(Source: Pharmafile 2015-01-08）
The FT Global Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology Conference held in London recently asked: “What will the life science company of the future look like?”
Suffixed with ‘Predictions 2020: the future of the industry’, much of the proceeding event discussion centred on some of the challenges initiated by such a rapidly changing pharma sector.
Emphasis was placed on the options that are currently available to finance further growth – which according to many of the speakers present needed to be fundamentally re-assessed.
During one of the seminars it was revealed that 55% of delegates in the room believe that life sciences regulations will be more aligned by 2020. Probed if any differences between pharma and biotech will in time disappear, 36% of the audience on the day said yes – with 34% suggesting it already has.
Other key points deliberated included a prediction by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) – that proposed health apps could potentially save $99 billion in care costs across Europe by 2017. The firm also prophesied a future exchange from everyday computers to more intelligent devices.
Speaking at the conference was Sir Andrew Dillon, chief executive at NICE, who said: “We are keen to have a conversation with companies about a more flexible approach to life cycle pricing.”
He continued that NICE plans to encourage partnership opportunities with pharma and biotech, but that complete integration between regulators and Health Tech Assessments (HTA) are still a way behind.
George Freeman, who is the UK minister for life sciences opened day two of the event by saying that the UK healthcare sector is a fundamental part of the UK economy. He told delegates that the healthcare sector will be unrecognisable in five years’ time.
Freeman continued: “As you know there’s a buzz coming back to this sector, investment is happening, deals are happening, not quite the sort of deals that used to happen – so one of the challenges for this sector is to open up to new models and for us in government to recognise that we need new partnerships forming.
“My central mission is to take life sciences from something viewed purely as research and investment and to build an integrated economy in which our health system – the NHS and care system – is fundamentally integrated with the life science research sector.”
The minister explained that he has a grand plan to make the UK the best place in the world to discover and develop 21st century healthcare innovations.
Emerging markets
During a seminar taking place on day two, industry speakers talked of various pioneers making headway in the sector of emerging markets.
On the agenda was how these markets will affect the industry and their impact in terms of strategies being deployed for life science firms.
Set to be one the biggest countries in terms of pharma growth in the 21st century, China certainly offers huge opportunities for any innovation, but – as is often repeated in industry circles – the Chinese market will be a tough nut to crack.
Christian Hogg who is the chief executive at Hutchinson China MediTech, told delegates that over the next 10 years the Chinese market will indeed blossom.
“By 2020 it might be a bit of a stretch, maybe one or two therapies may make it out of China but remember the last novel drug out of China to make it to the global market place was artemisinin in 1972, with nothing since.”
Over-priced western drugs are always going to bring challenges in the Chinese market. As we all know to really be able to innovate new therapies you need time.”
A possible emerging bazaar in the nation could very well be the diabetes market which is set to grow significantly in the future, the disease affects 382 million people globally and around one in four people in China.
In fact, according to a report named ‘Healthcare and Life Sciences Predictions 2020: A bold future?’ by the life sciences industry group, Deloitte – who are associated with this year’s event – there are more diabetics in China than the combined populations of Germany and Portugal.
At the conference allegations of corruption in China were also raised. “It’s challenging to avoid corruption, some companies are better at avoiding it than others – it’s an issue,” said Wim Leereveld, chief executive and founder of Access to Medicine Index, which ranks the world’s largest pharma companies.
“Governments play an important role and it’s very difficult of course but it is possible to learn.”
Pharma confidence in China has been shaken over recent times with a number of corruption charges in the country brought against big pharma, including allegations against GSK, Novartis and Lilly.
More than 56% of the conference delegates asked, thought that the opportunities presented for the industry in emerging markets is better than that of three years ago.
A bold future?
Predicting the landscape of emerging markets among other things was Deloitte, and between speakers Pharmafile sat down with Karen Taylor, director at Deloitte UK Centre for Health Solutions.
She said: “The mood of this conference is very upbeat and optimistic and a lot of the things that we’ve covered in our recent report [Predictions 2020] seem to be similar to what various speakers are saying.”
She told us that the industry of the future will be much more about collaborating, forming new partnerships, and forming new business models than ever before.
She explained to Pharmafile that change is going to happen, and it all comes down to who is going to take those visions for the future and really make them ensue.
Deloitte’s report predicts that by 2020 new markets requiring new business models will gain pace, and that the focus on Brazil, Russia, India and China will be challenged by new emerging markets in Latin America, Vietnam, Indonesia and Africa.
Diabetes and specific cancers will be major issues in these emerging economies according to the findings and this will force all stakeholders into developing solutions.
