Citizen Health Raises $14.5 Million, Enters Partnership with CZI

Rare Daily Staff

The AI-powered consumer health platform Citizen Health closed a $14.5 million seed round and announced a strategic program investment and partnership with the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

Transformation Capital led the round with participation from Wavemaker 360 and prominent angel investors.

Citizen Health grows out of what was originally Ciitizen, which was created as a platform for cancer patients to access their own health data. Invitae acquired the company in 2021 and it later divested itself of the company prior to Invitae’s bankruptcy in February 2024.

Citizen Health, established in 2023, takes a sharper focus on rare diseases and is co-founded by Ciitizen founder Farid Vij and rare disease patient advocate Nasha Fitter.

With more than 10,000 rare diseases, 95 percent of which lack an approved therapy, patients often struggle to find effective care pathways. Citizen Health seeks to address this gap by building a comprehensive knowledge base that captures each patient’s complete health journey, including clinical data, genetic information, imaging, and patient-reported outcomes. Its extensive repository enables patients to access answers based on others’ experiences and assists researchers in accelerating drug development by providing immediate access to critical information, potentially reducing the time to develop new therapies by years.

“With our collective experience and expertise, we’re working together to drive a future where any patient, at any stage, of any condition, has immediate access to exceptional guidance on the best action to take,” said Farid Vij, CEO and co-founder of Citizen Health. “Through our AI-powered platform, we are giving people agency over their health data to help themselves and each other, while shaving years off the drug development process for these critical diseases.”

Along with the seed funding, Citizen Health announced a strategic investment and collaboration with CZI’s Rare As One Project, which supports patient-led organizations working to accelerate research and improve the lives of people affected by rare diseases. CZI’s support aims to help rare disease groups and scientists better understand rare diseases, accelerate the launch of clinical trials and advance drug development.

Citizen Health plans to announce additional key partnerships and new product features in the coming months, further benefiting patients and advancing their mission to transform the healthcare landscape for those with rare and complex conditions.

“As precision medicine evolves, understanding patients at an individual level is crucial for developing tailored therapies and care options,” added Nasha Fitter, co-founder and chief business officer, who is inspired by her youngest daughter who suffers from an ultra-rare disease. “This shift in empowering patients and caregivers is the path to a true consumer-led health system for every patient across every condition, and in no area is this more amplified than in rare and complex conditions.”