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"We don't want to miss the train of digital health" is a phrase Bertalan Mesko, MD, PhD, has heard many times since he started working with pharmaceutical companies. Well, I have good news, says Mesko. They cannot miss it, because there are no trains to catch anymore. Instead, we should be looking to futuristic spaceships. If the pharma industry doesn't deal with disruptive technologies, it won't have an industry at all.
It might sound like a bold statement, but major trends suggest a future in which medical innovations come from a garage or a small startup company. For hundreds of years, innovation belonged to the R&D departments of pharma companies. A few technological developments might change that forever – and we are not happy about it.Bertalan Mesko, MD, PhD
Via Pharma Guy, Lionel Reichardt / le Pharmageek
Denise Silber commented:
"Complex question indeed that you raise about the transformation of pharma. So far, pharma has mostly missed out on the opportunities to 1) communicate in an engaging way on social media 2) to be involved in mobile apps that are used in a significant way 3) to transform their relationship and the sales process toward healthcare professionals 4) to transform internal processes in general. So, that's a poor scorecard indeed.
"However, if we look at, for example, Silicon Valley start-up accomplishments in health, there have been hiccups as well.
--Companies without pharma/device experience such as 23&Me and now Theranos turned out to have made premature announcements, probably to satisfy investors, and then faced setbacks.
--Healthcare connected objects and apps, even when not suffering from restrictive pharma marketing policies, confront high abandonment rates and seem to have difficulties in demonstrating clinical value.
"For the moment, even monster Google seems to want to partner with pharma rather than go it alone, (although this can change once Google has learned how everyone works from the inside).
"Wouldn't it be fair to say that new, disruptive ideas have always started with individuals or tiny teams. Many pharma compounds were the work of external researchers that were licensed or brought in.
And pharma is now taking a close look at start-ups and finding ways to collaborate with them as they would have with academic researchers in the past."
A good example of pharma collaborated with start-ups is Bayer's Grants4Apps™ program, which invites health app developers to submit their innovative app ideas for novel software that contributes to improving health outcomes. For more on that, see: http://bit.ly/pgtourberlin2013