- Tempus, founded by Eric Lefkofsky in 2015, merges technology with healthcare, utilizing AI and data to revolutionize cancer care.
- The company's comprehensive platform employs AI and machine learning to analyze medical data, accelerating precision medicine and patient outcomes.
- It has secured $1.3B in funding over 13 rounds and aims to personalize cancer treatment using AI-powered insights.
All of us love concerts. Isn’t it? From Harry Styles to Falguni Pathak, or from Taylor Swift to Prateek Kuhad - Concerts make you feel alive again! What if I say that cancer patients too can feel a similar joy of the concert in the form of medicine? But what's different is, it is not a happiness of temporarily moment but rather a permanent revolution.
What is Tempus?
Consider this: In the spotlight to transform cancer care, Tempus is like a renowned rockstar. Tempus, a company founded in 2015 by the only Eric Lefkofsky (remember Mick Jagger of Groupon fame?) is here to challenge cancer! But how?
The Tempus Team is focussing on amalgamating technology with healthcare. They tend to bring the power of artificial intelligence and data to this industry with the intent of personalized treatment, advancing precision medicine, accelerating cancer research, improving patient outcomes, and bridging the Gap between Data and Clinical Practice.
Tempus being the centre of the attraction has the ability to play more than one instrument - they're masters of an entire ensemble. Their cutting-edge platform collects all the medical notes, pathology reports, and genomic data you can imagine. It's like having a wild concert crowd of data right at their fingertips!
Well, the amalgamation of tech and healthcare isn’t new in the 21st century, for example, Vicarious is on the journey to manufacture robots that could help doctors do invasive surgery.
But what makes Tempus different?
Its amazing array of technology, includes artificial intelligence, machine learning, and even a little rock 'n' roll. Even the best guitar solos couldn't match the patterns and insights that these rock star algorithms discover when they analyze the data like ecstatic concert-goers.
It is definitely considered to be the rock star conductor conducting a symphony of clinical and genetic data. They're slamming those strings and singing rock songs to give doctors the most comprehensive understanding possible of tumors. Like a mind-blowing encore, it has the audience on its feet and clamoring for more!
But what does this whole concert thing consist of in the medical world? The segments of Tempus lie under two broad aspects - Providers and Life Sciences.
PROVIDERS
As per their website, their platform and technology serve various purposes: (Source: Tempus)
- Oncology: Oncology providers, deliver a comprehensive view of patients through their suite of genomic profiling and trial-matching offerings.
- Neurology & Psychiatry: For mental health professionals, their pharmacogenomic (PGx) results and gene-drug interaction information can help make precision medicine a reality for all patients.
- Infectious Disease: Starting with COVID-19, and extending into the broad range of viral infections, Tempus offers frontline testing, next-generation sequencing, and clinical research capabilities to understand and combat these diseases.
- Cardiology: Clinicians, build solutions that leverage routinely generated clinical data to help find patients with undiagnosed or under-treated cardiovascular disease.
- Academic & Research Centres: For clinicians associated with advanced research initiatives, Tempus provides next-generation genomic profiling, biological organoid modeling, image/pattern AI recognition, and a range of clinical trials and research collaborations.
- EHR Integration: With a dedicated team of integration experts, they offer a fully interoperable solution for clinical ordering and returning results back.
LIFE SCIENCES
As per their website, their solutions are pretty strategic and sequential: (Source: Tempus)
- Sequencing: Their genomic platform can prospectively sequence through clinical trials and retrospectively support research priorities.
- Data Collaborations: Leveraging real-world datasets of matched molecular and clinical data with digital whole slide pathology images in order to uncover new insights across the research and development spectrum.
- Biological Modelling: Leveraging their robust biobank of patient-derived tumor organoids to accelerate drug discovery.
- Companion Diagnostics: Integrate CDx claims into Tempus assays through a validated and established sequencing platform to pursue companion diagnostic biomarkers.
- Clinical Research Organization Services: Bring discoveries from the lab to market through our full-service CRO.
- Clinical Trial Enrollment: Utilize NGS and EMR integrations to identify patients that match your study's eligibility criteria, including targetable biomarkers from DNA and RNA.
- AI Applications: Their AI algorithms run on top of standard diagnostics modalities and give researchers new AI-driven insights to support clinicians’ management of their individual patients and potential trial eligibility.
- Tempus Studies: Leveraging their end-to-end solutions in order to design and execute Tempus-sponsored clinical trials for therapeutics, devices, and diagnostics from study concept to registrational filing.
In order to simplify all of the above scientific information, let’s bring back the rockstar concert analogy! The energy of the crowd is what a rock star feeds off, while Tempus feeds off the data from genomic and medical records. They enhance the signals that are there, isolate the important notes, and combine them into a masterpiece that aids doctors in making accurate treatment choices.
Tempus is in it for the long haul; they don't just offer a one-time performance. Their objective is to give medical professionals the resources they need to revolutionize cancer treatment.
Tempus assists doctors in fine-tuning their treatment plans so they can hit the high notes of personalized medicine like genuine virtuosos by analyzing enormous volumes of data.
But hey, it isn't easy to run a show like that huge, right? Tempus thinks that attention should be shared. Together, they comprise an all-star group of healthcare organizations, research institutions, and pharmaceutical businesses.
Together, they revolutionize the field of cancer research by sharing their knowledge and skills to produce ground-breaking scientific discoveries.
Funding
Tempus and their concert show have raised a total of $1.3B in funding over 13 rounds. Their latest funding was raised on Oct 20, 2022, from a Debt Financing round. It is funded by 11 investors in total out of which Ares Management and Google are the most recent investors.
Tempus has a post-money valuation in the range of $1B to $10B as of Oct 20, 2022, according to PrivCo.
Recently, Tempus announced the broad launch of Tempus One in the month of June 2023 - The first clinical assistant with AI capabilities that puts patient information at clinicians' fingertips by utilizing advances in generative AI. The article i.e. published
Tempus - quotes statements that describe the power and ability of Tempus One.
“Tempus One demonstrates the power of assistive technologies by simplifying the often complex process of ordering, obtaining, and interpreting genomic testing,” - Sandip Patel, MD, UC San Diego Health
“The ability to have a voice assistant augment our efforts in delivering precision oncology allows us to unlock the power of artificial intelligence for direct clinical benefit for our patients.” - Sandip Patel, MD, UC San Diego Health
Well, knowing that there is an AI now for medical assistance, especially for cancer patients makes me believe in their rockstar concert. Their big finish? The most impressive performance of Tempus is aiming for is curing cancer one patient at a time. They're offering doctors superstar-level powers to personalize therapies and rock the world of cancer by unleashing the power of data. Isn’t this AWE-COOL?
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Edited by Shruti Thapa
