Datavant Acquires Aetion to Enhance Real-World Evidence Generation and Accelerate Healthcare Insights

Datavant, a leading health data platform company based in New York, has signed an agreement to acquire Aetion, a pioneering firm in real-world evidence (RWE) generation. This strategic move aims to create a comprehensive, end-to-end RWE platform capable of delivering high-quality, scalable, and actionable insights throughout the clinical and commercial lifecycles of medical therapies and devices. The acquisition, announced via Business Wire, addresses a growing need within the healthcare and life sciences industries. Datavant's platform is known for facilitating secure and compliant health data exchange, connecting multiple datasets to provide a holistic view of patient health. Aetion, on the other hand, excels in generating RWE using advanced analytics and causal inference techniques. By merging, the two companies will enhance their offerings, providing stakeholders with a seamless, integrated solution for data discovery, linkage, privacy, curation, and analysis. According to Kyle Armbrester, CEO of Datavant, the acquisition responds to partner requests for deeper integration and broader capabilities. "As Datavant has grown, our life sciences and ecosystem partners have sought a more comprehensive and longitudinal view of patient health across the product lifecycle. Aetion's team of scientists and technologists will significantly bolster our capabilities, allowing us to generate evidence from trial to treatment and beyond, ultimately delivering life-improving therapies," he noted. The integration of Aetion’s technology and expertise with Datavant’s extensive data networks and secure data exchange platform will enable the creation of enriched, analytics-ready datasets. This will facilitate faster and more accurate decision-making, addressing key questions about the clinical impact of therapies. The combined platform will support drug and device development, regulatory submissions, and market access evaluations, ensuring that the evidence is scientifically validated, transparent, and reproducible, standards that are crucial for acceptance by regulatory bodies such as the FDA and EMA. A key component of this merger is the enhancement of Datavant Connect, a service powered by AWS Clean Rooms. This service accelerates data discovery and evaluation, making it easier for ecosystem partners to access and combine their data with other sources. Aetion’s platform, now available on AWS Marketplace, will further strengthen Datavant Connect by improving privacy assessments and providing clean, ready-to-use datasets for a wide range of applications. Additionally, Aetion's new product, Aetion® Activate, will expand the software portfolio to better serve biostatisticians and data scientists. Activate offers a collaborative, auditable, and secure environment that streamlines data preparation, reducing manual errors and freeing up time for more critical research activities. Jeremy Rassen, CEO of Aetion, emphasized the significance of this partnership. "Our mission at Aetion has always been to drive data science in healthcare. By joining forces with Datavant, we will unlock the full potential of RWE to inform confident, data-driven decisions that improve patient care. We are taking a bold step towards a future where health data is seamlessly connected and actionable, capable of answering crucial questions about treatment efficacy, suitability, and cost." The merger will also boost Datavant's existing ecosystem, which already includes datasets from electronic health records, claims, specialty pharmacies, registries, imaging, labs, and social determinants of health. Aetion’s data partners will integrate into this network, increasing the visibility and utility of their datasets. This expanded network will cater to a broader base of life sciences companies, enhancing the scalability and application of RWE. Industry insiders view the Datavant-Aetion merger as a significant advancement in the healthcare tech landscape. The combination of Datavant’s data connectivity and Aetion’s robust analytical tools is expected to streamline RWE generation, making it more accessible and valuable to a wide array of stakeholders. This could lead to faster regulatory approvals, more effective post-market surveillance, and better-informed healthcare decisions, ultimately contributing to improved patient outcomes and more efficient healthcare systems. Datavant, founded to make health data secure, accessible, and actionable, has established itself as a leader in health data platforms. Its network connects more than 60 million healthcare records across thousands of organizations, including a majority of the largest health systems and over 300 real-world data partners. Aetion, with its cutting-edge RWE solutions and strong investor backing from firms like Flare Capital Partners and Warburg Pincus, complements Datavant’s strengths and positions the combined entity to drive meaningful changes in the healthcare industry.