Dive Brief:
- NantHealth, a personalized medicine and IT company founded by Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, has filed for a $92 million initial public offering (IPO).
- The company has been vocal about going public for some time and now that it has, it isn't promising long-term profitability. In the filing, the company acknowledges it has consistently lost money and wrote it "expect[s] to continue to incur net losses for the foreseeable future."
- The company's "Comprehensive Learning Integrated NantHealth Intelligent Clinical System" (CLINICS) is a platform that includes various technologies, such as remote monitoring and medication adherence tools, to help clinical decision-making.
Dive Insight:
The number of shares and the size of the offering still have to be determined, Modern Healthcare noted.
NantHealth has raised at least $680 million from various investors - including Allscripts, Blackberry, and the government of Kuwait.
However, the filing comes with volatile conditions. First, according to the company's filing, NantHealth has lost money every year and last year experienced a net loss of $72 million. In addition, two former employees filed a lawsuit against the company last year, alleging NantHealth engaged in numerous fraudulent activities, including HIPAA and FDA regulation violations. The company denied the allegations but the case was dismissed.
And the very existence of NantHealth is entering new territory. As Modern Healthcare noted, the company "is forging a new model of care based on the idea that genomic analysis will one day inform how various diseases should be treated—a concept that's still in its early stages."
Though Soon-Shiong, who didn't collect a salary in 2014 or 2015 according to the filing, does have a fair amount of good will on his side. He created Abraxane and was recently appointed to a blue-ribbon committee for Vice President Joe Biden's Cancer Moonshot initiative.
The company said that one or more of its solutions or platforms are used by more than 2,000 hospitals or health systems, more than 70 health plans and one large, self-insured employer in the U.S. This totals to more than 100 million patients on NantHealth's provider and payor platforms, according to MobiHealthNews.