Deerfield Management Partners With AWS to Scale AI Across Healthcare Portfolio

The partnership will focus on applying generative and agentic AI across drug discovery, business operations and care delivery, according to the companies.

Investment firm Deerfield Management has partnered with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to expand the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) across its healthcare and life sciences portfolio, providing selected companies access to AI infrastructure, cloud technology, technical training and support.

Under the collaboration, AWS will serve as a preferred AI provider for Deerfield and its portfolio companies. The partnership will focus on applying generative and agentic AI across drug discovery, business operations and care delivery, according to the companies.

The collaboration combines AWS's cloud and generative AI services with Deerfield's team of AI engineers and the innovation ecosystem of its affiliate, Cure, a healthcare innovation campus in New York City.

Deerfield also plans to integrate AWS AI services into its internal research, investment evaluation and operational processes. Its Deerfield Intelligence and Deerfield Discovery and Development (3DC) teams will receive access to AWS technology and technical support to develop and scale proprietary healthcare AI products.

Deerfield Intelligence serves as the firm's data, technology and AI division, while 3DC functions as its internal research and development engine.

Selected portfolio companies will also receive technical enablement and training in areas such as large-scale model training, inference optimization and healthcare-specific managed services.

Dan Sheeran, Vice President and General Manager of Healthcare and Life Sciences at AWS, said the collaboration would support the development of AI-powered healthcare organizations. He cited Amazon Bio Discovery and Amazon Bedrock AgentCore among the services available to companies exploring healthcare-specific AI applications and agentic AI systems.

Jim Flynn, Managing Partner at Deerfield, said the firm's Intelligence team is developing models to transform how it identifies investment opportunities, evaluates scientific research and supports its portfolio companies.

Deerfield has investments in more than 200 private and public healthcare and life sciences companies. In May 2025, the firm announced its third healthcare innovation fund, allocating more than $600 million toward emerging therapeutics and healthcare technologies.

One of its portfolio companies, Ascertain, is already using AWS infrastructure for an agentic AI platform designed to automate administrative healthcare workflows, including case management and prior authorization.

Mark Michalski, MD, Chief Information Officer at Deerfield and CEO of Ascertain, said AWS's healthcare-focused services could help the company scale its automation capabilities and reduce administrative workloads for clinicians.

Through the partnership, AWS infrastructure will serve as a common technology layer across Deerfield's internal operations and participating portfolio companies, supporting the development and deployment of AI applications.

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