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From Huffington Post’s Health News – “The Long-Awaited Revolution: Digital Health Innovation”

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May 1st, 2013
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On April 24, XPRIZE and Nokia announced that I was among the mobile health and sensing industry leaders named to the Nokia Sensing XCHALLENGE Judging Panel. It’s a great honor for me to take on this role – and to work with the XPRIZE and Nokia teams in helping drive awareness of this important competition and the role of digital health innovation as part of the long-awaited revolution in healthcare. To that end, I was very pleased to have the opportunity to contribute a related blog post, which was featured yesterday via Huffington Post’s Health News. I hope you’ll read the post here, and take the time to learn more about the competition by visiting http://nokiasensingxchallenge.org/, following the XPRIZE team on Facebook, Twitter and Google+, following the Nokia XCHALLENGE on Twitter, and signing up for the related Newsletter to stay informed.

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A “Real Biz Model 2 Win” or “Merely a Bubble” for Digital Health?

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April 9th, 2013
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There’s been discussion recently about a lack of life science venture capital (VC) enthusiasm for emerging digital health companies. I happen to feel that this concern, if you will, is misplaced. I engaged industry and opinion leaders on this subject plus have my own thoughts on the digital health funding environment.

In his latest article in Forbes, contributor David Shaywitz characterizes life science venture capitalists as just “kicking tires” on potential digital health investments, citing fears from prominent investor Nimesh Shah that innovations in digital health are “merely a bubble,” and that these firms lack a “real biz model.”

Shaywitz bases his position on quotes from venture capital executives, but also from the $1.4 billion that was invested in digital health last year, which he says is a fraction of all the life science VC money available. He responded to my post in the Digital Health LinkedIn group that this “reflects the uncertainty that many investors feel regarding whether viable business models will emerge.”

While $1.4 billion doesn’t look like much on the surface, it’s a jump of 46% from the year before which, as digital health company Qualcomm Life’s Rick Valencia points out, represents “impressive numbers for such a nascent industry.”

It’s also important to note that this jump (albeit from a smaller start) looks even better when compared to funding in biotechnology and medical devices, which is down 15% and 13%, respectively, during the same period of time. These figures indicate that life sciences VCs are in a state of general paralysis, or at least lethargy.

One possible issue with the nascent digital health industry is that it’s not an obvious fit for life science investors or venture capital firms. First, it’s not the same as healthcare IT, which is already a source of confusion for a few investor firms. Second, it’s the convergence of many sectors and technologies—wireless sensors, devices, genomics, social networking, mobile technology, the Internet, consumers, and, yes, healthcare IT. As Rick Valencia wrote, “digital health investments have the legal and regulatory complexities of life science investments, but the business models and investment horizons of tech investments. So, neither the tech VCs nor the life science VCs are naturals for digital health investments.” There are often many nuances unique to each digital health startup—it’s not a one-size-fits-all market—which presents a learning curve for potential investors, whether they’re already investing in digital health or not. In other words, it’s difficult to leverage cookie-cutter investment strategies.

Marc Newman of TeleCenter points to other emerging areas of digital health that could be revolutionary, if allowed to mature. Marc highlights “omics” companies, which optimize low-cost sequencing, big data and artificial intelligence outfits to “enable patterns to be recognized from sensors and point of care measurements,” and phenotype assessments and matches to genotypes. Marc eloquently states that “The risk is high, but the valuations are low, and the market opportunity is large.” This scenario used to excite early-stage investors.

It’s said that time and cost are innovation’s enemies. We now stand in a place where we can potentially benefit from the reduced time and cost that are part of innovations in digital health, as some distinct categories emerge and partnering strategies open up opportunities to scale. But we also stand in the middle of complex regulatory approvals and longer time horizons that have become recognized as “normal” in healthcare. Like most truly disruptive innovations, funding and innovation require alignment but are often not the simplest of propositions on either side of the equation.

Could your company provide an extra step of certainty in this new market? We can help you create new strategies, ideas, and inventions to address unmet needs, and help position your company (and its products) in a more “definite position.” To learn more, please subscribe to our newsletter, follow us on Twitter, or send me an email.

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And On the Digital Health Front…Influencers, Certification, Sensing & More

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March 5th, 2013
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I originally shared this post as an announcement to the 15,000+ members of my Digital Health group on LinkedIn.

