26
Jan
2020
Challenging Core Assumptions, Tech Backlash Paves The Way for More Thoughtful HealthTech
Digital transformation (as I recently discussed), and the implementation of emerging technologies more generally, is routinely pitched by enthusiasts like Tom Siebel as both urgent and inevitable, something organizations need to embrace or risk irrelevance, if not extinction. Yet the “embrace or die” assertion is under increasing, and healthy, scrutiny, as the “techlash” (technology backlash) gains steam. “Surveillance Capitalism”: Tech... Read More
23
Jan
2020
Incrementalism is the new Disruption, Trust is the New Black, and Positive Change (for now) at FDA: Takeaways from the 2020 Precision Medicine World Conference
I had the privilege of serving as emcee for the “Data Science and AI” track on the first day of this week’s Precision Medicine World Conference (PMWC) in Santa Clara, CA, as well as chairing a panel discussion on data mining and visualization. I came away with a sense of optimism and need, organized around several key themes. In Praise... Read More
23
Jan
2020
Much Ado About Coronavirus and 23andMe Hits the Wall
This was a quiet week in biopharma. Review it in your weekly Frontpoints. This Week in Alarmism Every year, we hear about an infectious disease scare that generates massive coverage, way out of proportion with the actual threat posed. Remember Mad Cow disease, SARS, Bird flu, Ebola, etc. etc? I’ve been in newsrooms providing saturation coverage of such things, and... Read More
22
Jan
2020
False Heroes: Pharmacy Benefit Managers and the Patients They Prey On
[Editor’s Note: this is an excerpt from “The Great American Drug Deal.” The book is now available on Amazon.] By Peter Kolchinsky It’s hard to know when actual prices for a particular drug really do go up, because there is so little transparency in pricing. A lot of the public discourse on pricing is based on “list prices,” which no... Read More
21
Jan
2020
Seeking to Understand Dr. King’s Vision of Unity, at Our Divided Moment
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16
Jan
2020
Understanding The Ideology Of Digital Transformation
The phrase resounding in corporations these days is “digital transformation.” What does that really mean? According to proponents, digital transformation reflects the assertion that in order to remain competitive in the modern era, organizations need to radically rethink their approach to how they collect, manage, and analyze information. Change is clearly afoot, but the ideology informing this hasn’t been entirely... Read More
16
Jan
2020
Lilly’s Half-Measure on Insulin, Illumina’s Up-Market Play, & the Little Deals from SF
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15
Jan
2020
Atomwise and EQRx: Two Contrasting Strategies for the R&D Inefficiency Problem
Pharma innovation expert Bernard Munos captures the inherent inefficiency of drug development with two fascinating statistics he recently shared with me. First, for large pharmas, the average cost of developing a new drug (simply based on the total R&D costs divided by the total number of new drugs approved for sale) works out to about $5B per drug. It’s an... Read More
13
Jan
2020
A New Cholesterol-Lowering Drug at a Low Price: Tim Mayleben on The Long Run
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12
Jan
2020
EQRx Taps Zeitgeist, Raises $200m For Innovative Drugs at Aggressive Low Prices
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10
Jan
2020
Entering JPM20 With a Grounded, Yet Hopeful, View of Health Tech
Health tech seems balanced precariously between excessive optimism and excessive skepticism, between the promise that emerging technology is poised to disrupt health like it has so many other areas, and the painful recognition that many idealistic technologists misunderstood both the scientific and human dimensions of the inordinately complex problems to be solved in both health care services and the development... Read More
9
Jan
2020
MRNA Vaccines Impress, Blueprint Wins First FDA OK, & Calif. Gov. Stares Down Biotech on the Eve of #JPM20
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9
Jan
2020
Sanofi’s New CEO Captures Pharma’s Grounded View of Health Tech
Since taking over as Sanofi’s CEO in September, Paul Hudson has been blunt in his assessment of health technology decisions, and indecisions, made by previous management. Early in his tenure, Hudson took square aim at his company’s once-heralded $500 million collaboration with Verily on Onduo. This partnership was started in 2016 and intended to help diabetics better manage their condition. ... Read More
7
Jan
2020
We’ve Been Neglecting Common Diseases. We Need to Reverse this Trend
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6
Jan
2020
Three Lessons for Business Ahead of JPM, from the Kilimanjaro Climb to Fight Cancer
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2
Jan
2020
HBV Curative Treatments Gear Up in the Clinic, as HCV Combos Help to Guide the Way
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1
Jan
2020
New Job, Same Thesis: Aligning Tech & Pharma To Elicit Best Of Both
With the New Year, I’m very excited to share a professional update: as of January 1, I’m the proud founder of “Astounding HealthTech,” providing advisory services to R&D-driven biopharma organizations and health tech startups striving to engage each other more effectively. The mission of Astounding is to catalyze drug development by aligning the specific capabilities and distinct needs of individual... Read More
30
Dec
2019
Designer Proteins as Better Therapies: David Baker on The Long Run
Today’s guest on The Long Run is David Baker. David is a biochemistry professor at the University of Washington, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, and the director of The Institute for Protein Design at the University of Washington. Just like the name suggests, this institute works on designing proteins with special properties. Sometimes these proteins are designed on computers,... Read More
26
Dec
2019
Losing 80 Lbs Was Hard; Keeping It Off Was So Much Harder
Last year, at about this time, I shared my experience losing 80 pounds. I achieved this goal through a low-carb diet and coaching, guided by the Virta program, along with regular exercise. The overarching concern I expressed in that article, one year ago, was my recognition of how fragile weight loss can be. Most people who lose significant weight soon gain it... Read More
10
Dec
2019
Biotechs Build on Single-cell Analytics for Drug R&D, as Human Cell Atlas is Mapped
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