By Evereth Woodruff 
Datavant has established a fourth business vertical for itself by acquiring Ontellus, a Houston-based health records retrieval and claims intelligence company.
New York City-based Datavant, which has been around for about a decade, is a health data platform that connects and de-identifies patient data across organizations. By buying Ontellus, the company adds a legal and insurance vertical to go along with its three other verticals: payers, providers and life sciences firms. This move is meant to facilitate the exchange of clinical and billing data between providers and any professional organization that requests them — be it a legal department or insurance company.
The deal was announced Wednesday, and the two involved parties aren’t disclosing financial details.
Datavant CEO Kyle Armbrester said Ontellus stood out as an ideal acquisition target due to its strong technology platform and experienced management team, all of whom are staying on and receiving significant equity.
He noted that the acquisition of Ontellus supports Datavant’s core mission of reducing administrative burden for providers by digitizing medical record requests from lawyers and life insurers — processes that were manual and high-volume before.
Digitizing previously manual requests frees up Datavant’s product and engineering teams to focus more on developing patient and provider-centric solutions inside hospitals, Armbrester added. He pointed out that the company spends about $150 million per year on internal product innovation and is committed to releasing new offerings that address its customers’ pain points.
By establishing this fourth revenue vertical, Datavant is seeking to boost its top-line growth as well as diversify its customer base.
“I think it’s a market size that could rival our health plan and payer segments, so it could easily be a billion-dollar-plus vertical over the next several years,” Armbrester remarked.
Datavant’s purchase of Ontellus marks its second acquisition this summer, as the company closed its acquisition of real-world evidence platform Aetion last month.
In the future, Armbrester said that Datvant will continue to look for opportunities to grow through deals like these.
“We’re gonna be doing a lot of building and expanding, and we are constantly under surveillance for M & A [targets] of all shapes and sizes for our verticals. We’ll do everything we can to support them and grow them, so long as it’s driving value to our customers,” he declared.
Armbrester highlighted the growing demand for digital health data and its vital role in efforts such as accelerating clinical trials, improving patient care and reducing healthcare costs — and he reiterated that going forward, he wants Datavant to be a foundational player in the sector’s modernization through better data exchange.
Photo: boonchai wedmakawand, Getty Images