Roivant Sciences Launches Datavant to Improve Clinical Trials with Artificial Intelligence

SAN FRANCISCO and BASEL, Switzerland, Sept. 20, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Roivant Sciences, a global healthcare company focused on realizing the full value of promising biomedical research to improve the lives of patients and their families, today announced the launch of Datavant, a new company focused on employing artificial intelligence to improve the clinical trial process.

Datavant will be led by Travis May, a Silicon Valley technology veteran with a history of building industry-leading data companies. Mr. May was the co-founder and CEO of LiveRamp, an identity resolution provider offering data onboarding.

"As a technologist looking at the biopharma industry, it's surprising and disconcerting how little data is shared as compared to other industries," said Mr. May. "Biopharmaceutical data is siloed across big pharma companies, universities, healthcare consortia, CROs, research groups, hospital systems, regulatory bodies, patient registries, genomics companies, and EMRs. There is tremendous potential to apply analytics to this data more effectively, improve drug development, and ultimately save lives."

Incubated by Roivant, Datavant has already compiled data from 85 different datasets comprising over 20 million patient visits. When appropriately joined and analyzed, these datasets can be used to inform the design and operations of clinical development programs – improving likelihood of success and time to market, and reducing the cost of clinical trials. Datavant is launching with initial financing led by Roivant and including a significant personal investment from Mr. May.

Datavant has also built a scientific and data science advisory board that includes:

• Daniel Burch, MD, Chief Medical Officer of PPD Biotech
• Emiko Higashi, Founder and Managing Director of Tohmon Capital Partners LLC
• Min Li, PhD, SVP and Head of Neurosciences R&D at GlaxoSmithKline; former Professor of Neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University
• Andrew Lo, PhD, Charles E. and Susan T. Harris Professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management
• Atul Pande, MD, Former SVP, Head of Neurosciences R&D at GlaxoSmithKline
• Eric Perakslis, PhD, SVP, R&D Informatics at Takeda Pharmaceuticals; former CIO and Chief Scientist (Informatics) at FDA; former Executive Director of the Harvard Medical School Center for Biomedical Informatics
• Frank Rockhold, PhD, Professor of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics at the Duke Clinical Research Institute
• Bryan Spielman, Former EVP at Medidata

"Despite the best efforts of consortia and data sharing initiatives, clinical trial data remains under-optimized today, reducing the odds of success for clinical trials and adding significant cost to the drug development process," said Eric Perakslis. "I'm excited by Datavant's approach to using sophisticated analytics and AI to unlock the potential of patient-level data, and believe it can ultimately improve the drug development process and bring value to patients."

"Today's announcement represents another step forward in achieving Roivant's long-term goal of reducing the time and cost of the drug development process," said Vivek Ramaswamy, Founder and CEO of Roivant Sciences.

Roivant recently completed a $1.1 billion equity investment led by the SoftBank Vision Fund. Founders Fund also participated in that round.

"We are impressed by Roivant's bold vision for transforming healthcare, and see Datavant as an integral part of that vision," said Founders Fund partner Brian Singerman. "Few sectors need innovation more than healthcare and Datavant is uniquely positioned to have a significant impact on the way medicines are developed across the industry."

About Datavant

Datavant is dedicated to accelerating the discovery, development, and commercialization of new medicines through machine learning. We aim to partner with biomedical research institutions to eliminate silos of information and unlock insights from healthcare data.

Datavant is backed by Roivant Sciences, a global family of healthcare companies focused on innovative approaches to realizing the full value of promising biomedical research and shortening the timeline and cost of pharmaceutical development. Datavant is combining leading data scientists with Roivant's biopharmaceutical research expertise to provide analytic solutions to our partners.

About Roivant Sciences

Roivant is dedicated to transformative innovation in healthcare. Roivant focuses on realizing the full potential of promising biomedical research by developing and commercializing novel therapies across diverse therapeutic areas. We partner with innovative biopharmaceutical companies and academic institutions to ensure that important medicines are rapidly developed and delivered to patients.

We advance our drug pipelines through wholly- or majority-owned subsidiary companies, including Axovant (neurology), Myovant (women's health and endocrine diseases), Dermavant (dermatology), Enzyvant (rare diseases), and Urovant (urology). Roivant also pursues its mission by incubating and launching innovative healthcare companies operating outside of traditional biopharmaceutical development. Roivant's long-range mission is to reduce the time and cost of developing and delivering new medicines for patients. For more information, please visit roivant.com.

Related Links

http://www.datavant.com

http://www.roivant.com

Media Contact:

Paul Davis
[email protected]
+1 (646) 495-5310

Datavant Contact:

Sam Roosz
[email protected] 
+1 (765) 490-9385

SOURCE Roivant Sciences

Related Links

http://www.roivant.com