“One of the things that we predict is a real development in terms of transparency, in the past the industry has not been particularly transparent,” said Taylor. “Partly because of how they protect their IP, how they protect their commercial position, but that’s starting to change because of big data.”
Pharmafile also spoke to Hanno Rante who is a partner at Monitor Deloitte, a management consulting firm acquired by the company in 2012. He said: “We’ve taken a slightly provocative but generally optimistic view of what the future actually could be and tried to be a bit bolder without being completely unrealistic.”
Rante goes on to explain that the report looks at the search for innovation by using technology and data as a way of creating opportunities to form better outcomes-based research, as well as harnessing data that patients generate themselves via wearables and apps.
“It may be slightly optimistic but we believe that in the future the relationship and reputation of pharma will increase and become a true partner to the healthcare system,” continued Rante.
“It was a good sign that for the first time the National Institute for Health Research was present as a sponsor at the conference which we’ve never had before, I think that in some ways that was quite the breakthrough.
“We generally believe it’s an exciting time for the industry and for healthcare and I think it was good over these two days of the conference to see how that is shared by all the different stakeholders,” concluded Rante.
Digital technology in healthcare
During the conference Pharmafile also caught up with the president of US-based computer technology firm Medidata, Glen de Vries, who spoke to us about its recent collaboration with GSK.
GSK is experimenting with mobile health (mHealth) devices linked to cloud services in clinical trials. The firm gave people two wearables – Vital Connect’s HealthPatch MD and ActiGraph’s wGT3X-BT Monitor – in order to measure vital signs and activity levels.
“Working with GSK on this initiative has provided us with an exciting opportunity to show how technology can be used to enhance patient engagement and accelerate the pace of innovation in drug development,” said de Vries.
Using Medidata’s cloud services the firm was able to marry up mHealth and cloud services to see whether the two would align.
The hope was that by combining the data of both site and patient needs with faster study execution, costs would ultimately be reduced.
“We gathered data on an unprecedented scale – collecting more than 18 million data points on activity and vital signs per participant per day. This is an extraordinary level of in-life, real-time patient instrumentation for clinical trials, which will create new disciplines and new opportunities for life science companies,” he added.
The interest surrounding mHealth is gaining sufficient traction, from wearable devices to downloadable apps, the healthcare industry could now be starting to realise the potential of this type of technology.
de Vries told us: “If the mission is to give the healthcare industry good tools, for example, if everyone is to be connected in healthcare by interacting on their phones, talking to their physicians using digital technology the life sciences industry has to be ready for that.
“Our prediction is that by 2020 there will be life science companies that are using digital technology as surrogate endpoints to communicate with regulators and payers. But there will still be companies who are not doing that.”
He concludes that companies that do embrace digital technology “are going to end up with better labelling and potentially better and safer drugs”.
According to the Deloitte’s Predictions report only 22% of patients feel happy to send and receive images related to a personal health problem via a smartphone or computer.
An even smaller percentage of patients felt comfortable enough to consult with a doctor or other health professionals through a video connection – such as FaceTime or Skype. Despite these apprehensions much industry discussion still surrounds the possibilities of digital technology.
Prof Christofer Toumazou, founder of the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at Imperial College and chief executive at DNA Electronics, suggested that it’s not the technology that’s the problem, it’s the business plans implemented.
“We’ve been talking about patient centric technology but in fact one of the things I’ve seen its technology more for the carer rather than the patient themselves,” said Toumazou. He continues that this type of technology is to assist the carer, and to educate both them and the patient.
During the seminar, Kristoffer Famm, who is the vice president of Bioelectronics R&D at GSK, added that we need to find a way to also work with GPs in order to get this type of technology at our fingertips.
According to Deloitte’s report the era of electronic medical records (EMR) has finally arrived, furthermore it says the next generation of wearables will be interoperable, integrated, engaging and outcomes-focussed.
Daniel Mahoney, fund manager for healthcare at Polar Capital told delegates that we are going through a transformation in healthcare where the patients will be in the middle. “Our view is that we’re going to experience a real disruption in healthcare, and the disruption is going to be a lot bigger than anyone thinks.”
“The gateway to healthcare isn’t going to be the primary care doctor, it’s going to be this [smartphones] as there are more of these in the world than toothbrushes,” continued Mahoney.
Research conducted by Frost & Sullivan earlier this year found that more than 90% of apps directly related to patient health and treatment on the Apple iTunes app store had limited availability. It was also established that the majority of these apps are rarely used.
The industry of 2020 will need to overcome all these barriers in order to see pharma build, buy and hire new capabilities in data management and analytics. And according to speakers at the event this ‘bold’ future really is arriving rather fast for the industry.
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