NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – NantHealth announced on Wednesday that it has received a $250 million investment from the Kuwait Investment Authority and has named new members to its management team.
The Los Angeles-based firm is part of the NantWorks group of companies, is developing a cloud-based, single healthcare management platform that aims to provide genomic and proteomic data at the patient level and integrate such data with information about therapies, clinical trials, and scientific research.
The investment from the Kuwait Investment Authority is part of a Series B round of financing, which now totals $320 million. NantHealth noted that other investors in the firm include Verizon, Celgene, Blackberry, and Blackstone. Celgene, who invested $25 million in the firm a few months ago, also has an ongoing collaboration with NantBioscience, an affiliate of NantHealth.
"Providers using NantHealth solutions have the ability to analyze an individual's unique genomic signature and collaborate and share data in real-time with all members of the patient's healthcare team," Laura Beggrow, executive VP of commercialization for NantHalth, said in a statement. "This unique model has the potential to improve treatment decisions, as well as patient and financial outcomes, and that is groundbreaking."
In addition to the investment, NantHealth named several new members of its management team. Steve Curd, a former COO of WebMd, chief information officer of United Healthcare, and CEO of VantageMed, has joined the firm as COO. Beggrow has joined the firm from Strand Diagnostics, where she was president. Previous to that, she was VP of US sales and marketing at Genomic Health.
Other appointments included Stevie Davidson as senior VP of professional services; Michael Davis as senior VP of corporate strategy and business; Shannon Hastings as senior VP of product engineering; Mark Heinemeyer as senior VP of product management; Vasu Randagass as senior VP of strategy and research; Paul Fowler as senior VP of client services; Siew Yong Sim-Tang as VP of strategic planning; and Martin Walsh as VP and GM, UK.
NantHealth recently announced a partnership with the Chan Soon-Shiong Institute of Molecular Medicine and Providence Health and Services to create a clinical network for whole-genome sequencing.