What Is the Significance of the Roche Acquisition of Flatiron?

People are talking about the acquisition ofFlatiron Health by Roche. Here is an article fromForbes that discusses the possible rationale for the purchase (see:The Flatiron Health Acquisition Is A Shot In The Arm For Roche's Oncology Real-World Evidence Needs) and below is an excerpt from the article:...Roche, a global pharmaceutical giant, [has] acquired Flatiron Health, an oncology-focused electronic health records (EHR) company, for $1.9 billion....[Flatiron] has a partnership with a large network of oncology clinics and a few major research facilities to gather patient data. While it was not entirely unexpected for Roche to acquire Flatiron Health, this high-cost deal has surprised many people, as the value proposition of this deal is unclear....But one thing is clear —Roche’s decision was not driven by Flatiron’s healthcare provider-client lists. There are enough regulatory barriers that prohibit a pharmaceutical company from directly collaborating with a provider in the US.....The Flatiron platform captures and normalizes both structured and unstructured oncology data from diverse source systems.It also captures unstructured data from sources such as laboratories, research repositories, payer networks, among others, and its analytics engine pulls out relevant insights from the unstructured data, which, when combined with electronic medical records (EMR) data, generate the real-world evidence. Through its innovative approach, Flatiron addresses a few impor...
Source: Lab Soft News - Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Tags: Electronic Health Record (EHR) Healthcare Information Technology Healthcare Innovations Medical Research Pharmaceutical Industry Source Type: blogs