Sensyne Health and Sentara Healthcare Form New Partnership for Ethical Data Sharing and Design of New Clinical Algorithms

Sensyne Health and Sentara Healthcare Form New Partnership for Ethical Data Sharing and Design of New Clinical Algorithms

Partnership comprises two parts:

Strategic research agreement (SRA) where Sensyne will receive de-identified Sentara patient data for analysis in AI-driven life sciences research

Collaboration agreement to co-design, validate, and deploy new clinical algorithms in the areas of Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) and Congestive Heart Failure (CHF)

Oxford, U.K, and Dover, Delaware, USA, 19 August 2021: Sensyne Health plc (LSE: SENS) (“Sensyne” or the “Company” or the “Group”), the ethical clinical AI company, today announces that it has signed a Strategic Research Agreement (SRA) with Sentara Healthcare (“Sentara”), a leading healthcare system serving patients in Virginia and northeastern North Carolina through 12 acute hospitals with more than 300 sites of care. The new agreement is Sensyne’s third U.S. partnership since launching in the U.S. in December 2020. The addition of Sentara’s 3.6 million patients brings Sensyne’s combined total of de-identified patient data for medical research to 21.7 million patients.

The partnership combines both life sciences research and healthcare algorithm development that will deliver value back to Sentara and its patients. The agreement will enable the ethical application of clinical AI research by Sensyne through analysing Sentara’s patient dataset to improve patient care and accelerate medical research. As part of a collaboration agreement, Sentara also becomes the first of several U.S. health systems that will partner with Sensyne to implement new clinical algorithms to support patients with CKD and CHF.

Jordan Asher, Executive Vice President and Chief Physician Executive of Sentara Healthcare, said:

"The combination of data and clinical expertise has the power to drive innovation, further advance research and enhance our ability to deliver complex and high-specialized clinical care to the communities we serve. The Sensyne partnership has the potential to help our organization continue our mission of improving health every day in critical areas of healthcare, including health equity."

Tim Skeen, Chief Information Officer of Sentara Healthcare, said:  

“One of our top priorities at Sentara is protecting our patients’ healthcare information, and via our partnership with Sensyne and its ethically designed AI, we are able to do just that. Sensyne is aligned with our vision of advancing clinical research, especially in critical medical areas like CKD and CHF. It is exciting to be able to leverage Sensyne’s ground-breaking technologies and unique algorithms to truly move the needle on treatment development, ultimately improving our patients’ outcomes.”

Derek Baird, President, North America of Sensyne Health, said:

“This Sentara relationship expands our model in the U.S, where we want to be working with our partners not only in using data for life science research, but also to deliver clinical insights back into the health system itself. This clinical co-design work is a really important aspect of our model. We expect the work we are doing with Sentara on CKD and CHF will yield powerful algorithms to manage these disease areas.”

Consistent with Sensyne's approach in all its health system’s relationships, all research will be undertaken to the highest standards of information governance and data security and in accordance with The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the U.S. legislation that protects sensitive patient information. All data supplied to Sensyne for research will be de-identified by Sentara and will remain in the U.S., and the provision of the data will operate under an agreed set of data processing procedures. 

Sentara will join the 11 UK NHS Trusts and U.S. Health Systems who are already shareholders in Sensyne Health plc, receiving 121,084 ordinary shares in Sensyne Health plc and up to 363,249 warrants to subscribe for additional shares at a subscription price of 10 pence per warrant on the achievement of specific performance conditions. Should the medical research undertaken by Sensyne analysing Sentara’s data lead to medical discoveries commercialised by Sensyne, Sentara will share a proportion of Sensyne’s revenues generated from that research.