St. Louis-based CuriMeta, which focuses on using health care data to help advance medical research, says it plans to double its staff this year and grow to a team of 30-plus employees.
The expected headcount growth comes as CuriMeta has started to generate revenue after spending 2023 developing its technology to provide data to customers, said CEO Davis Walp. CuriMeta in recent weeks has announced new partnerships it says expands the usage of its health care data.
CuriMeta, which publicly launched operations in 2022, uses aggregated and de-identified patient data from health systems to create datasets that life science researchers and manufacturers can use to bring new therapeutics and treatments to market. It describes itself as a “real-world health data” company and in 2022 raised $6 million in a seed funding round led by BJC HealthCare and Washington University School of Medicine.
While CuriMeta has put a focus on its data being used by life science researchers and manufacturers, Walp said the startup has discovered there’s also interest in its data from health care-focused artificial intelligence companies that are building predictive models to be used in health care. He said about a third of inbound interest from prospective customers has come from companies using artificial intelligence.
CuriMeta in April said it inked a data licensing agreement with Nashville-based life sciences data company NashBio that will allow researchers to use data from both firms. CuriMeta has also formed a partnership with Menlo Park, California-based data company Verantos that involves CuriMeta’s data being part of Verantos’ research network. Financial terms of the partnerships weren't disclosed.
“We’ve demonstrated that the market wants what we have. We’ve demonstrated we can sell,” Walp said. “We’ve demonstrated the data we have has what researchers need. Now it’s just a matter of executing.”
CuriMeta will seek to boost its employment to meet customer needs, Walp said. CuriMeta currently has 16 full-time employees and expects to expand to more than 30 employees this year. Walp said it plans to add for roles in engineering, data science and clinical informatics.
The growth strategy for CuriMeta will also include efforts to expand its datasets. In addition to being investors in CuriMeta, Washington University School of Medicine and BJC HealthCare have provided data used by CuriMeta. Walp said BJC HealthCare’s merger with Kansas City-based Saint Luke’s Health System will create a larger data pool for CuriMeta. The startup is also working with Washington University School of Medicine’s McDonnell Genome Institute around genomics data.
