Business people shaking hands in microchip
Business people shaking hands in microchip

Clinical decision support company Congenica, announced it will develop a version of its Sapientia platform specifically for the market in China and has signed on as a strategic partner Digital China Health Technologies Cooperation Limited (DCHealth), to help market the product to hospitals throughout the market.

“China is an important market for Congenica and this new relationship with DCHealth gives us greater insight into what the local market requires to accelerate the broader use of genomic medicine,” said David Atkins, CEO of Congenica in a press release. “This comprehensive commercial partnership will give us extensive market insight and access.”

“We also recognise the need to automate Sapientia to support wider usage and to help reduce costs to healthcare providers, helping more clinicians provide accurate, rapid and cost-effective diagnoses to patients and their families.”

With DCHealth, Congenica signs on a partner with long and broad experience in China. It has participated in a variety of national health initiatives including the National Rare Disease Registry System of China and has experience working with hospitals in the country to build IT systems that enhance patient care. DCHealth has built a reputation as one of the leading companies in China leveraging Big Data for precision medicine via its work establishing a nation-wide data network that connects 30 specialized cancer hospitals and 174 municipal cancer hospitals across the country.

“As the provision of routine clinical genomics services continues to increase in China and other global markets, the analysis and interpretation of genomic data will be one of the most challenging aspects of transforming these data into meaningful, clinically-actionable results,” noted David Shi, CEO of DCHealth. “Our business partnership reflects Congenica’s proven abilities and track record, and underlines our confidence that its clinical genomic diagnostics platform and services will support clinicians with definitive diagnoses and facilitate the delivery of consistently high quality of care.”

U.K.-based Congencia already has a toehold in the Chinese market supporting whole-genome sequencing processing and analysis for China’s 100K Wellness Pioneer Project. Closer to home, the company, which was spun out of Cambridge’s Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, has worked with National Health Service (NHS) to help it support genomic medicine on a national basis, and for the past three years has also worked closely with Genomics England’s 100,000 Genomes Project.

It’s core technology, the Sapientia clinical genomics analysis platform, Congenica’s company goal is to “revolutionize personalized patient care through accurate diagnoses, curation of evolving knowledge bases and support in clinical trials and drug development.” It is applicable not just as a decision support tool for cancer for all diseases including the ability to identify rare variants in the identification of rare diseases.

“Congenica is at the exciting scale up stage of its commercial development,” added Andy Richards, chairman of Congenica. “As a top-tier Cambridge-based life sciences company at the forefront of the fast-moving genomics market, Congenica has demonstrated how, with the right investment and leadership, the U.K. can build world-leading technology companies originating from world-leading U.K. science. Having made tremendous progress over the past 18 months, and with this additional commercial partnership in China, it is poised to become the leading clinical genomics services provider, benefiting patients worldwide.”

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