ZS acquires digital health specialist Medullan to accelerate innovation for life sciences

EVANSTON, Ill., June 15, 2021 — Global professional services firm ZS today announced it is acquiring Medullan, a leader in digital health and digital medicine strategies and solutions. The acquisition paves the way for offerings that will help drive the success and scale of digital health solutions for better patient outcomes. It will achieve this by combining ZS’s existing consulting, technology and analytical services in life sciences with Medullan’s innovative digital health solutions, as well as its pioneering virtual care and decentralized trial platform, ZS VARA™.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated patient acceptance and industry need for scalable, secure, reliable and seamless digital health solutions,” said Chris Wright, CEO at ZS. “The power and flexibility of Medullan’s platform and other capabilities—combined with ZS’s deep business expertise, industry relationships and global reach—mean that we’re able to help our clients overcome digital delivery barriers and improve patient outcomes in this unprecedented moment.”

The acquisition combines two established leaders in professional services for the life sciences and healthcare industries. Through its Digital and Connected Health (DCH) practice, ZS has helped clients with their digital health strategies, and counts 49 out of the top 50 life sciences companies as clients. Medullan has developed specialized resources and tools in the digital medicine space.

Digital health solutions offer the promise of improved patient outcomes and more effective clinical trials, but face many barriers to success—both within organizations and in the external marketplace. ZS has helped some of the leading innovators in life sciences address these challenges by combining extensive industry expertise with leading digital strategy and analytics capabilities. Medullan provides advanced solutions through its virtual care platform, ZS VARA™, and through its digital medicine solution design and development. The complementary capabilities of ZS and Medullan promise to help realize the potential of this growing field of commercialized digital health solutions and decentralized trials.

“The life sciences space has unique challenges and opportunities that we have been focused on,” said Medullan CEO Ahmed Albaiti. “By combining our teams and technologies, we can provide unique, end-to-end digital health capabilities in an increasingly digital-first world that will define the future. Delivering that future, while meeting the regulatory demands in life sciences product innovation and decentralized trials, is what we can do today.”

The acquisition is the largest in the history of ZS, a 37-year-old company that now employs over 9,000 professionals across more than 25 offices worldwide. When the transaction is finalized, Medullan’s 80-plus employees will join ZS’s digital health practice.

“Digital health solutions will transform how we experience healthcare, improve lives and reduce costs in the process. While significant progress has been made, there remain many challenges to overcome toward realizing this vision,” said Pete Masloski, principal at ZS and leader of the digital health practice, which Medullan employees will join. “Together we will be in a unique position—with deep digital health expertise and capabilities from strategy through execution—to help our clients create impact at scale in digital health,” said Dharmendra Sahay, principal and global leader of technology and analytics at ZS who also serves as the board sponsor of the digital health practice.

Looking for more on how ZS and Medullan can help you design and execute your digital health strategy? Join us for our Impact Series webinar on biopharma’s role in digital therapeutics and the future of digital medicine, scheduled for July 21, 2021, from 12–12:30 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. For more information and registration, click here.

ZS is a professional services firm that works side by side with companies to help develop and deliver products that drive customer value and company results. We leverage our deep industry expertise, leading-edge analytics, technology and strategy to create solutions that work in the real world. With more than 37 years of experience and 9,000-plus ZSers in more than 25 offices worldwide, we are passionately committed to helping companies and their customers thrive. To learn more, visit www.zs.com or follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Medullan, Inc. is a leading digital health firm that designs and builds outcomes-driven solutions with a direct and measurable impact on the healthcare industry. Fueled by a passion for health, a desire to challenge the healthcare paradigm positively and a culture of accountability, we work with payers, health services companies and life sciences companies to build solutions that create measurable business value and positive impact on the lives of their customers. Medullan was founded in 2005 and is based in Somerville, Masssachusetts.

ZS VARA™ is a virtual care platform that is unique, being fully compliant and configurable to address life sciences’ most urgent digital health needs—decentralized and hybrid clinical trials, digital therapeutics and digital-first patient and HCP engagement. ZS VARA™ provides rapid and flexible electronic patient-reported outcomes (ePRO), electronic consent (eConsent) and EHR integration capabilities, configurable to specific protocol and product requirements. ZS VARA™ offers an ecosystem of integrated partners and a breadth of out-of-the-box features: a patient portal, HCP dashboards, telehealth, engagement campaigns and remote patient monitoring via wearables and sensors—all in a white-label, ISO-certified package.