Genetic testing company Invitae has made more than a dozen acquisitions to further achieve its goals Democratization of genetic testing. Its latest transaction, the acquisition of Ciitizen for $325 million, will add the patient’s health record to the picture.
Startups based in Palo Alto Founded by Anil Sethi, he sold his previous health record business to Apple. It uses the patients’ HIPAA access rights to extract all their records and organize this information, which usually contains thousands of pages of unstructured notes.
Sethi wrote in an email to MedCity News: “When collated into a single longitudinal data set, patient-level records will track the integrity of the patient’s genetics, health, health, diagnosis, treatment, medical procedures, and results. story.”
This transaction will allow Invitae users to access all their clinical and genomic information in one place, and make it easier for Invitae to simplify the process of collecting and organizing health data. In the long term, Invitae plans to integrate Ciitizen and other recent acquisitions to build a personalized data platform for patients.
Invitae CEO and co-founder Sean George wrote in an email that the platform will “promote Invitae from a testing company to a leader in genetic testing, software, and health information technology.”
In an investor conference call on Tuesday, he explained that the two companies share similar values: Patients should own their health data, and health data is more valuable when shared.
“This patient-centric positioning also distinguishes (Ciitizen) from other emerging data companies today. The strategy of these companies is to aggregate data from different organizations and send this data to interested parties. To gain benefits, there is usually no input permission or true transparency. The patients themselves,” George said.
Their methods also complement each other. Ciitizen initially wanted to help cancer patients, such as Sethi’s late sister who has metastatic breast cancer, and has expanded to pediatric patients with rare diseases.
At the same time, San Francisco-based Invitae began testing adult genetic diseases and has expanded to several other diseases, including oncology, its Acquired ArcherDx last year. Unlike similar products for consumers, Invitae’s test kits must be ordered by healthcare providers.
Ciitizen increases revenue by linking pharmaceutical companies and advocacy groups to health data. To this end, it specifically requires patient consent at every step of the process. For example, start-up companies must first obtain the consent of patients before they can retrieve their health records. If the company is looking for the records of a patient with a specific disease, they need to obtain the patient’s consent before sharing their records.
“We believe that combining genetics and clinical data in an easy-to-use digital wallet will achieve better healthcare results, provide important data for biopharmaceutical customers and researchers, and promote new innovations that can be matched with patients,” Sisi wrote.
The boards of directors of both companies have agreed to the transaction, which is expected to be completed this month. It will include $125 million in cash and 7.07 million shares of Invitae common stock.
In addition, Invitae said it plans to issue approximately $225 million in restricted stock to new employees who join the company. Sethi will continue to serve as President of Ciitizen and will see his role in the combined company expand to include working with third-party developers and building patient-centric applications.
Photo credit: mikdem, Getty Images
