Sensyne launches fundraising, agrees patient data deal with Phesi

UK digital health firm Sensyne has secured access to millions more anonymised patent records via an alliance with US clinical trial data specialist Phesi.

The new agreement comes after a string of access deals with NHS trusts for patient data, and coincides with a bid by Sensyne to raise £27.5 million (around $37 million) through a 90 pence per share placing.

The proceeds of that round – and possibly a second £2.5 million open offer that is also planned – will go towards “industrialising” its big data analytics and clinical artificial intelligence (AI) platform, with £10 million going towards buying a 10% equity stake in Phesi.

Oxford-based Sensyne uses patient data to improve drug development, disease understanding and clinical trial design, as well as to discover new drug targets, and also develops digital health software applications powered by AI such as GDm-Health for diabetes and CVm-Health for COVID-19.

Another £10 million from the fundraising will go towards building Sensight – a real-world, pharmaceutical R&D platform intended to analyse data more rapidly and cost effectively – while £6.5 million is earmarked for development of its Sense clinical AI engine for healthcare providers and payers.

“Currently, responding to questions about available categories of Sensyne's data can take several weeks with clinical AI answers taking months to produce,” says the company’s fundraising prospectus.

“Investments into industrialising this process are expected to dramatically reduce these timescales to seconds and weeks,” it goes on.

It already has access to around 6.1 million UK patient health records – equivalent to around 10% of the country’s total population – and the new agreement with Phesi will add around 13.5 million international patient records from 320,000 clinical trials dating back to 2007.

Phesi provides Sensyne with the benefit of a different type of data set, according to Sensyne, namely anonymised clinical trials data and clinical investigator site information.

Once the transactions go through, Sensyne and Phesi will work together to offer “synthetic” clinical trial arms and clinical decision support tools combining trial and real world data, for an initial period of five years.

Sensyne’s approach has already resulted in several agreements with major pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies including Bayer, Roche, Alexion and Bristol-Myers Squibb, while Phesi also has “a strong list of clients having worked with multiple blue-chip pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.”

Peel Hunt and Liberum Capital Limited are acting as joint bookrunners for the placing.