PRA acquires Symphony Health Solutions for $530m
Conshohocken, PA-based Symphony Health provides data, analytics, and technology solutions and has more than 250 employees and more than 400 customers.
In addition to expanding its consulting solutions, the acquisition also provides PRA access to Symphony Health’s commercial health data asset – Integrated Dataverse – which contains information on more than 280m people, including real world evidence observations.
PRA’s CEO Colin Shannon commented in a press release that Symphony Health will provide the contract research organization (CRO) with “rich data insights that will allow us to customize our clinical studies to be as unique as the patients who they are designed around.”
PRA did not provide any additional comment.
Symphony Health is owned by technology investment firm Symphony Technology Group (STG) and is expected to generate revenues in excess of $200m in calendar year 2017.
Following the transaction, which is expected to close in the third quarter of 2017, Symphony Health will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of PRA. Neal Bibeau will continue to serve as the company’s CEO.
Acquiring real world data
An analyst at GBI Research previously told us that real-world data (RWD) studies could “revitalize” productivity at a time when the industry is facing “unprecedented pressures.”
“It has been widely observed that a meaningful RWD study design necessitate a significant and deep understanding of the real world environment,” explained Rodrigo Gutierrez Gamboa. “This, in turn, necessitates easy access to robust and high quality real world health data and appropriate technology and analytic capabilities to analyze the data.”
This necessity is driving companies to explore the opportunities from real world health data and technologies via acquisition.
