Shortly after announcing plans to transform itself into a digital, “cloud-first” drugmaker, Takeda has extended its agreements with Seqster—a company whose founder describes it as the Mint.com of patient healthcare data.
Seqster—pronounced seek-ster—will provide its platform for combining and visualizing individual patient information gathered from electronic health records, genomic profiles and wearable activity trackers. The San Diego-based company will also supply a decision support and clinical research platform for onboarding and obtaining consent from study participants.
"By leveraging Seqster and extending Takeda's external data and digital collaboration ecosystem, we will have better access to real-world evidence, integrating real-time into our workflows generating powerful data and insights for research and patient services," said Emir Roach, head of Takeda’s digital partnership and emerging technology efforts.
"Speed to implementation and integration with Takeda's infrastructure will allow us to activate 12 distinct use cases across our business in a matter of weeks—ultimately, positively impacting patient outcomes," Roach added.
RELATED: A company that wants to be the Mint.com for health data secures backing from major pharma company
Seqster previously secured an undisclosed amount of funding from Takeda in February in return for access to its longitudinal data platform. In an interview with Fierce Healthcare, Seqster co-founder and CEO Ardy Arianpour said the company’s offerings are similar to the personal finance website Mint.com in that it works to collect all of an individual’s health information in a single, accessible manner.
Through licenses to enterprise customers as well as providers and payers, Seqster’s data platform connects at least 3,600 healthcare providers and more than 150,000 hospitals and clinics in the U.S.
"Takeda's strategic approach to adding Seqster's technology capabilities into its data and digital foundation maximizes the full potential and rapid deployment of our platform," Arianpour said in a statement. "Our technology will help Takeda accelerate transforming clinical development in the post-COVID era, improving patient engagement and services, and streamlining safety and efficacy demonstration."
RELATED: Takeda to transform into a 'cloud-first company' through Accenture, AWS partnership
Earlier this month, Takeda outlined a five-year plan to outfit each of its research scientists with artificial intelligence tools, while also transitioning its drug development applications to cloud-based servers, through a partnership with Amazon Web Services and Accenture.
Takeda has already tapped AWS and Accenture to help launch a COVID-19 data-sharing platform to support clinical trials run by a consortium of more than 20 biopharma companies. Using the rapid scale-up abilities afforded by cloud computing, Takeda said it was able to stand up the project within five days—compared to an estimated three months that would have been necessary under previous methods.