A Story of Contrasts and Predictions: Orr Inbar, CEO and Co-Founder of QuantHealth

Orr Inbar is leading what is undoubtedly a revolution in healthcare data analysis. But what QuantHealth has managed to do – predictive simulation of clinical trials – is likely to have an impact far beyond the pharmaceutical industry. 

With personal modesty and self-awareness, Orr is a man of contrasts and persistence. He and his cofounder Arnon Horev have created a business and a company culture that never loses sight of its most valued mission – bringing value to the healthcare market and to patients by improving drug development.

In this interview, Orr tells us how he got to where he is and what lies ahead for QuantHealth – and the industry they’re shaking up. 

Let’s start from the beginning. We know you as a data scientist, a founder, an innovator. How did you end up where you are? 

By winging it. There’s been a lot of trial and error as I worked through the multiple identities and influences in my life. 

I was born in Indiana, United States. When I was seven we moved to Israel. When I was thirteen we moved to Boston. After attending college in the Northeast, I returned to Israel at 23 and, a few years later, I moved back to Boston for grad school and work, eventually founding a company there. Then I moved back to Israel yet again to start QuantHealth. And in a few months from now, I’m relocating back to New York – my fifth or sixth transatlantic move. 

Am I American? Am I Israeli? There’s always been this duality in my life. Over time, I’ve come to accept that I’m both – and that it’s an advantage. I’m able to bridge ideas, mindsets, and cultures. And that’s true for many of the American-Israelis and Israeli-Americans at QuantHealth. 

Another kind of duality exists in my areas of interest, which have been heavily influenced by my parents. My mom is a physiologist with a PhD in cardiac rehabilitation and my dad’s a computer engineer who worked at Intel for 30 years. So, on the one hand, I planned to go into medicine, while on the other I was always tinkering with electronics and programming. As an undergrad I was pre-med, but somewhere along the way I rediscovered computer science, which I took up in grad school. 

After that, I became an entrepreneur – and again struggled with my identity. Professionally, am I an engineer? A scientist? An entrepreneur? In QuantHealth, as it turns out, I exercise all those muscles on a daily basis. 

In hindsight, it’s become clear to me that I never fit very neatly into any one mold. It took me many, many years, but I’ve learned to appreciate that my constantly evolving identity, both personally and professionally, has made me who I am today. 

I think that one of my superpowers is that I’m comfortable being uncomfortable. I don’t mind uncertainty. I don’t mind ambiguity. I even enjoy it to some extent, because it’s a breeding ground for ideas and innovation.

QuantHealth also seems to combine a lot of worlds. Can you give us a little bit of background? 

It all started with Concert.ai, a company I helped start  which connects, analyzes and commercializes  oncology data andfor the pharma industry. In life-sciences, data is a critical asset and pharma constantly strives to get more of it, often to the point of obsession. The reality is that so much data already exists (healthcare produces 30% of the world’s data), and what I learned at Concert is most companies simply don’t know how to correctly analyze the data they already have. This is known as the data insights gap, and it’s a gap that continues to grow. QuantHealth took up the challenge of closing that gap.  . 

Clinical trials sit at the crossroads of all the key stakeholders – patients, pharmaceutical companies, healthcare providers, and insurers – making it an ideal entry point for innovation. And as an applied researcher, I could see how the datasets were evolving, becoming richer, deeper, and broader. At the same time, new methodologies, AI, and computational biology algorithms were rapidly developing, synergizing, and enabling radically new solutions to problems that have plagued the industry for decades. 

What problem does QuantHealth solve?

We help pharma companies improve the odds of trial success, while decreasing their overall trial expenditures. 90% of drugs fail in clinical trials, costing the industry $50B a year, and robbing patients of life-saving therapies. By integrating huge amounts of biological and clinical data, and applying advanced AI algorithms, we are able to model out patient level response to make trials more precise, with fewer patients, and a shorter timeline.

How did you decide to partner with your cofounder, Arnon Horev? 

Basically, we got really lucky. I did not know Arnon before QuantHealth and we both took a huge risk on each other. 

We were both in The Junction pre-seed startup program backed by F2 Capital and some people there said, “Hey, you two should talk.” We went out for coffee a couple of times, talked about some ideas, and it just seemed like a good fit. 

In May of 2020 we incorporated and we haven’t broken up or fought since. In part it’s because we complement each other in terms of our skills, but we also understand each other. I have a technology background, I’ve also led technology teams for most of my career, and Arnon has more of a business background, and has a lot of experience in digital health and digital diagnostic companies. We know enough of the other person’s skill sets to be able to speak the same language and work together. 

