Sympatic, a data collaboration platform that allows users to create and manage safe data sandboxes in their cloud of choice, today announced that it has raised a pre-seed round of funding led by Saltagen Ventures with participation from ScaleGood Fund.
Sympatic rethinks how data collaboration occurs and lays the foundation for a future of ethical data use. Sympatic’s founder, Dr. Piers Nash, personally experienced the endless delays and barriers to data sharing over two decades in research. A University of Chicago cancer research professor and Director of the National Cancer Institute Genomic Data Commons, Nash experienced how difficult, risky and expensive it is to access vital data to accelerate new cures.
The current industry standard is data sharing agreements that take months to negotiate and are ultimately unenforceable; where sensitive data is duplicated, and copies of data shipped out of reach. Risk, uncertainty, and danger results in lost time, failure to create innovations, and revenue forgone. With as few as three data elements being enough to positively re-identify most individuals, the notion that de-identification provides privacy protection is misleading. Solutions that obfuscate, tokenize, or encrypt data decrease data quality and increase analytic complexity while creating a residue of future risks.
Sympatic is revolutionizing the process with VirtualVault® management. “As a cancer researcher and genomic data custodian, it’s painful to see privacy policies fail when data is shared or data held back that could save lives.” said Piers Nash, Sympatic’s founder, and CEO. “Our goal is to allow the full power of deep medical data to be used to drive discovery and new AI models while leaving data owners in full control without the need to duplicate data. We are thrilled to partner with Saltagen Ventures who share Sympatic’s commitment to developing the next generation of zero-copy data collaboration tools.”
“We’re pleased to partner with Sympatic, a mission-driven technology company that was born from Piers’ firsthand experience navigating the complexities of healthcare data collaboration,” said Joseph Fung, managing partner at Saltagen Ventures. “The Sympatic team has already made an immense impact developing patentable technology to unleash the value of data collaboration that stands to transform the health and life science industry.”
