There are serious evidence gaps in healthcare treatment guidelines. Clinical trials shape most care guidelines and payer decisions, but they exclude about 70 percent of the U.S. population, according to co-founder and CEO Brigham Hyde. Atropos HealthHe noted that this dynamic is more pronounced for patients with chronic comorbidities or those belonging to rare groups such as children or those with rare diseases.
Last week, Hyde’s startup moved closer to a mission to address this evidence gap. Announce Completed a $14 million Series A financing. Breyer Capital led the round with participation from Emerson Collective and Boston Millennia Partners.
Atropos Health provides physicians with real-world evidence at the point of care to help them make more informed decisions when treating patients. The idea for the company came from Nigam Shah, a professor of biomedical informatics at Stanford University.
Stanford Healthcare Physicians used to send Shah consistent requests to gather insights from EMR data and answer their questions about how best to treat patients. So he built what he calls the “green button service,” a tool that analyzes Stanford EMR data and returns consultation reports to physicians.Shah ran the service at Stanford for about 18 months before contacting Hyde at Stanford — where Hyde most recently served as an executive at a life sciences company Eversana – Help it spin off as a new company in 2020.
Shah and Hyde, along with their other co-founder, Stanford researcher and physician Saurabh Gombar, founded Atropos Health with the goal of enabling physicians to one day reduce extrapolation. They want doctors to quickly get evidence about which treatments work for certain patients, rather than often relying on educated guesses.
Atropos’ technology produces a report called a prognostic map, which Hyde describes as a “ship-wide, publication-grade observational study of unidentified EMR patients, including statistical error correction using high-dimensional propensity score matching.” These The prognostic map meets with physicians at the point of care, which is important because they often have patients in their offices and their follow-up is scheduled within a day or two.
Speed and ease of use were the primary considerations for Atropos developers. On the input side, all the company asks doctors to enter is a few words about a patient’s situation, similar to an email they might send to a colleague.
The startup charges customers for platform subscriptions and installs its technology into their EMR datasets. The startup also charges for its forecast graph, which may be based on volume or number of users.The services are reimbursed, though — Hyde says doctors can get reimbursed by ordering reports and Atropos can get paid deliver them.
Atropos is currently selling its services to academic medical centers. Six institutions are using them, according to Hyde, which serves about 10,000 doctors.
Start a business in May Sign the partnership and ASCO CancerLinQ, which collects EMR data from oncology practices across the country. The partnership not only gives Atropos access to ASCO’s rich oncology data to help companies answer specific cancer treatment questions, but also to all members of CancerLinQ. That means more than 150 community oncology practices can now order prognostic maps, Hyde said.
Atropos will use some of the funds raised in its Series A financing to further develop its oncology consulting product developed in partnership with ASCO. It will also use the money to grow its commercial team.
As the startup continues to grow, Hyde says it’s focused on building a service that not only helps doctors make better decisions, but also leads to better outcomes for patients. He said the mission was tied to the startup’s name — Atropos, one of the three Moirai in Greek mythology, was the goddess who assigned destiny to people. The company’s main goal, he said, is to create a brighter destiny for patients.
Photo: 3283197d_273, Getty Images