In this update:

  1. 15 Influencers Shaping Digital Health
  2. Happtique Mobile Health App Certification Program
  3. Making Sense of Sensors (Jane Sarasohn-Kahn on CHCF)
  4. X PRIZE’s Nokia Sensing X CHALLENGE – Application Deadline
  5. Upcoming Events: Future of Genomic Medicine VI Conference

15 INFLUENCERS SHAPING DIGITAL HEALTH

The list of 15 Influencers Shaping Digital Health (via BIONIC.LY) was compiled by London-based digital communications professional Stephen Davies, and is noteworthy because he accurately includes (as part of digital health) leaders in the field of genomics, e.g. Anne Wojcicki, Co-founder of 23andMe, and Jessica Richman, CEO at uBiome. I’m incredibly honored to be included in such esteemed company.

http://bit.ly/15ShapingDH

HAPPTIQUE CERTIFICATION PROGRAM FOR MOBILE APPS

In announcing the new “Happtique Health App Certification Program,” CEO Ben Chodor stated that “Healthcare professionals and consumers need third-party certification to verify that the app they are prescribing or downloading delivers credible content, contains safeguards for user data, and functions as described.” The new program contains standards to be used by partner organizations in assessing operability, privacy, security and content of health apps.

http://bit.ly/HapptiqueAppCert

MAKING SENSE OF SENSORS: HOW NEW TECHNOLOGIES CAN CHANGE PATIENT CARE

Well-known health economist Jane Sarasohn-Kahn (@HealthyThinker) created this excellent report for the California HealthCare Foundation (CHCF, @CHCFNews), a nonprofit grant-making philanthropy. Note the cool infographic on passive sensors.

http://bit.ly/CHCFSensors

X PRIZE’S NOKIA SENSING X CHALLENGE – APPLICATION DEADLINE APPROACHING

Along with the Qualcomm Tricorder X PRIZE (@TricorderXPRIZE) and the Archon Genomics X PRIZE (@AGXP), the Nokia Sensing X CHALLENGE (@NokiaXCHALLENGE) being administered by the X PRIZE Foundation (@XPRIZE) is fostering digital health innovation and catalyzing the creation of a collaborative global innovation ecosystem. The goal of the Nokia Sensing X CHALLENGE is to transform personal health with sensing. Innovation in sensing is an important component to creating a means for appealing, usable, smarter digital health solutions.

The CHALLENGE is comprised of two distinct competitions running through 2014, with total prize purses of $2.25 million. The application deadline for Challenge #1 is less than five weeks away.

http://bit.ly/SensingXChallenge

UPCOMING EVENTS: Future of Genomic Medicine VI Conference

Along with my Popper and Co. colleague Shane Climie, Ph.D., I’ll be attending the Future of Genomic Medicine VI conference in La Jolla/San Diego, CA (March 7-8). I’m excited to learn the very latest about opportunities for genomics to change medical practice and make healthcare more precise and individualized. I gather that the term is now “Precision Medicine.”

I’m particularly looking forward to hearing the following people speak:

  • Gholson J. Lyon, MD, Ph.D.,
  • Cinnamon S. Bloss, Ph.D.,
  • Misha Angrist, Ph.D.,
  • Daniel MacArthur, Ph.D.,
  • George M. Church, Ph.D. (encoded 20 million copies of his book into DNA: http://bit.ly/ChurchColbert),
  • Jonathan Eisen, Ph.D.,
  • Atul Butte, M.D., Ph.D., and
  • A.J. Jacobs, author of “Drop Dead Healthy”.

Note that all of the folks and organizations listed above are included in my Digital Health Twitter list: http://bit.ly/DHTwitterList. And you can access the comprehensive global digital health event list at http://bit.ly/DHEvents.

Join the 15,000+ member Digital Health group on LinkedIn to stay up-to-date on these and many of the other happenings in the digital health space. And, if you have a digital health idea you’d like to discuss, please contact me directly at sonnier@popperandco.com to learn how Popper and Co. can help guide your business development strategy.

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Why the U.S. Economy Needs the Power of Digital Health

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February 11th, 2013
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As the new year slips into higher gear, and our national focus shifts from politics to policymaking, we need to take a fresh look at how innovation can give the economy a boost.

While President Obama’s second inauguration speech mentions the need for new technology (harnessing new ideas and technologies to remake, revamp, reform and empower various sectors of society), I find myself asking: what kind of innovation? How could digital health play a role?

