Meet InsightRX, a platform for patient-specific dosing

Vator will be highlighting the up-and-coming healthcare companies before Splash Health on Feb. 12th

With Vator Splash Health coming up soon, we've been focusing on different aspects of the healthtech space, including the companies that have raised the most money and  how quickly the space itself has been growing in recent years.

One big part of that involves discovering what the future of healthtech looks like, and the up and coming companies.

So VatorNews reached out to venture capitalists who invest in health companies to find out from them: who are the next generation of health companies, and the ones that will disrupt and shape the space in years to come.

One such company is InsightRX, a software platform that fills the 'one-size-fits-all' approach to drug treatment gap by providing an informed, patient-specific dose by leveraging mathematical models, patient demographics, physiological characteristics, genomic data, drug concentrations and biomarkers.

The company was founded by  Sirj Goswami, Ron Keizer and Ranvir Mangat. The team also consists of Rada Savic, professor at UCSF, as an advisor.

I spoke to Goswami about the company, its mission and his vision for the future of healthcare.

EDITOR'S NOTE: On February 12th, Vator will be holding its first ever Splash Health event in Oakland, where speakers such as Dr. Katrina Firlik, Tom Lee, Founder & CEO of One Medical, and Ryan Howard, Founder & CEO of Practice Fusion, will be talking about the state of the healthtech space, and where they think it is going. (Get your tickets here).

VatorNews: What the problem is that you are trying to solve and how you are trying to solve it?

Sirj Goswami: The prevailing 'one-size-fits-all' approach to drug treatment of diverse populations is failing: in the US alone more than half of all prescribed drugs fail due to lack of efficacy or serious side effects. This results in hundreds of thousands of deaths each year, and billions of dollars in costs. Efforts in personalized medicine from healthcare practitioners and/or pharmaceutical companies focus primarily on selecting the right drug for the right patient. Drug dosage is however often overlooked and rarely optimized for the individual patient.

Our InsightRX software platform fills this gap by providing an informed, patient-specific dose by leveraging mathematical models, patient demographics, physiological characteristics, genomic data, drug concentrations and biomarkers. The software platform, mobile app, and API iteratively optimize dosing and treatment strategies, and provide clinically relevant analytics to healthcare practitioners and pharmaceutical companies.

VN: Who is your average customer and what is a typical use case for 
InsightRX?

SG: Our average customer base includes Clinical Pharmacists and Physicians. An initial use case is to optimize dosing for drugs that require therapeutic drug monitoring. Drug classes include chemotherapeutics, anti-coagulants, anti-infectious agents, and immunosuppresants. 

VN: How do you want to change the healthcare space? What is your vision for what it will look like in five to ten years thanks to what InsightRX is doing?

SG: The future of evidence-based medicine promises the delivery of the right drug and dose to the right patient. At InsightRX, we plan to be an end-to-end solution for treatment optimization, providing intelligent solutions for drug selection and dosing, bringing real-time, data-driven personalized medicine to the forefront of healthcare.  With the emergence of genomic medicine, InsightRX will be uniquely positioned to translate cutting edge research to actionable insights for healthcare practitioners. 

VN: How many users do you currently have?

SG: We currently have an undergoing pilot at UCSF for Busulfan and at Stanford for the drug Vancomycin. The Busulfan module will be rolled out to 42 clinical centers as part of a UCSF led trial in mid 2016.

VN: Have you raised any money yet and, if so, from which investors?

SG: We have raised money from Launchpad Digital Health, an accelerator based in San Francisco. We have also received a grant from the Clinical & Translational Science Institute at UCSF.

VN: Has InsightRX been able to get data on how it has helped people improve their health? 

SG: There are several articles that have been published over the past decade on individualized dosing using the methodology we propose. 

For example, one study showed patients in the severely ill group had significantly better survival when managed with pharmacokinetic consultation. This study compares physician-directed with pharmacokinetic methods  (our methodology in our software platform).

Another showed improved outcomes in childhood leukemia, saying, 'Among the patients with leukemia, those who received individualized therapy had a significantly better outcome than those given conventional therapy; the mean (±SE) rates of continuous complete remission at five years were 76±6 percent and 66±7 percent, respectively.'

 These studies all highlight the importance of the methodology that we are packing in our software platform. We are also in the process of acquiring our own data through our pilots with the drug Busulfan and Vancomycin. Unfortunately, I am not able to share those at the moment.