Evidation Health: A New Way of Validating Healthcare Outcomes

Corporate Startup of the Week

[6 minute read]

These days you’d be hard-pressed to find an industry that hasn’t been affected by the digital revolution – and healthcare is no exception. 

Breakthrough advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Virtual Reality (VR), wearable medical devices and telemedicine (just to name a few) are:

• Enabling practitioners to reach more patients
• Improving medical outcomes 
• Reducing human error in healthcare
• Lowering costs

And all of it can be accomplished from anywhere at any time, through convenient web and mobile experiences. 

Now, with the added acceleration of the Covid-19 pandemic, the trend towards digitization in healthcare has all but exploded. In fact, according to Frost & Sullivan, the global digital healthcare market will increase from a projected $ 147 bn in 2019 to $ 234.5 bn by 2023.

In recent years, there has been a boom of new technology-driven products and services entering the healthcare market, each showing tremendous promise – but how can you track which solutions work in the long-run and which ones don’t? 

Meet Evidation Health – A corporate startup that generates clinical and economic evidence to prove how effective these new technologies are. Ready to find out more about this amazing company? Let’s start at the beginning. 

About GE Ventures and Stanford Healthcare.

Evidation Health is the product of a collaboration between GE Ventures and Stanford Health Care. Their Vision? To help pave the way for a digital health-enabled future.

GE Ventures

GE Ventures was the corporate venture capital arm of GE. Basically, their job was to seek out and nurture promising new startups, using the infrastructure, expertise, partnerships, and capital of their parent company.

According to an article by Medcity News, they’ve invested in companies like Jiff, Hearthflow, Nanostring, and Neuronetics. They’ve also incubated a few companies including Drawbridge Health, Vineti, and Evidation Health.

The company’s portfolio included ventures in industries like life sciences, energy, mobility, digital infrastructure, and frontier technologies.

Stanford Health

Stanford Health is an academic healthcare system with expertise in areas like cancer treatment, neuroscience, surgery, cardiovascular medicine, and organ transplants. They’re renowned for conducting successful clinical trials and using the medical breakthroughs in everyday patient care.

As part of their strategy to remain a leader in healthcare, they cultivate partnerships (like the one with GE Ventures) to discover new and improved ways to deliver patient care.

About Evidation Health.

The need for a company like Evidation, in the healthcare industry, is perhaps best described by board of directors member Rowan Chapman:

“Digital disruption in the healthcare industry has introduced a number of new but often unproven products and services. With Evidation Health, we will be able to not only improve outcomes but also ensure that the best products reach patients.”

Evidation Health was founded in 2014, with a mission to use digital technologies to determine the real-world impact of digital health solutions. 

Specifically, it uses its expertise in health outcomes research, product commercialization, and predictive behavior analytics to validate the outcomes and efficiency of different technologies. 

Before its formal launch, the company merged with “The Activity Exchange”, a digital health startup that specialized in gathering data from health and fitness apps and devices. Their goal was to help practitioners, insurers, and other stakeholders monitor and improve the health of different users. 

The merger provided Evidation with: 

• Predictive analytics capabilities 
• Expertise in machine learning
• A software platform with real-world patient behavior data
• Customers and academic partners (e.g. Biogen, Sanofi, Harvard Business School, and Wharton)

As described by CEO Deborah Kilpatrick: 

“We started with a technology engine that could connect to people and data, and we aimed it at health outcomes quantification…We knew we could use data from patients’ real lives to measure product impact in the market.”

How it works.

Evidation basically helps digital healthcare companies answer questions like:

• Does your product or service actually deliver on its promise?
• Is it beneficial outside your target population?
• Is it effective?
• Is it economically viable?

Answering these questions with real-world data can help promising young startups prove that they can deliver on their offerings. This, in turn, facilitates their ability to access funding and the support they need to develop and scale.  

Depending on the information needed (inside or outside a clinical setting), the team at Evidation can design a study that fits the given situation. The next step is to explain the protocol to those involved (e.g. patients, practitioners, etc.) and quantify the data based on the chosen data streams.

Some of Evidation’s data sources include clinical and fitness wearables, patient sensors, apps, and traditional data sources (e.g. medical claims, electronic records, and health partners) – and of course, all data is gathered with the patient’s consent.

A strategic partnership.

The partnership between GE Ventures and Stanford Health combines the strengths of each organization to: 

• Conduct clinical studies and provide patient data (Stanford Health) 
• Provide the funding, infrastructure, partnerships, and know-how needed for the incubation phase (GE Ventures)  

On the other hand, Evidation Health provided its own set of benefits:

• Helping Stanford Heath understand the impact and outcomes of various new healthcare apps and devices.
• Providing GE with valuable information about their own as well as other health and fitness apps and devices (demonstrating which technologies are the most effective and profitable). 

The result? Some very valuable data about patient health and the cost of care.

What’s next?

Evidation is still helping world-class health care companies validate their offerings by enabling them to prove their economic value and clinical effectiveness. 

Most recently the company launched an initiative in the U.S. to track people’s experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic. So far, over 185,000 people have been recruited to participate through Evidation’s Achievement app. 

Stanford Healthcare is still developing groundbreaking programs in medicine, bioengineering, genetics, and computer science to help patients from all over the world overcome their health challenges. 

As for GE Ventures, General Electric has decided to change tactics and decentralize its innovation activities. Innovation partnerships are now forged through the team at GE Licensing.

A notable partnership was struck in 2019, between GE Licensing and Nokia with the goal of exploring new channels for Nokia’s innovations.