Harvard professor and innovation pioneer Clayton Christensen calls for a better mix of the three main types of innovations: empowering, sustaining and efficiency. He observes that empowering innovations, which create jobs by transforming complex and expensive products into simpler, cheaper products, are in unusually short supply. Meanwhile, sustaining innovations, which replace old products with new models (that nonetheless operate the same way), and efficiency innovations, which reduce costs of existing products, are abundant, but don’t help jump-start an economy as much. Today, he says, efficiency innovations are just being reinvested back into more efficiency innovations.

Digital health entrepreneurs pursue all three innovation types. I believe, however, that the overall economic impact of digital health comes from empowering innovations. Christensen cites the Model T Ford, IBM personal computers, and cloud computing as such empowering innovations. In my opinion, the remote monitors and sensors, healthcare apps, and biomarker/companion diagnostic tests now being developed are likewise transforming complex and expensive care paradigms, but also are transforming an equally complex, costly healthcare industry. In fact, mobile devices (today’s “personal computers”) and cloud computing are significant contributors to today’s digital health revolution.

Nonetheless, despite the potential to drive significant process and efficiency improvements, many digital health innovators still face challenges in raising capital. Here at Popper and Co., we’re interested in helping you strengthen your business plan to make it attractive to prospective financial and strategic investors and to identify those that may be most receptive to hearing more about your business. Follow us on Twitter, sign up to receive our e-newsletter or reach out to me directly to learn more.

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Generation Digital Health—Observations from the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show

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January 21st, 2013
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I attended the Consumer Electronics Show (#CES2013) in Las Vegas earlier this month. While this was my second year at the Digital Health Summit portion, it was the first year that Qualcomm delivered the keynote address for the entire show. While there, I found myself building upon the “Born Mobile” theme of Qualcomm’s keynote show—which unfortunately came across as parody, as seen in this piece in The Verge—in pointing out that we are experiencing a digital revolution, of which mobile wireless devices and networks are just two subcomponents.

Digital Health is the convergence of the digital revolution with health. “Health” is writ large in this context, and includes sports, fitness, and wellness, plus medicine and healthcare. At CES, we could see the convergence of the following key digital elements:

    • Wireless Sensors and Devices
    • Genomics
    • Social Networking
    • Mobile Connectivity and Bandwidth
    • Imaging
    • Health Information Systems
    • The Internet
    • Computing Power and the Data Universe (Big & Cheap Data)

I was gladdened to see all of the activity-tracking devices at the show. There were also “soft silos,” where players like Withings and Fitbit had what I’d call consumer digital health solution-sets on display: wrist-worn activity trackers, weight scales, and health dashboards. I thought this Cambrian-esque explosion was great, since it drives a virtuous circle/positive feedback loop in the ecosystem; increasing consumer awareness and demand accelerates product innovation and improvements which, in turn, further drives consumer demand for improved solutions.

Digital Health was prominent at CES (here’s iHealthBeat’s take on “What the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show Means for Health Care IT”) and even people I talked to who were outside of the health sector really seemed to get it. I also loved that Arianna Huffington, who spoke in a super session, wrote a piece explicitly talking about the “Digital Health Revolution.”

Do you think the digital health revolution is experiencing a “Cambrian” explosion of innovation? Could a post-Cambrian “die-off” be somewhere on the horizon? What other new inventions could fill this space? What does this all mean for the healthcare consumer? What about for life science or digital technology companies? We welcome your thoughts.

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Your Health is What You Drive: Digital Health in the Driver’s Seat

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November 12th, 2012
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One of the most enjoyable aspects of my role at Popper and Company involves constantly surveying the global digital health ecosystem. Recently, I attended Dr. Leslie Saxon’s 6th annual USC Body Computing Conference (BCC).