I think personality-wise, we both have the same temperament, which is also really important. We’re both thinkers who like to second guess ourselves and hear other opinions. If I’m really sure about something, then Arnon will give me pushback and vice versa. And so we’ve developed a dynamic of dividing and conquering on the little things, while putting our heads together on the big things. 

Co-Founder & Chief Strategy and Operations Officer Arnon Horev with Co-Founder & CEO Orr Inbar

Can you share an exciting milestone in QuantHealth’s trajectory?  

A huge turning point was when we realized that we could predict the results of a clinical trial before they were publicly announced. Traditionally, pharma companies pour hundreds of millions of dollars into phase two and phase three trials, waiting years for uncertain results, with stock prices and careers hanging in the balance. It’s a real nailbiter. But we developed models that could forecast these outcomes with high accuracy and repeatability, even without any of the pharma company’s internal data. We cracked the nut. This breakthrough confirmed that QuantHealth had figured out something that was going to be transformational for the industry. 

Once you can predict how clinical trials will play out, you can use that foresight to design better clinical trials, strategize about what treatments to invest in, and which drugs to license or buy. 

Another, more personal, milestone happened in 2023 when we collaborated with a major oncology-focused pharma company. After months of working together on a pilot to rethink their drug program and clinical trial approach, we unexpectedly ran into the lead investigator at a conference. Over coffee, she broke character and became emotional as she described how transformational and necessary QuantHealth’s work was for the industry, and how everyone needs to know about us. I knew that what we were doing was tremendous and impactful, but hearing a senior leader in big pharma speak in such a truly emotional and visceral way was very meaningful for me. 

I would assume that a lot of big clinical trial companies or in-house pharma teams have a hard time learning that a small start-up is doing what they never dreamt of doing.

Definitely. Some of our customers ask us outright how on earth a 30-person start-up out of Israel figured out what big name pharma companies hadn’t, with their thousands of data scientists and tens of millions of dollars in data assets. They worry they are missing something, or that we are not being truthful. 

The reality is that pharma is amazing at developing drugs, but they’re just not built for deep technological innovation. I believe you need a different DNA for that. 

So, some of these companies are beginning to understand that it makes sense to let others with the right expertise help them be successful. Luckily, that realization is accelerating and there are more and more companies for us to work with.

Do you think about the impact of more efficient clinical trials in getting the right drug into the hands of the people who need it? 

One hundred percent. And I’d say that’s the mission that most of us subscribe to on a day-to-day basis. The QuantHealth team includes a lot of engineers and data scientists, but most of them also have some background in biology, immunology, medicine, or another aspect of healthcare. Everyone is extremely aware that we are working on real problems faced by real people. Our database includes 350,000,000 anonymized patients, each of whom we know very intimately. Our team has collectively spent decades studying what is happening to them, the diseases they’re experiencing, the treatments they’re getting, what works, and what doesn’t. 

Moreover, we make sure that almost every team member engages with our customers at some level. That’s not common for engineering teams, but we consider it very important that everyone sees the real people behind the technological challenge. We sometimes invite speakers to discuss the clinical issues, and we’ll send engineers and data scientists to medical conferences. We encourage that kind of collective consciousness around our mission. 

How did Pitango come into the picture? 

Well, let’s be honest. First, I was looking for money. When we were raising our seed round, back in 2022, we were just a young company that hadn’t really proven itself and whose vision was still far into the future. Yet, Ittai Harel saw something in us early on. I think his unique experience around drug development and digital health gave him insight into the potential of what we were doing and that we were onto something. And so, Pitango became one of the first seed-round investors and Ittai became a close advisor.

And that relationship has continued until today. We consult with Ittai and the broader Pitango team at least on a weekly basis. Ittai has phenomenal wisdom and intuition regarding business strategy, marketing, and more. And the rest of the Pitango team has been very, very helpful with everything from HR to brand development. 

Finally, what advice would you give a young aspiring entrepreneur today? 

Three things. First, find a problem that you really, really care about solving. You need to be obsessed with the problem. Not with the technology or the solution, but with the problem. 

The second thing is founder-market fit. You may have a great idea, but it’s got to be applicable in a space that you have experience in and that you know something about. Cool and interesting is not enough. 

Third, find the right cofounder. I lucked out, but I have come to realize how important it is to invest in the effort. The right cofounder isn’t just somebody to take on half the responsibility for the company – though that is of monumental value to the team – they’re a force multiplier. When the match is right, one plus one equals three. 

Get those most important elements in order first, and then focusing on the many other things a company has to get right – such as choosing the right investors, hiring the right people, customer-centric marketing – will be that much easier.