Digital Health Leader Verana Health Secures $150M Series E Funding Round
SAN FRANCISCO, CA — Jan. 14, 2022 — 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.
Verana Health plans to use the proceeds of the investment 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.
“We’d like to thank both our existing and new investors for partnering with us, demonstrating confidence in the foundation we’ve built through our exclusive real-world data network and our advanced population health data engine, VeraQ,” said Sujay Jadhav, CEO of Verana Health who joined the Company in August 2021 with more than 20 years of experience, including as the CEO of goBalto where he led the acquisition of the company by Oracle. “We’re especially pleased to have a strong mix of investors—including growth firms, life sciences innovation funds, and academia—who recognize the momentum we’ve built in powering real-world evidence by cultivating exclusive partnerships with three specialty medical societies and collaborating with four of the top five pharmaceutical companies.”
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 three-year-old 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.
“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.”
“Verana Health has shown incredible growth in its collaboration with leading pharmaceutical companies and medical societies. The Company has assembled a seasoned management team with deep experience in healthcare, science, and business that will continue to expand real-world evidence into multiple therapeutic areas with its unique and powerful health data platform, VeraQ.” said Jeffrey Low, MD, Principal at Novo Growth. “We are pleased to join Verana Health’s investors and look forward to working with the team to generate insights that ultimately help to improve quality of life for patients.”
Dr. Low and a representative from JJDC have also joined Verana Health’s Board of Directors.
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.
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.
About Verana Health
Verana Health is a digital health company committed to delivering quality drug lifecycle and medical practice insights from an exclusive real-world data network. Verana Health is entrusted by key specialty medical societies to manage data from more than 20,000 healthcare providers and 70 electronic health record systems. Its healthcare data ecosystem is powered by VeraQ™, a population health data engine that securely powers a data integrity feedback loop of nearly a half-billion, point-of-care health encounters. By applying advanced analytics to fit-for-purpose, quality data sets, Qdata™, Verana Health helps life sciences collaborators generate real-world evidence, advance business insights, and accelerate medical innovations that promote quality of care and quality of life. For more information, visit www.veranahealth.com.
