🔒With beefed up C-suite and board, Farmington medtech Diameter Health sets sights on 100-employee mark

Diameter Health CEO Eric Rosow said his company had record growth in 2021 and aims to continue changing the healthcare data market into the new year.

The Farmington-based medical technology company provides data analytics services that help healthcare customers consolidate and better assess clinical data.

Diameter Health, which has raised $30 million in venture funding, has been steadily growing since it was founded eight years ago, Rosow said, and is potentially one of the best examples of a startup that’s grown out of the state’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. It got its start at the UConn Technology Incubator Program in Farmington before moving out on its own.

Last year Diameter Health grew its workforce 25% and will likely surpass the 100-employee count by 2023, Rosow said. It also made Inc. magazine’s 2021 list of the 5,000 fastest-growing U.S. companies, recording 215% revenue growth between 2017 and 2020, according to the magazine, which didn’t disclose specific revenue numbers.

“Data is the new currency of the 21st century,” Rosow said in a recent interview. “All of us humans are being digitized across every aspect of our lives, from electronic health records, our genetic sequences, our wearables, to what we watch on Netflix. This new data economy that’s emerging is really a health data economy.”

Making sense of data

Rosow is an entrepreneur with a track record. Earlier in his career he worked at Hartford Hospital as the director of biomedical engineering, which put him in contact with a multitude of vendors, clinicians and IT organizations.

That work inspired him in 2000 to start a company, Premise Corp., which developed software to help health systems streamline patient flow. The company was eventually acquired by Eclipsys Corp. in 2008, which was swallowed up by Allscripts two years later.

Diameter Health’s main product, Fusion, aims to make sense of digital patient files that can contain dozens, or even hundreds of pages of information with potentially redundant or conflicting data.

For example, a file may indicate a patient is taking several medications, when he or she is actually on a single pill that’s been documented under different brand names.

Diameter’s software would recognize the different names as the same medication, and list it as such, condensing the file for busy doctors or pharmacists.

The software can also be used to streamline data for researchers looking for things like the number of people who were prescribed an opioid in a specific geographic area, or how many people in a region have received immunizations.

Fusion organizes and analyzes more than 225 million clinical documents — like medical history logs or prescription records — for clients including health information exchanges, care providers, insurance companies and health IT vendors. Diameter Health also works with the Department of Veterans Affairs and state governments.

The company launched a new trademarked brand in 2021 — called “Upcycling Data” — that describes its process of converting raw clinical data into a more “clean, clear” and usable form that can work across different healthcare spaces.

Interoperability — or marking sure different computer systems or software can exchange information — is a key part of Diameter Health’s strategy.

Rosow equated the process to creating a cliff-notes version of a long book.

“We look at all this data as digital crude oil,” Rosow said. “That digital crude oil is in the ground, in tanks, on trucks, but it’s still crude. … Diameter really positions itself in that center part of the value chain as a refinery where we enrich and upcycle that data.”

Rosow said data has the potential to change the healthcare industry — a $4 trillion market that makes up roughly 20% of the country’s GDP.

And the COVID-19 pandemic has presented an opportunity since it exposed the need for accurate, organized and readable clinical data in order to provide safe and timely care.

“In many ways the pandemic highlighted the inequities of access to treatment, to testing, to diagnoses, so it actually really further amplified the purpose and mission of this company,” Rosow said.

New partnerships

While the healthcare industry is an obvious market for the company, Rosow said Diameter Health is also focused on partnerships with state and federal governments.

“We’re in our fourth year of working with the Veterans Administration to monitor and identify gaps in data quality, and we also work with one of the largest states in the nation to look at the quality of data for COVID testing,” Rosow said.

Diameter Health officials also touted new partnerships in 2021 with companies such as Surescripts, Ciox, Swiss Re and Amazon Web Services. Surescripts is a Virginia-based health information network that connects healthcare organizations and pharmacies.

Diameter Health’s technology provides Surescripts standardized data that communicates comprehensive patient histories, saving pharmacists time from having to track down missing or incomplete information.

“Surescripts is focused on reducing the time it takes to get patients needing specialty medications onto their therapy,” said Mike Pritts, the company’s chief product officer. “By providing fast and easy access to simple-to-understand, normalized, patient-centric clinical data, we can help providers avoid the back-and-forth phone calls and faxes that slow the approval of specialty therapies and ultimately delay treatments.”

As part of its growth last year, Diameter Health also beefed up its senior leadership team with five new executives and added some star power to its board, including Jill Hummel, the former Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield Connecticut president and general manager. It also named former UnitedHealthcare Chief Information Officer James Bradley board chairman.

The company has successfully raised venture funding in recent years including $18 million in a Series B round in 2020 and $9.6 million in 2019.

Investors have included managed care organization Centene Corp., Optum Ventures, LRVHealth, Connecticut Innovations and Activate Venture Partners.