Crescendo Health’s real-world data platform creates partnerships between researchers and patients to gain greater longitudinal insights into health outcomes from clinical research.
Company also raises initial funding from top investors; model proven to work after successful pilot completion with top-three clinical research organization.
Crescendo Health, an innovative health data company powering the next generation of clinical research, today announced its official launch with a mission to revolutionize how patients contribute real-world data to clinical studies. The company also announced an initial $3.4 million investment from leading early-stage investors, including Define Ventures as well as the founders and CEOs of many other well-known organizations.
Founded by the co-founder of Datavant (merged with Ciox in a $7 billion deal), and a top product-management leader from Grand Rounds (merged with Doctor On Demand to form Included Health), Crescendo Health is a public benefit corporation that is unlocking access to traditionally siloed health data for both patients and clinical research sponsors. The company works with researchers from many types of healthcare organizations, including biopharma, medical device manufacturers and contract research organizations, to provide the tools and support required to collect and integrate information from patients’ routine clinical care, helping them better understand long-term outcomes of new treatments.
“Patients participating in clinical trials generate valuable health data throughout their healthcare journey, so researchers shouldn’t be limited to information gathered in the four walls of a research clinic. However, to date, these external real-world data elements weren’t accessible to trial sponsors at scale, which is why we’re building the machinery and support required to change the paradigm,” said Sam Roosz, Co-Founder and CEO at Crescendo Health. “We are working towards a future where research is seamlessly integrated with routine clinical care, making participation easy and accessible for patients from all backgrounds.”
Led by a world-class team of former clinical research executives from institutions like Stanford and Medidata and seasoned digital product experts, Crescendo Health brings some of the most innovative digital health technologies that are transforming patient care to clinical trials, helping sponsors advance life-saving therapeutics in more efficient and cost-effective ways. The model works by garnering informed consent to collect health data on behalf of people participating in clinical research from any healthcare organization touching their care. Crescendo Health collects this information through APIs, data partnerships, and other methods, converting that data into a format that’s accessible to patients and useful for researchers.
As a result, clinical research sponsors receive an ongoing, longitudinal view of patient health that informs more comprehensive research. Sponsors can leverage Crescendo Health’s model to support a variety of use cases, including:
- Health economics and outcomes research that reflects the whole patient journey, including the true costs of their care;
- Post-marketing observational studies or safety registries that reduce the burdens placed on sites and patients, while also reducing costs for sponsors; and
- Longer-term follow-up or observational extension studies that help researchers understand the impact of interventions over time.
Historically, clinical research sponsors have struggled to gather information from study participants beyond the limited points of contact that occur during a study. This leaves out critical data from participants’ other encounters with the healthcare system, including information from primary care or emergency department visits, lab tests, prescription fills and more.
Crescendo Health helps fill these gaps for study sponsors using a novel approach made possible after the implementation of the 21st Century CURES Act, which empowered patients with more rights to collect and use their health data. As part of its core belief that every person has an absolute right to their own data, the company also makes the information it gathers available to each participant through a secure portal.
“Crescendo Health is pioneering a new way of using real-world data to support clinical trials and envisions a future where life sciences organizations don’t have to rely on buying large data sets to support ongoing research,” said Lynne Chou O’Keefe, managing partner at Define Ventures. “As more trials move to decentralized formats and competitive pressure builds to bring therapeutics to market faster and cheaper, Crescendo Health has an incredible opportunity to power a new era of clinical research. We are proud to partner with a deeply experienced team that has successfully launched the platform with proven results.”
During its early-access period, Crescendo Health completed validation studies that demonstrated the effectiveness of its model in partnership with leading life science-organizations, including a top-three contract research organization that conducts thousands of clinical trials each year. Crescendo Health helped this organization capture thousands of health events long before and after study enrollment.
Moving forward, Crescendo Health plans to scale its services throughout the life sciences industry and will use the investment to build software tools that will enable its clients to research the longitudinal effects of treatments and track outcomes over time.
About Crescendo Health
Crescendo Health is an innovative digital health company that is transforming the way patient health data is collected and used to advance clinical research. Leveraging many of the same transformative technologies that have revolutionized patient care, Crescendo Health builds relationships with patients by garnering informed consent to collect health information on their behalf, then curates the data for trial sponsors to have a more comprehensive and longitudinal view of patient health. Founded by veteran healthcare executives from Datavant and Grand Rounds, the Crescendo Health team includes leaders from across the research, technology, academic and provider communities. The company was founded in 2021 and is backed by leading institutional and angel investors. For more information, please visit crescendo.health.
Originally announced January 5th, 2023
