Intermountain Healthcare Unveils Data-Driven Precision Medicine Company

Intermountain Healthcare announced the launch of biotechnology company Culmination Bio (Culmination), which is developing an anonymized and de-identified intelligence platform that aims to enhance patient care through the application of precision medicine insights. 

With the goals of driving clinical discovery, enhancing precision medicine, and improving care processes, Culmination includes physicians, scientists, operators, and commercialization and industry experts. Through these professionals, the organization will collaborate with commercial partners, such as technology and biopharmaceutical companies.

“We are thrilled to announce our partnership with Culmination Bio and the launch of its cutting-edge clinical discovery platform,” said Nickolas Mark, managing director and partner at the health system's investment arm Intermountain Ventures, in a press release. “This technology will revolutionize the way clinicians and researchers identify diseases and corresponding treatments. It has been a pleasure working with the Culmination team to build out a platform that will improve patient outcomes across the board.”

The organization has filled various leadership positions, including Lincoln Nadauld, MD, PhD, as president and CEO, Michael Wiley as chief operating officer, Mark Oldroyd as chief commercial officer, and McCall Rowley as interim chief financial officer.

With the assistance of Intermountain Ventures, Culmination is developing a de-identified intelligence platform to assist customers with accessing omics-level data along with an insights engine for medical research and health data. This platform includes millions of data points and supports data queries that could help identify diagnostic tests and treatments to improve care.

The company's research efforts will focus on determining patient predisposition to diseases, along with personalized methods for prevention and treatment.

“Culmination Bio was built to expand on the success of Intermountain’s precision medicine efforts by creating longitudinal multi-modal data sets. Culmination’s powerful insights platform will unlock the next generation of discoveries to advance healthcare,” said Nadauld in a press release. “Our focus is to discover better health for patients everywhere. Our partnership with Intermountain Health has enabled us to build a platform that will revolutionize the way we identify and implement novel clinical insights to benefit patients.”

Developing and applying advanced technological approaches to improve patient outcomes is a growing practice. But as use grows, providers must consider standards to ensure ethical care delivery.

In November 2021, Intermountain Healthcare created a Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Center of Excellence that aims to maintain ethical standards while improving artificial intelligence (AI) practices.

The center brought together experts from various disciplines, such as data analytics, applied mathematics and statistics, computer science, behavioral sciences, econometrics, computational linguistics, clinical informatics, and clinical specialists.

The goals of the center include improving the quality and affordability of healthcare, identifying care disparities, and ensuring ethical AI practices.