Becker's Hospital Review

32 INNOVATION Provider-led data platform Truveta goes live, secures $200M in funding By Jackie Drees T ruveta, a healthcare data analytics startup formed by 14 U.S. health sys- tems, on Nov. 9 launched its deiden- tified clinical data platform, which pools information on participating care sites to glean insights on medical conditions such as COVID-19 and rare diseases. Fourteen health systems, including Trin- ity Health, Northwell Health and Tenet Health, partnered to create Truveta. Since forming in February 2021, the startup has raised $200 million and welcomed six additional health system members as of November 2021. With the addition of Ochsner Health, Saint Luke's Health System and UnityPoint Health, Truveta represents more than 16 percent of clinical care delivered in the U.S., according to a news release shared with Becker's. Truveta's platform gathers participating health system's deidentified data, which is updated daily and includes EHR informa- tion such as labs, vitals, diagnosis codes, procedure codes, physician notes and pa- thology reports. Researchers can then use the data on Truveta's platform for analysis and building custom studies; early custom- ers can have access to data on vaccinated and unvaccinated populations, breakthrough cases and patient outcomes. e company on Nov. 9 released the first set of COVID-19 insights from its platform, which include early findings from a study on breakthrough cases for people with comor- bidities such as cancer and diabetes, along with insights on vaccine effectiveness and adverse events. Truveta's dashboard is inter- active, so members can select populations to study based on factors including age, sex, race, comorbidity and vaccine manufacturer. Truveta CEO Terry Myerson, a former engi- neer at Microso, highlighted Truveta's focus on alleviating the gaps in national public health data reporting. "One of the greatest travesties of COVID-19 is the failure of public institutions in the U.S. to combat the pandemic using re- al-time data," he said, adding that "e U.S. is one of the few developed countries to lack a na- tional COVID-19 dashboard with rich insights for effectively managing the pandemic." e first insights from the Truveta Platform found that 9 to 15 percent of fully vaccinated people who experience a breakthrough in- fection end up hospitalized, with Johnson & Johnson vaccine recipients having the highest hospitalization rate. e platform also found that people with high-risk conditions who have breakthrough cases are twice as likely to be hospitalized compared to the general pop- ulation, according to the news release. Truveta plans to use its $200 million in funding to continue building out its data platform. Here are the company's 20 health system members: • AdventHealth (Altamonte Springs, Fla.) • Advocate Aurora Health (Milwaukee) • Baptist Health of Northeast Florida (Jack- sonville) • Baylor Scott & White Health (Dallas) • Bon Secours Mercy Health (Cincinnati) • CommonSpirit Health (Chicago) • Hawaii Pacific Health (Honolulu) • Henry Ford Health System (Detroit) • MedStar Health (Columbia, Md.) • Memorial Hermann Health System (Houston) • Northwell Health (New Hyde Park, N.Y.) • Novant Health (Charlotte, N.C.) • Ochsner Health (New Orleans) • Providence (Renton, Wash.) • Saint Luke's Health System (Kansas City, Mo.) • Sentara Healthcare (Norfolk, Va.) • Tenet Health (Dallas) • Texas Health Resources (Arlington) • Trinity Health (Livonia, Mich.) • UnityPoint Health (West Des Moines, Iowa) n Mark Cuban's drug company to launch PBM By Maia Anderson M ark Cuban's generic drug company is launching its own pharmacy benefit management company, The Wall Street Journal reported Oct. 25. The company, called the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Com- pany, said the aim of the PBM is to be more transparent about drug costs and share more savings with customers, according to the Journal. The PBM will start bidding for clients in 2022 and hopes to be operational in 2023, Alex Oshmyansky, MD, PhD, the CEO of the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company, told the Journal. The PBM plans to share the details of its operating costs with clients and will share 100 percent of the rebates they receive from drugmakers. "The supply chain for distributing pharmaceuticals to pa- tients is so cumbersome and broken," Dr. Oshmyansky told the Journal. "We decided the only way to get our drugs to the people who need them is to build a parallel supply chain where we have control of all the intermediary players and ensure the same level of transparency at every level." The Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company tweeted Oct. 18 looking for a PBM sales leader to join its team, saying, "We hate PBMs. Want to help us build a better one?" Mark Cuban launched his drug company in January 2021, saying it is dedicated to producing low-cost versions of high-cost generic drugs and pledging to "provide radical transparency in how we price our drugs." Currently, nearly 80 percent of prescriptions in the U.S. are managed by three PBMs, CVS Caremark, Express Scripts and OptumRx, the Journal reported. n

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