While the conference offered a comprehensive overview of what’s trending in digital health (BCC never fails in this regard!), I was fascinated to see the evolution of biometric and other types of sensor-based monitoring in motor vehicles. While BMW Group (a new partner at the Center for Body Computing), was represented at the conference, Ford Motor Company is also aggressively pursuing ways to improve the driving experience and health of drivers and occupants alike. Here’s a brief rundown on the efforts of both automakers:

  • BMW Group seeks to enhance  the driving experience by measuring a driver’s heart rate, which could provide feedback to the driver to calm things a bit (even adjusting music), or comparing the driver’s heart rate to, say, a professional race car driver’s.
  • Ford is collaborating with Medtronic and WellDoc to develop its In-Car Health and Wellness Solutions program. The collaborators are developing applications and services that monitor the driver’s chronic illnesses and medical disorders while they are behind the wheel. Systems that monitor blood glucose, manage diabetes, or report on environmental pollutants and allergens could provide data and warnings to drivers, and could even safely disable the vehicle in the event of a heart attack, for example.

The approaches on display by both automakers are quite different. While BMW—the company with the advertising tagline “The Ultimate Driving Machine”—is looking for ways to appeal to the “driving enthusiast” in its customers, Ford is leaning more toward the car as an extension of a holistic approach to wellness. As consumers, it’s natural for us to gravitate to things we perceive as fun rather than things that connote a doctor’s visit or surveillance. However, since monitoring and intervention need not be obtrusive, differentiation in this segment of digital health will most likely boil down to marketing, something which automakers do quite well. It will be interesting to see how these solutions are commercialized and presented to the public, as well as to see whether they can drive the success of certain brands or particular models.

Is the entertainment quotient of digital health as integrated into the driving experience more consumer friendly than medical and safety applications? Do you think the automobile could—or should—be part of a healthcare monitoring and/or delivery system? What might these developments mean for the life sciences industry or medical device developers?

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Calling for More Than an Ounce of Prevention

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November 1st, 2012
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I originally shared this post on October 27th as an announcement to the 13,000+ members of my Digital Health group on LinkedIn. We hope you’ll find the information interesting and helpful.

Recently, I watched the documentary film “Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare.” The film poignantly shows a healthcare system designed for quick fixes rather than prevention, for profit-driven care rather than patient-driven care. I highly recommend it: http://www.escapefiremovie.com/

Nutrition is prominently featured as part of the emphasis on the need for disease prevention. Dr. Andrew Weil and Dr. Dean Cornish discuss lifestyle diseases. And while Dr. Cornish has demonstrated outcomes of his prescribed exercise and diet regimen in partially reversing heart disease, it is still unclear as to what the “best” nutrition profile is for disease prevention and the lifestyle factors leading to certain diseases. I’d note that since we are all genetically unique, “best” could be different for each of us. Nonetheless, there are some nutritional choices that apply at the population level.

In a 2002 New York Times article, “What if everything you’ve been told is wrong?”, Gary Taubes challenges the collective recommendations of the American medical establishment to eat less fat and more carbohydrates and asks if these are actually fueling the epidemic of obesity in America. In partnership with Dr. Peter Attia, Taubes recently formed the Nutrition Science Initiative (NuSI) in San Diego. (Dr. Marty Makary is an advisor: http://lnkd.in/gi9SG6). As described on the NuSI website, current dietary guidelines are not based on rigorous science and the medical research establishment has failed to provide definitive, unambiguous answers to unresolved questions of diet and health. Despite billions of dollars spent on medical research, the definitive experiments have never been done. (Scary!)

I recently spoke with Larry Smarr, who has attained a high profile in the self-tracking/Quantified Self movement. Smarr, founding director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) at the University of San Diego (UCSD), was recently profiled in The Atlantic: http://bit.ly/ScPUrV. During our chat, I discovered that Smarr and I share a lot in common regarding our dietary choices. To a large extent, I’m following the Paleolithic diet, http://bit.ly/TBHlUu, while Smarr follows the Zone Diet, created by biochemist Barry Sears: http://bit.ly/QARHFR. The two are not mutually exclusive, but Paleo focuses more on quality while the Zone focuses on quantity.

Another person whom I’ve been following is Dave Asprey, a bio-hacker who takes self-quantification to the extreme: https://twitter.com/bulletproofexec

While I’m barely self-tracking, I estimate that I’ve lost about 20 pounds in just a few months based exclusively on my nutrition/lifestyle choice.

Escape Fire ends with these two sentences:
WE CAN CHANGE OUR HEALTHCARE SYSTEM
BUT NOT UNTIL WE CHANGE THE CONVERSATION

It’s safe to say that all of us are aware that we need to change our healthcare system. As the case studies in the movie illustrate, once we change the conversation, everything is possible. Along the same lines, I tell new [Digital Health] group members that their membership alone will help catalyze the digital transformation of health. In addition to the work being done, discussion and knowledge sharing are equally critical since we’re all change agents in our own way.

