Boehringer, Seqster ink 3-year health data deal to accelerate research

Boehringer Ingelheim has struck a three-year deal to work with Seqster to standardize and visualize health data.

Seqster, which raised funding from groups including Takeda last year, is working to provide accelerated access to de-identified, tokenized, and real-time health data. Paul Petraro, global head of the real-world evidence (RWE) center of excellence at Boehringer, explained the appeal of the system for his company.

“To truly close the real world evidence gap, we must think differently about the data that we access with full patient consent and control. Simultaneously, we must provide full transparency for patients who we engage with in all of our studies and trials. With the SeqsterOS we have a ready-to-go solution​,” said Petraro.

Ardy Arianpour, CEO and co-founder of Seqster, envisages the collaboration benefiting Boehringer teams running clinical trials by driving “speed through real-time health data collection, study design flexibility, and control, as well as high quality and high fidelity real-world data​.”

Seqster’s system, which is applicable to retrospective and prospective health data, automates health data collection for researchers to address a barrier to the scaling of studies.

“The traditional manual collection of medical history data takes weeks, if not months. This is not a sustainable model when scaling to a large number of study participants​,” said the Seqster CEO.

Boehringer will also be able to use the Digital Front Door to standardize and visualize health information. The system provides researchers with access to patient-consented data first and, as a study continues, the data connection persists to allow longitudinal data flow.

For study participants, the system could streamline the consent and re-consent processes. Patients can electronically consent to join a clinical study and to collect their medical records instantaneously.

“The Digital Front Door empowers the patient to have full visibility into the study they are participating in and engages them by putting their health data at the center. eConsent and re-consent help overcome the drop-off rates and other hurdles to effectively running clinical studies. Making the consent as well as the data collection processes simple for the study participant increases their likelihood of staying in the current study as well as their interest to participate in future studies​,” said Arianpour.