Published On: 1/15/2021

Target RWE Acquires NoviSci Inc., Adding Significant Analytical Capabilities to Leading Real-World Evidence Platform

DURHAM, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Target RWE, a leading real-world evidence (RWE) solutions company for the pharmaceutical and biotech industries based in Durham, North Carolina, today announced the acquisition of NoviSci, Inc., a software analytics and services company whose innovative technologies enable the visualization and analysis of health data using modern epidemiological methods and sound scientific principles. The acquisition significantly broadens Target RWE’s data analytics capabilities and will enable the company to meet increasing demand for high quality evidence from real-world data.

Related to this acquisition, Amgen Inc., a strategic investor in and collaborator with NoviSci, has also made a strategic investment in the combined company to fuel growth, joining existing Target RWE investors Norwest Venture Partners and 22C Capital. This expanded partnership further validates the importance of real-world data on a global scale and the differentiated capabilities and solutions that Target RWE and NoviSci offer together. Financial terms of the transactions were not disclosed.

Neal Bibeau, Chief Executive Officer of Target RWE, said, “Target RWE’s proven real-world data and evidence solutions continue to grow in breadth, depth and value for our research and industry partners. With the addition of NoviSci’s novel analytics platform and experienced team, Target provides a highly adaptive environment to accelerate insights and reproducible research output from real-world data to various stakeholders in the healthcare ecosystem, including our pharmaceutical industry partners, healthcare investigator partners, government agencies and payor organizations.”

“Now more than ever, real-world evidence solutions are transforming healthcare. Our expanding longitudinal, observational data augmented with new sources of data allow for deep characterization of patient journeys across a broad range of diseases and treatments,” added Michael W. Fried, MD, FAASLD, Chief Medical Officer and Co-founder of Target RWE. “NoviSci’s expertise and novel analytical software complements our leading real-world evidence platform, and we look forward to integrating these products to enable accelerated growth in our industry.”

Durham-based NoviSci, Inc. applies epidemiologic methods and causal inference techniques from the fields of epidemiology and statistics to complex real-world data to support its partners in research and industry. NoviSci has built a novel repository of rigorously developed interactive real-world studies that can be adapted to new datasets and populations. All study results are rendered in NoviSci's secure web-based environment, featuring interactive content and compelling data visualizations that can be updated with accumulating data. NoviSci’s tools also support all critical aspects of scientific knowledge production, peer review, and sharing.

M. Alan Brookhart Ph.D., Co-Founder and Chief Scientist of NoviSci and Professor of Population Health Sciences at Duke University, said, “We are delighted to have the opportunity to apply our analytic technology to Target RWE’s unique data assets and to provide timely, relevant, and useful answers to important questions posed by stakeholders across the healthcare ecosystem.”

Aaron McKethan, Co-Founder and CEO of NoviSci added, “Our goal is to make it easier and faster to answer important questions in health care that result in better outcomes for people and populations. We have sought to use technology to bring the craft of scientific expertise to greater scale, particularly as research methods and data sources have become more complex.”