By Trenor Willams, MD
The past year has been an exciting period of growth and transformation for Socially Determined and to cap it off, we closed our Series B funding round. At the end of June, we announced the $26 million investment led by Questa Capital with participation from existing investors, OSF Healthcare, CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, LRVHealth and Ziegler Link-Age Funds. This investment will give us fuel to grow faster and do so much more to help our clients maximize their SDOH investments. But as we look ahead towards the future, it’s also a great time to take a step back to appreciate the accomplishments that got us here and form the strong foundation our company is building upon.
Here's a quick look back at some of Socially Determined’s “greatest hits” from the past year.
- New SDOH Metrics: In order to launch the SocialScape platform, our team did a tremendous amount of research to find the right public and private datasets that can be used to assess different social risk. We then developed algorithms to integrate and analyze the data into social risk scores in five key domains: food, housing, transportation, finance and health literacy. The work of identifying and integrating new datasets is – and will always be – ongoing, because we’re adamant about ensuring we have the best, most relevant data behind our analytics. We’ll continue integrating new data to strengthen our current risk scores, while also working tirelessly to develop new risk scores that can make an impact. In the past year, we were proud to introduce two new risk scores – one that assesses the Digital Landscape in a community, and the other that assesses Social Connectedness – two social risk domains that will be especially important to understand as we emerge from the pandemic.
- New and Extended Client Relationships: In the last year, we have grown our client base and signed-on new clients, while also expanding our current relationships with existing clients. The Institute for Public Health Innovation (IPHI) is an example of a new client relationships where we’re partnering on important work to help advance health equity and advocate for affordable, accessible, and quality care communities in Virginia. In addition to kicking-off new partnerships, many of our current clients that have seen value in our partnership have extended the length and scope of their contracts with us. CareFirst BlueCross Blue Shield is an excellent example. After using our solutions in isolated initiatives, CareFirst decided that Social Risk Intelligence should be a fundamental part of its business and chose to launch an enterprise-wide initiative to use the SocialScape platform across job functions and business lines.
- Industry Recognitions: One of the achievements we’re most proud of this year is the fact that we earned “straight As” on KLAS® Research’s 2022 Emerging Technologies Report. What makes this is such a meaningful distinction is that it’s based on direct, anonymous and unvarnished feedback from our clients. And in addition to the distinction of earning straight As in all of the six key categories KLAS measures, we also earned the top spot among all 500 vendors surveyed for executive involvement and were fourth overall in client service. Adding to the KLAS distinction, we were also thrilled to be named one of Fierce Healthcare’s Fierce 15 companies. This recognition speaks to our sustained growth and innovation to illuminate the impact of the Social Determinants of Health on populations, communities, and people. We were extremely honored to be recognized as one of the 15 most promising digital health startups by one of the most influential media outlets covering the industry.
- Strengthening the Team: We added a number of impressive people to the Socially Determined team over the past year – in the C-suite, on our Board of Directors and through a new advisory board. In February, we added two phenomenal hires to our executive team: Paul Matsui and Mike Considine. Paul spent nearly two decades at the Advisory Board Company and joined Socially Determined as our Chief Strategy Officer. Mike most recently served as VP of Enterprise Product Initiatives for Healthcare at TransUnion and joined our team as Chief Product Officer. We also added the extremely talented Nikia Bergan, president of GetWell, to our Board of Directors, and launched a powerhouse advisory board that includes former Secretary of Defense, William Cohen.
We’ve set ambitious goals for Socially Determined to revolutionize what “whole person care” means by providing insights into social factors that the industry has never had access to before. There’s still a lot of work to do, but as I look back, we have a strong record of success already and have put ourselves in a position to achieve even more in the future!