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31
Jul
2020

Closing Medicine’s Feedback Gap: Can Tech Help Integrate Clinical Care and Clinical Research?

Medicine is plagued by a feedback gap, or perhaps more accurately, a feedback paradox.  On the one hand, clinicians are bombarded by feedback. Every day, there are a slew of process and billing metrics to review, providing an accounting of the volume of patients seen, and the intensity of each visit.  How thorough was the exam? What procedures may have...
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30
Jul
2020

Jill Hagenkord’s Rags To Riches Story Reminds Us Why We Still Admire Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurial stories, often told through the narrative framework of the hero’s journey, are by now well past the point of cliché.  Yet, it’s important, perhaps even instructive, to remind ourselves every now and again about the exceptional, transformative power of entrepreneurship, the can-do thinking it motivates, and the remarkable progress it can propel. This potential emerged as a central theme...
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30
Jul
2020

Race and Life Sciences: Where is the Healing?

When I started to go to the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, it was still known as H&Q after boutique bank Hambrecht & Quist that had originated it. This means that, as a journalist, I have been able to watch biopharma grow up over the last 20 years. Those first few events I attended had so little diversity that the upstairs...
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20
Jul
2020

Barring Foreign Talent Is An Assault on Biotech Innovation

As a first generation American (John Maraganore) and a proud immigrant (Jeremy Levin), we’re appalled by the relentless, short-sighted assaults by this Administration on legal immigration. The latest attempt specifically aims to limit, and potentially shut down, immigration to America of the world’s best and brightest minds. This is precisely the time we need these bright minds. Thankfully, in light...
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20
Jul
2020

Clinical Trials: High-Value Attack Surface For Pharmatech Entrepreneurs

There’s an emerging sense among early stage investors that there are profound opportunities at the intersection of healthcare and technology, and no shortage of white papers from consultants and venture groups addressing this topic. Consultant white papers tend to be focused on the inevitability of “digital transformation,” emphasize the $X billion dollar opportunity, and argue that if large organizations don’t...
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15
Jul
2020

Do We Need Models Anymore?

Long ago, in the early days of the pandemic, models were everywhere in the news. As our lives were upended and everything became uncertain, models were there to provide some predictability in the face of the unknown. Never mind that predictions varied wildly – between models, and even within the same model at different time points. The models agreed that...
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13
Jul
2020

Playing the Long Game for Antibiotic R&D

This week’s unveiling of the AMR Action Fund, a $1 billion public/private consortium anchored by 23 pharmaceutical companies to support the development and commercialization of antibiotics, is a welcome development in the fight against antimicrobial resistant infections.   The money is important, but it was very encouraging to see the leadership of major pharmaceutical companies — Pfizer, Merck, and Eli...
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11
Jul
2020

Can Novartis Digitally Transform Clinical Development?

In 2018, Dr. Vas Narasimhan, newly-installed as CEO, told the Wall Street Journal he saw Novartis as “a focused medicines company that’s powered by data science and digital technologies.”  Since then, Novartis has tried to grow into this ambition, embracing the concept of digital transformation perhaps more conspicuously than any other large pharma.  It’s not easy, as Narasimhan himself acknowledged...
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9
Jul
2020

Novavax Nabs $1.6B, BD Secures Fast Antigen Test OK, & a Tribute to Tony Fauci

The United States, it pains me to say as a patriotic believer in our Constitutional system and institutions and generally decent and hardworking people, looks like a disaster zone. A tally of 3.1 million COVID-19 cases, 133,000 deaths, and record numbers of new infections adding up every day can shake one’s faith. Confidence in US institutions, and faith in government...
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