PicnicHealth, a digital health company that partners directly with patients to build deep real-world datasets, has raised $60 million in a Series C funding round.
PicnicHealth creates its datasets for life science researchers by working directly with consented patients. Datasets include complete medical records from all of a patient’s sites of care, supplemented with direct patient-reported experience and linked to other research data sources. Patients also have access to their aggregated medical information in a single place, giving them the opportunity to contribute their medical journey to advance research.
PicnicHealth plans to build 30 new patient-centered real-world data cohorts with the funding, which was led by new investor B Capital Group. Existing investors Felicis Ventures and Amplify Partners also joined the funding round. The recent funding round brings the San Francisco-based company’s total fundraising to more than $100 million.
Health Exec Perspective
The funding comes as medical records have increasingly come under the spotlight of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). These agencies have focused on creating free, digital access to health records for patients over the past few years, with HHS and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) proposing a new rule to support electronic health record (EHR) interoperability in 2020. However, EHR companies were quick to oppose the rule, citing concerns about health system burdens and patient privacy. The rule was finalized in 2020, requiring free access to health records for patients through third-party apps.
“Gaining patient consent isn’t just the right thing to do, it's the only way to build the complete, longitudinal data needed to truly describe how diseases look in the real world. This is especially important in our fragmented healthcare system, where the typical PicnicHealth patient has data spread across more than 20 different healthcare providers over seven years,” Noga Leviner, CEO and co-founder of PicnicHealth, said in a statement. “We are thrilled to expand this patient-centered approach to empower patients in dozens of new diseases with control over their data.”
PicnicHealth launched its PicnicHealth Research Platform in 2020 with the intent to power the creation of patient-centered real-world data cohorts. Since then, the company has created cohorts in:
- hematology (including hemophilia, sickle cell disease, paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria, and immune thrombocytopenia);
- neurology (including multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, myasthenia gravis, and Huntington’s disease);
- and rare diseases (including lupus nephritis, primary biliary cholangitis, and Pompe disease).
Global life sciences and biopharmaceutical companies rely on these datasets to surface real-world experiences beyond what they can study in clinical studies alone, according to PicnicHealth. The company's new cohorts will focus in complex, chronic or rare conditions. PicnicHealth will also use the funding to introduce new capabilities to aid clinical trial sponsors in linking trial data with longitudinal real-world outcomes. The company will also streamline and speed the patient experience of accessing up-to-date medical records.
Amy joined TriMed Media as a Senior Writer for HealthExec after covering home care for three years. When not writing about all things healthcare, she fulfills her lifelong dream of becoming a pirate by sailing in regattas and enjoying rum. Fun fact: she sailed 333 miles across Lake Michigan in the Chicago Yacht Club "Race to Mackinac."