GNS Healthcare Announces $10M Financing, MMRF Study Results

By Bio-IT World Staff

December 8, 2015 | GNS Healthcare announced a $10M Series C financing round today. New investors in this round—Celgene Corporation, Alexandria Real Estate Equities, and Gi Global Health Fund LP—join previous investors including Cambia Health Solutions, California's Heritage Provider Network, and Japan’s Mitsui & Co. U.S. subsidiary ("Mitsui USA").

GNS builds cloud-based big data solutions for precision medicine and population health. Earlier this week, the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation (MMRF) announced preliminary results of a multi-year collaboration with GNS to speed the discovery of innovative treatments for patients with multiple myeloma. GNS used its patented causal machine learning and simulation platform, REFS (Reverse Engineering and Forward Simulation), to analyze data from the CoMMpass Interim Analysis 7 (IA7) dataset, which is composed of extensive clinical and genomic data for a population of almost 800 enrolled patients.

REFS works to unlock value from increasingly rich streams of patient data, including data from electronic medical records, mobile health devices, medical and pharmacy claims, genomics, consumer behavior, and more. GNS solutions better match drugs and other health interventions to individual patients, improving outcomes and lowering costs related to preterm birth; medication non-adherence; metabolic syndrome; comparative effectiveness in diabetes, specialty care and oncology; end-of-life care; new member risk on healthcare exchanges; patient stratification in clinical trials; and more.

In the MMRF study, GNS used REFS to reverse-engineer the molecular pathways that affect treatment outcomes in the CoMMpass population and to assess the significance of these pathways in treatment response. REFS employs a hypothesis-free approach, simulating every possible combination and outcome from large, heterogeneous datasets.

The MMRF and GNS plant to release the computer models for use by associated researchers, clinicians and partners to facilitate future discoveries.

GNS licenses its solutions to health plans, pharmaceutical companies, healthcare providers, foundations, academic research organizations, and self-insured employers. These solutions rapidly deliver actionable insights to guide researchers, inform clinical decisions by healthcare leaders, and to support patient-physician conversations at the point of care.

“Machine learning can reveal cause-and-effect relationships in data, not just patterns and correlations, making it possible—and practical—to predict many future 'what if' scenarios, to compare outcomes across different treatments, patient by patient, and ultimately use that knowledge to optimize treatment decisions,” said Colin Hill, CEO and co-founder of GNS, in a statement. “We’re honored to work with world-class pioneers as investors and partners in our quest to transform healthcare.”