What do you feel are the overlaps between digital technologies, nutrition, and disease prevention? What can be done to advance nutrition science? How can we improve consumer and professional education and knowledge dissemination on these subjects? I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

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Digital Health Gets Extended (Television) Coverage

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September 26th, 2012
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Digital health is propelled by many different drivers: genomics research that allows for inexpensive, accurate sequencing (and biomarker discovery), smart phone and internet technology that provides consumers with access, and the increased power of consumers to demand remote healthcare services. Perhaps as a symptom of this increased demand (or at least awareness), we’ve observed digital health as a topic on two popular television shows.

Recently, Dr. Eric Topol, author of The Creative Destruction of Medicine and an advocate of these drivers who provides much commentary on digital health, appeared on the television show The Doctors. What was significant about this appearance?

  • He reached a large, mostly consumer audience with the message of digital health and the innovations that are happening vis-à-vis empowerment provided to patients by mobile devices.
  • He introduced biomarkers for certain diseases and the sensing technologies for them, and showed how powerful the combination can be in disease prediction and prevention.
  • By illustrating the power of a smart-phone attached electrocardiogram, he underscored the notion that consumers/patients will be connected to their doctors remotely.

As consumers become more informed and empowered, they will continue to drive the disruption of healthcare delivery in the U.S. and elsewhere, helping to bend the cost curve downward, states Dr. Topol. This will happen as more healthcare is handled outside of hospitals, ensuring healthier consumers who are less likely to need care, and moving us into the realm of disease prevention.

As these changes are rapidly altering the healthcare landscape, it’s important to note how we got here. Former President Bill Clinton noted recently on The Daily Show that it was the collaboration of government, non-profits and the private sector that gave us both digital technology and the genomics advances behind digital health (he specified how San Diego, California, was transformed from a Naval center into a genomics/digital hub, thanks to companies like Qualcomm, the San Diego mayor’s office, the University of California, San Diego, and the non-profit J. Craig Venter Institute). Genomics is an important component of the digital revolution we’ve seen mostly in the academic and research worlds thus far, but which will be a big part of medicine and healthcare going forward.

What did you think of Dr. Topol’s appearance on The Doctors? How close are we to the “disease prevention” model of modern healthcare? Is the San Diego formula of private/public/non-profit partnership the only successful one? What do you make of a former U.S. president spending part of a TV interview speaking about digital health? We’d love to hear your thoughts.

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POLL RESULTS: What is the single greatest health benefit afforded by Digital Health solutions?

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July 18th, 2012
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I’ve previously discussed the health revolution that’s been initiated by the super-convergence of several key macro digital technologies and technology-based trends with healthcare and consumers. But many in the life sciences and healthcare industries have asked: “What are the ultimate health benefits?” It’s a great question since, beyond the hype and flurry of investments (tripling this year vs. the same period in 2011), we are still waiting to see large scale measurable health-related outcomes that are attributable wholly or in part to the combined application of digital health solutions.

In order to gauge the sentiment of professionals working at the forefront of digital health innovation I polled the members of my Digital Health group on LinkedIn: “What is the biggest human health benefit from using digital health?”

  • Disease management – 50%
  • Disease prevention – 30%
  • Disease diagnosis – 11%
  • Disease prediction (especially genomics) – 7%
  • Reduced radiation exposure (imaging) – 3%

According to the poll (which received more than 325 responses as of July 16), half of the total respondents felt that the most significant, near-term benefit will come from improved disease management. For long-term benefits, approximately one third of respondents indicated that disease prevention was the greatest opportunity.

In considering the supporting evidence that already exists for the survey results, we’re already seeing some improvements in disease management from the use of digital health tools such as access to caregivers and laboratory results via online resources to delivering cardiac, rheumatology, and infectious disease care (and even psychiatric consultation) to patients in remote areas, as noted in previous posts by our guest blogger Dr. Dale Alverson. Moreover, many diabetics use glucometers and even pedometers to better monitor and manage their diabetes.

