Patient Square Capital Launches Patient Square Insights to Transform Health Care Private Equity Due Diligence

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Apr 06, 2021, 07:55 ET

MENLO PARK, Calif., April 6, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Patient Square Capital, a dedicated health care investment firm, announced today that it has established a proprietary research and due diligence center of excellence called Patient Square Insights ("PSI"). PSI will include a diverse set of experienced scientists and health care experts, all with a focus on delivering insights into technically complex areas of health care including disease areas, epidemiology and market sizing, regulatory, policy and reimbursement.

PSI will also utilize the purpose-built Patient Square Insights Network of curated expert advisors, as well as data science techniques and advanced survey methods, all specifically targeted on Patient Square's investment focus areas to improve the reliability of due diligence findings and lead to better investment decisions.

To lead this effort, the firm has hired Laura Furmanski, Ph.D. as Partner and Head of Patient Square Insights. Dr. Furmanski joins with 20 years of health care experience, most recently as Managing Director & Partner at Boston Consulting Group. While at BCG, Dr. Furmanski worked with biopharma and medical device companies on a range of R&D, market access and broader strategy topics, and she played a lead role in creating BCG's data and analytics offerings for the health care sector.

Prior to BCG, Dr. Furmanski created and was SVP and Head of the Bioinformatics Business Area for QIAGEN, a life science company. In that capacity, her team built and launched the company's genomic clinical decision support platform for oncology and rare diseases. She managed the engineering and commercial teams that delivered a portfolio of innovative informatics products to biopharmaceutical companies, academic research institutions, and clinical labs. Dr. Furmanski was also a Partner at McKinsey & Co, where she worked across the entire health care value chain. She holds a Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuroscience from UCLA and a B.A. from Stanford University.

"We believe that building dedicated and proprietary resources to enable a deep understanding of the nuances during due diligence will be the next major innovation in the private equity investing landscape, and this need is particularly acute in a specialized field like health care. Laura is the perfect fit to lead this function and will oversee scientists, health care professionals and research experts that will deliver unmatched due diligence insights to inform our investment decisions," said Jim Momtazee, Managing Partner of Patient Square.

"The private equity industry often outsources critical and technically complex elements of its due-diligence process. Investment outcomes in health care can hinge on the output of these analyses. By making these important elements of the due diligence process core competencies and proprietary capabilities of Patient Square, we believe we can meaningfully improve the quality and consistency of our investment due diligence," said Dr. Furmanski.

"Laura has deep and long-standing ties to our team at Patient Square," said Founding Partner Neel Varshney, M.D. "I first worked with Laura over 10 years ago at McKinsey and saw firsthand the kind of impact she can have. She brings tremendous expertise and relationships as well as a cultural alignment that make her uniquely well-suited for this important role at Patient Square."

Dr. Furmanski has already begun the buildout of the Patient Square Insights team with the hire of Emily Hartman Guthrie, Ph.D. as Senior Research Associate. Previously Dr. Hartman Guthrie was a Consultant at Boston Consulting Group, where she worked directly with Dr. Furmanski and specialized in health care strategy and private equity due diligence. Dr. Hartman Guthrie holds a Ph.D. in Chemistry from UC Berkeley, where she studied drug delivery vehicles for targeted cancer therapies. Her technical expertise includes synthetic biology, high-throughput sequencing, and analytical chemistry.

About Patient Square Capital
Patient Square Capital is a dedicated health care investment firm that partners with best-in-class management teams whose products, services and technologies improve health. We utilize our deep industry expertise, our broad network of relationships and a true partnership approach to make investments in companies that will grow and thrive. We believe in the power these companies have to improve patient lives, strengthen communities and create a healthier world. Patient Square is purpose-built by a team of industry-leading executives, differentiated by the depth of our focus in health care, the breadth of our health care investing experience, and the network we can activate to drive differentiated outcomes. Most importantly, patients are squarely at the center of all that we do. For more information visit www.patientsquarecapital.com

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SOURCE Patient Square Capital