By Clinical Research News Staff 

September 5, 2024 | Today, SEQSTER and United Healthcare Group’s PatientsLikeMe (PLM) announced their strategic partnership to accelerate the patient screening process, improve the patient onboarding experience to increase retention and engagement, and provide more resources and tools for condition-specific communities. 

SEQSTER will serve as PLM’s Electronic Health Record (EHR) provider to allow quicker and more accurate patient screening for clinical trial opportunities and improve the patient onboarding experience to reduce dropout rates. PLM will help pharmaceutical companies sponsor these condition-specific communities with the resources they need. Within these communities, accessibility to SEQSTER’s services and capabilities will be available, as well as ongoing surveillance and real-world data collection, which will enable better data depth and quality. The integrated community model will also support digital engagement and educational efforts at key points across the patient journey, as well as meet patient registry needs. 

Patients and researchers can look forward to the following: enhanced data access; personalized health insights tailored to each patient’s unique health journey; a richer dataset for researchers that combines patient-reported outcomes with real-world data; and improved patient outcomes by providing a more complete understanding of health, leading to more targeted and effective interventions. 

“The partnership between PLM and SEQSTER was inspired by a shared vision to empower patients through the integration of real-time, longitudinal health records,” Ardy Arianpour, CEO and co-founder of SEQSTER, tells Clinical Research News staff. “The collaboration aims to bridge the gap between patient-reported outcomes and real-world data, offering a more holistic view of health for both patients and researchers.” 

SEQSTER and PLM have previously collaborated on a national rare disease study in October 2022. The study aimed to better understand how to reduce diagnosis delays, decrease disparities in care, and improve outcomes in patients with Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency (AATD), a rare genetic condition that leads AATD patients to be susceptible to lung and/or liver disease. The data collected helped to identify trends and patterns in disease progression and “also highlighted the importance of integrating patient-reported outcomes with clinical data,” according to Arianpour. The results of this collaboration provided researchers with a more complete understanding of the AATD patient experience and demonstrated the potential of combining multiple data sources to advance research in rare diseases, ultimately leading to more personalized treatment options for patients. 

In the May 2023 episode of the Scope of Things podcast, Arianpour discussed SEQSTER’s mission of consolidating various data and transforming it into a usable form for patients. Their partnership with PLM will support this mission by integrating PLM's 1 Million Patient Database covering over 2800 conditions with SEQSTER's Operating System. With their combined technologies and efforts, the companies will be able to support care navigation, condition management, and a connected experience that will provide “a complete and actionable picture of a patient’s health journey,” according to Arianpour.  

“We are setting the industry standard with this partnership,” says Arianpour. “This partnership unlocks enormous value for patients, researchers, life science and healthcare companies, driving the last-mile data connectivity and accelerating clinical trials with real-time EHR data. Our joint solution empowers patient communities and researchers with Regulatory-Grade EHR Data, driving better research, faster drugs to market, and Real-World Evidence."