The news: Healthcare data analytics startup Truveta Health added three health system partners and scored $95 million in Series A funding to expand its patient database covering different diagnoses, demographics, and regions.

• Truveta’s 17 health system partners reportedly provide more than 15% of all care in the US, including large institutions like Providence, Henry Ford Health System, and Northwell Health.

How we got here: The pandemic exposed the need for a large, accessible patient database that provides rapid insights into whether treatments are effective.

Last year, there was buzz about hydroxychloroquine’s ability to manage COVID-19—but doctors couldn’t share data about the drug quickly enough to make a fast call. Since then, drugs like hydroxychloroquine and remdesivir have proven to be ineffective as antiviral treatments against COVID-19 by the World Health Organization. But massive databases being developed by companies like Truveta could have enabled researchers to come to this conclusion more swiftly, potentially saving patients from experiencing unnecessary side effects like heart rhythm disturbance.

Why it could succeed: Deidentified databases like Truveta’s could be key to ensuring providers get access to more diverse samples to inform their decisions.

Some massive insurers have databases of deidentified patient information providers can access, but they exclude uninsured and Medicaid patients. That means providers or researchers accessing anonymized databases from commercial insurers may not be getting a comprehensive picture to inform their care decisions: As of January 2021, 81 million individuals are enrolled in Medicaid across the US.

Platforms like Truveta’s are more inclusive of all populations.

• Truveta’s health system partners include names like Chicago-based CommonSpirit Health, which has about 137 hospitals serving a large and diverse population of Medicare and Medicaid patients.
• Komodo Health’s ​​AI-powered analytics tool Healthcare Map also offers providers and pharma companies access to over 325 million deidentified patient encounters to facilitate research initiatives, for instance.