Century Health, now with $2M, taps AI to give pharma access to good patient data

Thursday, 28 March 2024, Bengaluru, India

Century Health is another new company joining the action. It’s using clinical data and AI to find new uses for medications. It involves collaborating with pharmaceutical companies and researchers—from Yale and UC San Diego—to find and market the subsequent extensive treatment for diseases that impact millions of people, like Alzheimer’s. 

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Vish Srivastava, the CEO of Century Health and co-founder, has a personal motivation for the aim. He saw Alzheimer’s take hold of his grandfather to the point where he lost the ability to recognize Srivastava. 

With a background in statistics and healthcare product development, Srivastava added, “That sent me down a rabbit hole. “Effective access to high-quality patient data is a major barrier to creativity in new medication development. Only generative AI makes this feasible at this point. Because normalizing and deriving insight from such data requires laborious labor, it sat around for decades. 

That’s when he founded Century Health with a friend and data scientist/applied AI engineer Sanjay Hariharan, his pal. They developed a platform to gather and extract the concealed data. Researchers and pharmaceutical companies can use the platform’s data on approved pharmaceuticals to broaden their reach to new drugs or gain insights about better distributing already-approved drugs. 

According to Srivastava, the main objective is to expedite therapeutic accessibility. 

“It takes between $1 and $2 billion on average to develop a new drug, and drug development is costly,” he stated. The primary objective of the pharmaceutical industry is to deliver its approved drugs into the hands of patients swiftly. That also means accessing high-quality, real-world data at the most reasonable cost. 

Centennial Health has received $2 million in pre-seed money and plans to conduct three to five pilot programs over the coming months. According to Srivastava, the objective is to verify the original data collection method and, more significantly, to determine the potential influence of the insights gleaned from those data sets. 

According to him, these pilot programs serve as design collaborations and a means of gathering input on the advantages of medications, such as which patient subgroups may be underrepresented. A significant achievement will be obtaining early income from the pilots, which Century Health can use to pursue a second round of venture funding in addition to the verified technology. 

2048 Ventures led the investment, with participation from LifeX, Everywhere, Alumni Ventures, and a collection of angel investors that included Travis May, the founder of Datavant, and Christine Lemke, the founder and CEO of Evidation. 

In a statement, 2048 Ventures managing partner Alex Iskold said, “We have a strong thesis around real-time data in healthcare and beyond.” Vish and Sanjay’s vision aims to use AI and real-world patient data to improve feedback loops and, eventually, expedite and improve the development and marketing of drugs. 

Century Health’s injection of $2 million and its application of artificial intelligence (AI) to furnish pharmaceutical companies with good patient data represent a noteworthy advancement in the healthcare sector. Through AI technology, Century Health has established itself as a trailblazing entity in refining patient data administration and amplifying the efficacy of pharmaceutical research and development.

Moreover, Century Health’s groundbreaking methodology highlights AI’s potential to transform healthcare by facilitating enhanced decision-making, enhancing patient outcomes, and ultimately, elevating the global quality of life. As the company progresses in augmenting its capacities and cultivating fresh partnerships within the healthcare landscape, it stands ready to leave a profound imprint on the trajectory of medicine.

(Information Source: Techcrunch.com)