Evidation Health: $45 Million Funding And Sam Marwaha Joins As Chief Commercial Officer

By Amit Chowdhry ● Jul 3, 2020
  • Evidation Health announced it has closed $45 million in Series D funding and Sam Marwaha has been named chief commercial officer. These are the details.

Evidation Health announced it has closed $45 million in Series D funding to power the expansion of its direct-to-person research platform Achievement to include virtual health. B Capital Group led the round. And new investors McKesson Ventures and Section 32 as well as existing investors Revelation Partners, Rethink Impact, and SV Health Investors also joined the round.

In connection with this funding round, B Capital’s Adam Seabrook has joined Evidation’s Board of Directors. And Sam Marwaha, Senior Partner at Boston Consulting Group and long-time advisor to Evidation is joining the company as Chief Commercial Officer.

With this round of funding, Evidation Health will build upon its existing evidence generation capabilities to offer real-time insights and digital tools to its network of nearly 4 million individuals. And the funding will be used to rapidly grow its study solutions business and offer programs that enable Achievement members to gain clinically actionable insights into their health. These include relevant digital interventions, treatments, and tools to help individuals understand and take advantage of the latest evidence in partnership with their care teams.

The first of these new virtual health offerings is slated for release later this year. And Evidation will continue to expand and diversify the Achievement population — which is already the largest and most demographically and geographically diverse connected cohort in the United States — to serve additional at-risk and disease-specific cohorts. Achievement includes participants residing in all 50 states and in 9 out of every 10 ZIP codes nationwide.

Marwaha is going to lead Evidation’s commercial strategy as it brings its new offerings to market. As a 20-year industry veteran, Marwaha will strengthen and broaden partnerships with life sciences companies as they innovate with patients, providers, and payers. And he will also scale Evidation’s marketing and business development teams and shape new opportunities to help people achieve better outcomes through virtual health.

Eight of the top 10 global biopharma companies utilize Evidation for person-generated health data (PGHD), including passive sensor data, electronic patient reported outcomes (ePROs), and at-home diagnostics. And Johnson & Johnson, Apple, and Evidation also recently launched the ongoing Heartline Study, which is the largest randomized trial in the history of cardiovascular disease. Evidation is also working with a diverse cross section of partners in industry, academia, government, and civil society, including the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on efforts to better detect, characterize, and predict COVID-19 using PGHD.

Key Quotes:

“Participation in research is an activator for individuals to better understand their health and seek care proactively. The natural next step for Evidation is to decrease the latency between evidence and action by offering virtual health programs, while still keeping privacy and consent at the forefront. We are especially excited to have Sam Marwaha, a pioneer in real-world evidence and an experienced digital health strategist and operator, join us to lead our commercial endeavors as the company ushers in a new era of self-activated care.”

– Evidation CEO Deborah Kilpatrick, Ph.D.

“Evidation is a learning engine directly connected to four million people, making it possible to understand real-life indicators of health quality and disease progression, reflecting behavioral and social factors. Evidation can drive personalized, consented engagement with individuals in the safety and convenience of their homes, empowering them to be partners in their own health.”

– Evidation Health Chief Commercial Officer Sam Marwaha

“Healthcare needs Evidation more than ever before. Evidation’s technology has the potential to realize new ways for individuals, providers, biopharma, and payers to understand and react to health in real life. Today’s announcement marks the company’s next step toward achieving that goal and we are pleased to continue our partnership with the company as investors.”

– Raj Ganguly, co-founder and Managing Partner at B Capital Group

“We see tremendous value in generating real-world data for both clinical development and commercial life sciences use cases, ensuring the best possible understanding of a population inside and outside the clinic. The discipline, rigor and scale with which Evidation has built their technology makes it possible to garner relevant real-world data points and transform them into meaningful insights for pharma.”

– Carrie (Hurwitz) Williams of McKesson Ventures

“COVID-19 has shown us that accelerating real-world evidence development is critical. Evidation has led the way in health measurement and has proven out the potential of person-generated health data. The company is optimally positioned to lead the way into a new era of individualized healthcare.”

– Michael Pellini, MD, Managing Partner of Section 32 and former CEO and Chairman of Foundation Medicine