Partnership announced with Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to drive rare disease drug development
With its leading consumer health AI platform, Citizen Health will help patients navigate their conditions and accelerate novel therapies
SAN MATEO, Calif., Nov. 19, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Citizen Health, an innovative AI-powered consumer health platform designed to support over 400 million individuals managing rare and complex conditions, has announced the successful closing of a $14.5 million seed round. The funding round was led by Transformation Capital, with participation from Wavemaker 360 and prominent angel investors. This fundraise is further strengthened by a strategic program investment and partnership with the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI).
Navigating healthcare, especially for rare diseases, presents significant challenges. With more than 10,000 rare diseases and 95% lacking approved therapies, patients often struggle to find effective care pathways. Citizen Health addresses this gap by building a comprehensive knowledge base that captures each patient’s complete health journey, including clinical data, genetic information, imaging, and patient-reported outcomes. This extensive repository enables patients to access answers based on others’ experiences and assists researchers in accelerating drug development by providing immediate access to critical information, potentially reducing the time to develop new therapies by years.
“With our collective experience and expertise, we’re working together to drive a future where any patient, at any stage, of any condition, has immediate access to exceptional guidance on the best action to take,” said Farid Vij, CEO and co-founder of Citizen Health. “Through our AI-powered platform, we are giving people agency over their health data to help themselves and each other, while shaving years off the drug development process for these critical diseases.
“As precision medicine evolves, understanding patients at an individual level is crucial for developing tailored therapies and care options,” added Nasha Fitter, co-founder and chief business officer, who is inspired by her youngest daughter who suffers from an ultra-rare disease. “This shift in empowering patients and caregivers is the path to a true consumer-led health system for every patient across every condition, and in no area is this more amplified than in rare and complex conditions.”
Rare diseases play a significant role in this paradigm, highlighting the limitations of traditional healthcare approaches. A study by the EveryLife Foundation revealed that 379 rare diseases impose an economic burden of $1 trillion annually in the U.S., underscoring the urgent need for innovative solutions like Citizen Health.
Citizen Health’s launch is bolstered by a strategic investment and collaboration with CZI’s Rare As One Project, which supports patient-led organizations working to accelerate research and improve the lives of people affected by rare disease. Citizen Health founders’ personal experiences navigating the healthcare system as patients and caregivers inspired them to partner with CZI. CZI’s support aims to help rare disease groups and scientists better understand rare diseases, accelerate the launch of clinical trials and advance drug development.
“Rare diseases are not as rare as they seem, and empowering patients to direct their data to research opportunities can accelerate biomedical research for everyone,” said Tania Simoncelli, vice president of Science in Society at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. “Citizen Health’s expertise in AI, healthcare, and commitment to patient centricity is opening new avenues for rare disease patients to drive research forward and advance the development of new treatments.”
Citizen Health plans to announce additional key partnerships and new product features in the coming months, further benefiting patients and advancing their mission to transform the healthcare landscape for those with rare and complex conditions.
About Citizen Health
In 2023, Citizen Health was founded to fundamentally flip the healthcare system on its head: empowering patients to take charge of their own care through individual health data, as well as driving industry research to accelerate treatments for those who need it most.
Inspired by personal experiences and an incredible bench of passionate leadership with expertise spanning tech, healthcare and business, Citizen Health’s mission is to use the power of shared experiences to provide relief to patients, caregivers, and families navigating rare and complex conditions.
Citizen Health sees a future where any patient, at any stage, of any condition, has immediate access to exceptional guidance on the best personalized actions to take at that point in time.
About the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative was founded in 2015 to help solve some of society’s toughest challenges — from eradicating disease and improving education, to addressing the needs of our communities. Through collaboration, providing resources and building technology, our mission is to help build a more inclusive, just and healthy future for everyone. For more information, please visit chanzuckerberg.com.
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SOURCE Citizen Health
