We recently pulled together a panel of industry experts to discuss the value of real-world data and why investment in digital health has (nearly) overtaken funding for biotech.
Yes, you read that right: investment in digital health has nearly overtaken funding for biotech. Venture Capitalists poured an estimated $10 billion into digital health companies in 2017, with 500 deals made in 2016 alone.1
Beyond the investment in the space, there are over 260,000 digital health apps in the marketplace and the global IoT healthcare market is expected to grow to $405 billion by 2026. But many biopharma and medtech companies are still wondering… what’s the real-world impact of digital health?
The group of experts convened at the annual JP Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco in January, and included:
The session was moderated by Sy Mukherjee, Author and Producer of Fortune Magazine’s Brainstorm Health Daily.
The lively panel explored how digital health is unlocking a treasure trove of real-world data that accelerates clinical trials, supports value-based reimbursement and enables improved adherence and in turn, revenues.
“There’s an inflection point with digital health right now,” described Bertrand Bodson, Chief Digital Officer at Novartis.
Kal Patel, MD agreed. “As a former biopharma executive, back in the day digital was like a shiny object. We were largely trying to convince people to do something, like develop a simple app as an after-thought to an existing drug. Today we’re seeing a definite tipping point where biopharma and medtech are strategically investing to fundamentally transform their products and the value proposition of their products.”
The group also discussed the main reasons that digital health hasn’t yet scaled today.
“Lack of scalability is really holding back digital health today,” shared Kal Patel, MD “Biopharma and medtech know how to get a drug or a medical device approved in a key market and roll that product out globally. We have not yet seen this kind of global infrastructure to support digital health product roll outs.” Hence why we developed our BrightInsight Platform.
To hear more of the panelists’ perspectives, you can watch the full panel here.
1 Source: Sonnier, P. (2017) The Fourth Wave: Digital Health, A New Era of Human Progress p. 37