and researchers need better data and faster answers to address the most challenging issues in patient care—not just for this pandemic, but for all health conditions,” said Terry Myerson, a former Microsoft executive who was tapped to lead Truveta as its CEO,
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“Together with Microsoft, we’re working to accelerate saving lives with data and advancing health equity around the globe. Our mission is to enable researchers to find cures faster, empower every clinician to be an expert and help families make the most informed decisions about their care," Myerson said in a statement.
The partnership comes on the heels of a $95 million investment backed by its healthcare system partners.
“Healthcare is generating more data than ever before, and there is an immediate need to leverage insights to improve patient care,” said Scott Guthrie, executive vice president, Cloud + AI at Microsoft in a statement. “Building on the security and scalability of Azure and its AI capabilities, Truveta’s data platform will empower clinicians and researchers to find new therapies and treatments. Together, our partnership will help advance global health outcomes for all.”
Truveta executives said the company chose Azure as its cloud platform for its industry-leading security and compliance capabilities that will help the company protect sensitive health data, manage compliance and address evolving regulatory changes.
Truveta launched earlier this year, with some of the biggest names in healthcare including Tenet Health, Providence and CommonSpirit Health banding together to pool and analyze patient data for research and drug development.
The Seattle-based startup pulls together and sells normalized and de-identified data from the group of providers with a keen eye on protecting patient privacy and security, the company said.
The 17 health provider members care for tens of millions of people and operate thousands of care facilities in 40 states. The Truveta platform will leverage the power of Azure and AI to include insights from billions of de-identified data points, including medical records, images and genomics, according to the company.
Data is refreshed daily, Truveta executives said.
Truveta is also creating a learning community for health, bringing researchers together to easily build on each other’s work, readily share their data-driven questions and answers and ultimately speed their time to insight. The company aims to build up capabilities for analyzing data in real-time.
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“COVID-19 has shown us the important role that data plays in helping us rapidly understand, prevent and treat disease. That’s why we must create a world where new insights enable us to be ready for the next pandemic and address other pressing health issues, including heart disease, chronic illnesses and cancer,” said Rod Hochman, M.D., president and CEO at Providence, in a statement. “From detection to preventative care to personalized medicine, the opportunities to combine AI with Truveta’s learning community for health create nearly limitless opportunities to save lives with data.”
The company says that clinical data from its 17 health provider members represent the full diversity of the U.S. across age, geography, race, ethnicity and gender.
With more data from more members, more diseases and more drugs can be studied in more precise situations – with data that is representative of our world’s demographics, race and socioeconomic diversity, executives said.
“The best care in the world is somewhere, but not everywhere. Patients with the same condition can have widely disparate outcomes,” said Angela Yochem, executive vice president and chief transformation and digital officer at Novant Health in a statement. “The Truveta platform can help address these inequities by building our collective understanding, leading to discovery and better care for all communities. We have been able to provide a great deal of insights to physicians through advanced technology and with Truveta’s unprecedented data platform and powerful tools, we’ll see insights increase exponentially.”
Microsoft, Google and Amazon Web Services are all pushing deeper into healthcare in a battle to provide cloud computing and data storage technology to hospitals and health systems.