While it came in second, disease prevention could ultimately provide the largest benefit arising from use of digital health tools. After all, if we don’t become patients because we’ve used information to prevent disease, or exchanged testing information that presented a warning sign to future disease, digital health can stave off healthcare’s greatest costs: disease care. In addition, using solutions like 23andME and Pathway Genomics for personal genomics-based probabilistic disease prediction is a powerful, but mostly overlooked opportunity for digital health to make a significant difference in improving our health. If more consumers catch on to using these tools, and integrate them with additional digital health devices and services, they could further catalyze the digital health revolution.

Personally, I think both disease management and prevention will be equally important as more information becomes available through digital means. While basic health management and improvement augmented by digital tools and information is probably the biggest aspect of digital health disease prevention, in one amazing dual-opportunity, Dr. Eric Topol, author of The Creative Destruction of Medicine: How the Digital Revolution Will Create Better Health Care, recently described a scenario where we might one day intervene to prevent heart attacks just days before they occur: ”In the long term… we could put it in a nanosensor that is embedded into a tiny vein in high risk people who are most vulnerable to having a heart attack, and have that sensor talk to their cell phone, so they get an alert that they might have a heart attack in a few days.”

Going forward, we’ll hopefully see a transition from the short term disease management opportunity to a more robust disease prevention effect, which will bend the healthcare cost curve while greatly increasing the quality of life for consumers.

Given this rapidly evolving convergence of technology with health and medicine, what do you think are the biggest short-term and long-term health benefits afforded by the digital health super-convergence? Are there any that I missed in the “answer” options (one I thought about subsequently is aging in place)? Will use of genomic information by consumers seeking to prevent disease become mainstream? Please join in the conversation by commenting below and by submitting your own vote in the Digital Health group poll.

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Three Steps Toward Actualizing the White House’s Bioeconomy

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May 7th, 2012
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The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) recently released its “National Bioeconomy Blueprint”—a detailed proposal on how advances in our knowledge of biology and biotechnology have spurred significant enough economic activity (e.g., labor, capital and resources) to create a new type of economy for the United States.

While the report focused on many areas outside of healthcare, the following three points struck me as significant for those of us who spend our time thinking about life sciences:

  1. We must facilitate the transition of bioinventions from research lab to market, including an increased focus on translational and regulatory sciences.  If a national “bioeconomy” is to be successful, it must be based on a steady flow of new products and services that address the needs of American and global customers. Ensuring this steady flow will mean that policies must be developed—and taxpayer dollars used responsibly—to foster an environment that supports discovery, innovation and commercialization.
  2. We must integrate approaches across fields. Modern research questions have become so complex that traditional boundaries between fields of study have become permeable. Today, programs must concentrate expertise from diverse disciplines around society’s greatest challenges. The Administration should prioritize (fund) additional multidisciplinary efforts to enable biological research at the boundaries of fields, such as physics, chemistry, engineering, computer sciences, and mathematics, as well as genomics, imaging, biosensors and wireless technologies that will all support the new bioeconomy. The success of systems biology in using genetic data and other big data sets to link and thus redefine disparate diseases is an example of how these efforts are starting to pay off. The bioeconomy can borrow from cross-disciplinary approaches used in other industries like construction and defense.
  3. Moving forward—improved regulatory processes will help rapidly and safely achieve the promise of the future bioeconomy.
    • Agencies should improve their predictability and reduce uncertainty in their regulatory processes and requirements. Part of this predictability includes coordinating efforts among agencies that hadn’t operated in the healthcare space; recently Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn) and five other members of Congress asked the Federal Communications Commission and FDA to clarify their ongoing efforts to improve the regulatory process for development of wireless medical devices.
    • To reduce costs and impediments, but without compromising safety, attention should be given to drug and device application review times, coordinating reviews by multiple agencies to allow parallel (instead of sequential) reviews, and specific guidance that should be issued in response to stakeholder needs.
    • When emerging technology enters the regulatory process, agencies must have a solid framework to identify lead agency responsibilities, clarify supporting agency roles, and deliver timely, specific guidance for applicants. At the very least, these new moves should update and streamline the 1986 Coordinated Framework among federal agencies.

In future posts, we will be talking more about how the federal government is planning on aligning itself with the new bioeconomy, including initiatives in digital health and takeaways from some of our meetings with federal government representatives.

What was your key reaction to the White House’s blueprint for a bioeconomy? Are there points that you honed in on? For what other programs should the OSTP advocate? Is a future “bioeconomy” even a realistic concept? Share your thoughts with us.

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