D.C.’s Socially Determined Inc. is making some changes to its C-suite, building on the momentum of its best stretch over five years of operation.
“We had our most successful two quarters at the end of 2021,” said Dr. Trenor Williams, co-founder and CEO of Socially Determined. In a push to continue on that trajectory, the analytics startup has appointed two health care industry veterans to its leadership team: Paul Matsui as chief strategy officer and Mike Considine as chief product officer.
They join the company to help address increasing demand for its platform, which arms organizations with data about the health and social risks in their communities, known as the social determinants of health.
“This is one of the main reasons we knew Paul and Mike were the right leaders to bring on board,” Williams said. “Both have extensive health care market, health care product and health care data experience and have spent their careers focused on creating customer value through product adoption.”
The new appointments
Matsui joins Socially Determined following nearly two decades with the D.C.-based The Advisory Board Co., most recently as executive director of its data analytics research and technology business. He also founded the Antigrav Group, a product development consultancy for early-stage companies, after serving as an equity analyst in biotech and medical supplies for Citigroup Inc., Goldman Sachs and Piper Jaffray, which is now Piper Sandler Cos.
Matsui succeeds Anthony Beverina, who shifted to a full-time adviser role with the company in the fall and remains an active board director, according to the firm. In his new role, Matsui will be tasked with leading corporate strategy for Socially Determined.
Because the pandemic has only worsened health disparities across the country, “the focus on identifying and addressing social risk has never been more important,” Matsui said in a statement, adding that he’ll now be focused on “driving both meaningful improvements in health equity as well as in the business performance of our payer, provider, and life sciences partners.”
Considine moves to Socially Determined as chief product officer from Chicago’s TransUnion LLC, where he was vice president of enterprise product initiatives for health care. There, he spent more than eight years in senior product development roles, and had previously worked with eScan Data Systems Inc., which TransUnion acquired in 2013.
He assumes the position from Nithi Vivitrat, who per his LinkedIn left Socially Determined in January. With Socially Determined, Considine will lead the firm’s product development and engineering teams in expanding and deepening the capabilities of its social risk intelligence platform, called SocialScape.
“We have a tremendous opportunity to transform the entire health care industry by providing insights into social risk factors that impact organizations’ key business metrics and the health and wellbeing of those they serve,” Considine said in a statement.
The growth goals
Socially Determined aggregates publicly available data from federal, state and local sources, as well as commercial data from vendors about communities, businesses and people. It then uses that information to identify the factors that put certain communities at higher risk. During Covid, the company expanded its business model to include the Covid-19 Social Susceptibility Index, which considers access to health care and other social risk factors such as food insecurity, housing instability, lack of transportation and social isolation. The goal: to pinpoint where pockets of risk exist and help the people who need it.
The new hires come in a critical moment for Socially Determined, which has been on a growth tear through the coronavirus crisis. The business, whose headcount now sits in the mid-40s, is hiring across product, data science, sales and client delivery positions — shooting to reach the mid-50s by the end of 2022, Williams said. The company is also looking to add more organizations to its customer base, which counts roughly 25 clients including CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield and LifeBridge Health locally.
The company, which has raised roughly $17 million in funding to date, has also been “contemplating” a Series B financing round, Williams said, echoing his sentiments from July — and hopes to build on momentum from 2021 “as we discuss the massive growth opportunities in front us with potential financial partners,” he said, declining to share details at this point or annual revenue figures.
“We’ve spent the last few years creating a market and building a tech platform that provides our customer health care and social risk insights that didn’t exist before,” Williams said. “We’ve proven that it works with in every health care sector, including health care payers, providers, life science companies, nonprofits and others, and now it’s time to scale our platform.”
