Data sharing technology company Datavant has expanded its collaboration with pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim to support Boehringer’s real-world evidence initiatives.
The extended collaboration aims to leverage Datavant’s privacy-preserving tokenization and data connectivity technologies to strengthen clinical development and initiate strategies across 75 additional clinical trials and multiple new molecular entities.
Through Datavant Connect, a platform that helps balance data utility with data privacy, Boehringer can adeptly explore and evaluate third-party data sources without moving or sharing underlying data.
By applying Datavant’s technology across a broad portfolio of trials and launches, Boehringer Ingelheim aims to increase the integration of real-world data into drug development.
Furthermore, teams will implement tokenization in a phased rollout to ensure seamless integration with Boehringer Ingelheim’s existing research infrastructure.
Arnaub Chatterjee, general manager and president, life sciences, ecosystem and public sector for Datavant, said by enabling secure and efficient data linkage at scale, Boehringer Ingelheim is establishing a new benchmark for medical research.
“This partnership exemplifies how technology can reshape healthcare and improve patient outcomes,” Chatterjee said in a statement.
Paul Petraro, executive director and head of the real world evidence analytics center of excellence for Boehringer Ingelheim, said investment in real-world data underscores Boehringer Ingelheim’s commitment to using cutting-edge technologies to advance medical research.
“By expanding this approach across more trials and commercial launches, we are positioned to drive more personalized and cost-effective treatments, ultimately transforming patient care,” Petraro said in a statement.
THE LARGER TREND
In 2023, Socially Determined partnered with Datavant to provide life sciences companies with data on social risk drivers to improve health equity and patient outcomes.
Socially Determined uses data to offer insights into the social determinants of health, including factors like access to food, housing and transportation.
In 2021, psychedelic-inspired biotech company MindMed tapped Datavant to help link its clinical trial data with external evidence from other clinical trials and real-world data sources.
Using Datavant’s privacy-protecting technology, MindMed created datasets to understand the real-world treatment, service utilization and healthcare experiences of patients with psychiatric and substance use disorders. By increasing its data, MindMed hoped to better develop its product pipeline.
In 2020, Datavant closed $40 million in Series B funding. Transformation Capital led the raise, which saw contributions from new backers Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC and Cigna Ventures and existing investors Roivant Sciences and Flex Capital.
In 2023, Boehringer Ingelheim and tech giant IBM teamed up to harness the power of generative AI and foundation models to further biologic drug discovery.
The partnership leveraged IBM’s foundation model technologies, consisting of pre-trained, large-scale neural network architectures, to accelerate the identification of novel antibodies vital for therapeutic development.
That same year, Boehringer Ingelheim and digital therapeutic company Click Therapeutics initiated a clinical trial called CONVOKE Study, which evaluated prescription digital therapeutics as an adjunct treatment for schizophrenia.
The randomized trial included 432 participants and compared prescription digital therapeutics to the standard of care using antipsychotic therapy over the course of 16 weeks.
