citybiz+ Socially Determined Gains Momentum In Funding As It Advances Social Risk Measurement Platform

Socially Determined has raised a total of approximately $36 million in venture funding, including $26 million in a Series B round announced on Tuesday (June 28) by the Washington, D.C.-based firm, which is developing a social risk measurement platform.

The latest round was led by Washington- and San Francisco-based Questa Capital with participation from existing investors — LRVHealth, OSF Healthcare, Ziegler Link-Age Funds and Baltimore-based HealthWorx, the investment and innovation arm of CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield (CareFirst).

So far, Socially Determined has raised $36 million in venture funding, including $11.1 million in a Series A round in 2020. Healthworx, Lafayette General Health, 3M, LRVHealth and others were the investors.

Health first, but varied use cases exist

Socially Determined, founded by CEO Trenor Williams, has built a social risk intelligence platform — dubbed SocialScape. The platform analyzes varied and sometimes seemingly obscure social data, such as domestic violence, to optimize outcomes of health programs. It has initially targeted the healthcare industry, designing ways to use the data to build algorithms that can raise the performance of healthcare payers and providers, life science companies, government organizations and others.

But SocialScape has other use cases too. The data it collects and analyzes range from income and household size, to vehicle ownership rates, eating habits and education levels, all of which could be used to enhance the efficiency of varied businesses and programs.

Women who inspired Trenor Williams

Williams, a former Deloitte and IBM executive, has credited the development of Socially Determined to two women — his mother, a social worker, and a Veterans Health Administration executive. Williams has said that he realized the value of social parameters and data from his mother, who ran the Area Agency on Aging in in southwestern Virginia for 32 years.

“Six years ago…we had a lot of conversations about how her social workers conduct in-person interviews for eligible people at their homes. It struck me that the amount of data social workers had compared to a family practice was simply amazing,” he told Health Evolution in an interview. “They could see if the people were socially isolated, what was in the fridge, or how close the nearest grocery store is to them. In this case, Meals on Wheels had such a massive impact.”

Williams also was inspired by with Theresa Cullen, national chief medical information officer at VA, when engaging with her at his previous startup, Clinovations. Her guidance on varied things like homelessness and suicidality, for example, led Williams to “think about it from a much more structured point of view.”

Questa Capital

Questa Capital, which has offices in Washington, D.C., and San Francisco, is a healthcare-focused venture firm. So far, it has raised two funds. Its current portfolio consists of 27 investments. Questa has made 34 exits, eight of which were from startups valued in excess of $500 million each.

Cofounders Ryan Drant and Bradley Sloan serve as Questa’s two managing partners. Dranthas invested in healthcare since 1996, and was previously a general partner at New Enterprise Associates (NEA). He has overseen the deployment of $1billion in equity capital. He has also worked with the healthcare investment banking group of Alex.Brown& Sons and Arthur Andersen.

Sloan is a 20-year veteran of the healthcare industry and has invested in the sector since 1999. Previously, he was an investment professional at private equity firm Parthenon Capital. He has also held stints at healthcare tech firm Broadlane, and at investment firms MTS Health Partners, Evercore Partners and BearStearns.

Note: The article has been updated to correct errors in funding amounts

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