Datavant, a US-based healthcare data services subsidiary of drug developer Roivant Sciences, closed a $40.5m funding round on Monday co-led by Roivant with Datavant’s co-founder and CEO, Travis May.
The investment was announced concurrently with Datavant’s acquisition of Universal Patient Key (UPK), a provider of de-identification services for healthcare data. Financial terms of that deal were not disclosed.
Datavant, launched in August 2017, has developed a platform that enables the secure linking of separate healthcare datasets to better conduct medical research without compromising patient privacy. The platform currently incorporates more than 250 different data sources.
The acquisition of UPK will allow Datavant to further build out its ecosystem. Shahir Kassam-Adams, co-founder and CEO of UPK, will join Datavant as head of strategy while Jason LaBonte, UPK’s chief product officer, will become Datavant’s head of product.
Datavant’s August launch made it the first new company to be spun off from Roivant in the wake of a $1.1bn round led by internet and telecommunications group SoftBank’s Vision Fund.
SoftBank Vision Fund was joined in the round by pharmaceuticals distributor Dexxon and unnamed additional backers. Roivant had previously spun out women’s health product developer Myovant Sciences in 2016, four months before the latter went public.