One of the greatest things about technology is its well-roundedness. You can literally put it to any use, and chances are you will be enhancing the quality of that operation. This lack of rigidity has helped us in tinkering with different usage patterns, giving us an informative base to zero upon the most suitable one for every situation. Furthermore, technology’s openness to areas of different nature also provides us with a fair shot at avoiding that disjointed scenario where few elements are miles ahead of the others. Instead, we are encouraged to aim for a more collective and sustainable growth. There are plenty of examples where this feature alone has proven to be more decisive than all the other factors. One of those examples resides within the medical field. We might have kickstarted the healthcare evolution by introducing tech devices in a more methodical manner, but fortunately, we were soon able to compliment those devices with advancements in other areas too. The result is, of course, a sector that doesn’t shy from any medical complication, regardless of how head-scratching it promises to be. Even though the leaps we are making on, more or less, daily basis are hugely instrumental in their own way, there is one aspect which we fail to recognize time and again, and that aspect is digitization of health records. Now, the devices that actually treat patients are certainly more important, but the difference that digital health records make is a sizeable one too. Not having to bother about taking care of physical files has resulted in significant improvements for patient’s overall experience. Nevertheless, there are still some wrinkles that must be ironed out, and a recent acquisition indicates that the work has already started to ensure the same.
Invitae, a genetic testing company, has made its bid towards enhancing the role of health records by acquiring Citizen in a deal worth $325 million. Citizen is built on patients’ HIPAA right to gather all of their records, but that’s not the only thing it does. Citizen allows you to easily organize the reports that have long been criticized for being unstructured. Invitae plans on using Citizen’s attributes to create a space that allows the user to find value in their clinical and genomic data, as the need of having it in one place and organized in a intelligible manner is finally satisfied.
“We believe that the combination of genetic and clinical data, housed in an easy-to-use digital wallet, will enable better healthcare outcomes, provide important data for bio-pharma customers and researchers, and fuel new innovation that can then be patient matched,” said Anil Sethi, the founder of Citizen.
Despite the fact that it’s a historic deal by all means, Invitae will be looking at it as just a step towards their ultimate goal. The company has made a slew of similar acquisitions in a hope to merge all these platforms to create a personalized data center that is more expansive and user-friendly in its services.
