What You Should Know:
Verana Health, a digital health company that delivers quality drug lifecycle and medical practice insights from an exclusive real-world data network, today announced a $150 million Series E funding round led by Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC, Inc. (JJDC) and Novo Growth, the growth-stage investment arm of Novo Holdings.
– Existing Verana Health investors GV (formerly Google Ventures), Casdin Capital, and Brook Byers also joined the round, as well as notable new investors, including the Merck Global Health Innovation Fund, THVC, and Breyer Capital.
Empowering Physicians & Life Science Companies
Founded in 2018, With this infusion of capital, Verana Health is poised to accelerate its position as a market leader in powering quality real-world data to drive quality insights across the drug lifecycle. The company will build upon its strong technology and data ecosystem—the VeraQ™ platform and its curated Qdata™ in ophthalmology, neurology, and urology—to advance clinical trials enablement, software-as-a-service, and real-world evidence. The Company will also expand upon its established artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities with a particular focus on its pioneering use of natural language processing (NLP) to extract insights from unstructured text data in electronic health record (EHR) notes.
In October 2021, Verana Health launched its VeraQ™ population health data engine, which is clinician-directed and enhanced by AI to securely power a data integrity feedback loop of nearly a half-billion, de-identified healthcare encounters. The outcome is curated Qdata™—disease-specific, fit-for-purpose data modules designed to help life sciences companies confidently drive business insights and rigorously inform research outcomes.
Strategic Partners
Verana Health is the exclusive data partner of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, American Urological Association, and American Academy of Neurology and collaborates with multinational pharmaceutical companies as well as emerging biotechnology and biopharmaceutical companies.
Expansion Plans
The funding will enable the company to advance its life sciences product and service strategy across the drug lifecycle, further enhance its value proposition to healthcare providers participating in its real-world data network, and expand its data footprint through medical society and strategic partnerships.
“The healthcare industry needs new ways of creating high-quality data sets from disorganized information dispersed throughout a myriad of electronic health record systems that often lack interoperability and standardization,” said David W. Parke II, MD, Verana Health’s Executive Chairman and CEO of its first medical society partner, the American Academy of Ophthalmology. “Verana Health is solving this critical need by delivering and analyzing proprietary, curated data sets (Qdata), from both structured and unstructured data that maintain truth to original clinical context. The company is well-positioned to help healthcare providers advance quality care standards, and life sciences companies accelerate clinical research and bring products to market that benefit both patients and physicians.”
