Invitae, a leading medical genetics company, said it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Ciitizen, a patient-centric consumer health tech company that is building a global platform to help patients collect, organize, store, and share their medical records digitally.
The addition of Ciitizen is expected to empower Invitae to extend its platform further, adding a complementary patient service that streamlines the process of collecting and organizing health information from any source and uses machine learning to transform the unstructured (and largely untapped) health information to enable better care decisions, find clinical trials, and power research using real-world evidence. In addition, as the use of Invitae testing and the Ciitizen service expands, third-party access to consented genomic and other clinical data can be democratized to power a variety of applications that can enhance Invitae’s business and growth strategy.
Under the terms of the agreement, Invitae will acquire Ciitizen for approximately $325 million consisting of approximately $125 million in cash and approximately 7 million shares of Invitae common stock (based upon a trailing average closing price prior to the agreement date). Invitae will also issue approximately $225 million in restricted stock units to new employees who join Invitae in connection with its acquisition of Ciitizen.
The transaction, which has been unanimously approved by the boards of both companies, is expected to close this month.
Invitae, which is working to bring comprehensive genetic information into mainstream medical practice to improve the quality of healthcare, said the acquisition will enhance its platform by providing patients an easy-to-use, centralized hub for their genomic and clinical information. Together, it said, it will provide a powerful dataset with the potential to drive research and improve healthcare decision-making.
“We believe combining Ciitizen’s state-of-the-art, transparent and patient-consented platform with our technologies and services will accelerate our evolution into a genome information company that informs healthcare throughout one’s life,” said Sean George, co-founder and CEO of Invitae. “This would give us the ability to engage patients, create an innovative patient-centered data ecosystem and deliver better outcomes for everyone.”
Ciitizen has already helped patients take ownership of their medical records to optimize therapy for themselves and contribute their data towards a variety of goals, including research on rare diseases.
“Patients leave a breadcrumb trail of records behind them, and we believe access to this real-world data is key to personalized therapeutics in the future. The combination of lifelong health history together with Invitae’s world-class genetic and data services would enable a digital ecosystem of personalized services for each patient,” said Anil Sethi, CEO and founder of Ciitizen. Democratization of patient-consented data is expected to improve outcomes by providing access to third-parties for whom the patient has granted consent. Unlike many health data companies, we operate on the premise that it’s the patient’s data, not ours.”
Photo: Sean George, co-founder and CEO of Invitae
Author: Rare Daily Staff
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