In a strategic acquisition, Roche has completed its capabilities to use Big data to build new business cases in digital diagnostics solutions and personalised healthcare. The pharma major agreed to pay US$1.9bn to take over the US specialist for digital electronic medical records, Flatiron Health Inc.
In 2015, Roche already acquired a majority stake in Foundation Medicine Inc (FMI), which sequences tumour DNA from biopsies and compares tumour panels with a protrietary database that includes over 140,000 anonymised tumour profiles in order to reveal the optimal individual cancer treatment. While this service to oncologists will be marketed globally, FMI partnered with Flatiron Health in the US to link tumour profiles with electronic medical records (EMRs) of patients from 265 community cancer clinics, six major academic research centers and 14 therapeutic oncology companies, which include therapeutic history and outcomes, in order to be able to improve diagnosis, drug selection and patient stratification for clinical trials as well as providing real world evidence for effective cancer drug combos to the regulatory authorities. Roche contributed with a US$175m Series C financing (12.6% of the company’s equity) to the partnership of its FMI subsidy. According to Flatiron Health, data from clinical trails only represent 5% of the cancer patient population.
Under the current deal, Roche will acquire further 87% of Flatiron Health Inc. but follow the same company autonomy model as used in the take-overs of Genentech and FMI. In the diagnostics space, Roche’s plan is to offer an integrated digital tumours board data solution to oncologists to support therapy decisions. In the therapeutics space, comprehensive privately controlled data driven cancer models may speed up enrolment for clinical trials, approval and reimbursement decisions. Last month, Roche acquired Syapse, a precision medicine company using machine learning to correlate Big data in life sciences and partnered with GE in order to include imaging data in its cancer data suite.
“This is an important step in our personalised healthcare strategy, as we believe that regulatory-grade real-world evidence is a key ingredient to accelerate the development of, and access to, new cancer treatments,“ said Daniel O’Day, CEO Roche Pharmaceuticals.
Flatiron Health has worked with industry leaders and regulators to develop new approaches for how real-world evidence may be used in regulatory decision making, including the design and validation of novel endpoints. By working closely with its network of community practices and academic medical centers, Flatiron has also developed a suite of software products that uniquely positions the company to advance the use of real-world evidence at the point of care.
