How well is pharma incubating innovation?

Digital health startups are on fire right now as the big global trends create a following wind for the sector.  The pandemic has accelerated the adoption of digital health as consumers increasingly adopt wearable tech, as the clinical impact of digital health became apparent during 2020, and as everyone looks to a future of high demand and stretched healthcare systems and budgets.  Digital health ’s scope to manage healthcare costs, to help keep people well and to support physicians in their work flows has become abundantly clear to investors, says Dominick Kennerson, Global Head G4A Digital Health at Bayer, one of the first biopharma accelerator programmes in Europe. “2020 was a record year for investing and financing.”And 2021 is shaping up, arguably, to drive change faster than 2020.  According to digital health venture fund Rock Health, the first quarter of 2021 was the most-funded quarter to date, with $6.7B in US digital health funding, more than doubling from Q1 2020. Average deal size ballooned to $45.9M (up from $31.7M in 2020) and the pace of deal making in the sector has accelerated too, it says. “The average age of startups at the time of their first mega deal raise has been cut in half over the past few years, from 12 years in 2017, to just six years among the Q1 2021 mega-deal companies.”Early insights All these records and landmarks underline the importance to pharma of building its understanding of the fast-emerging innovations and opportunities i...
Source: EyeForPharma - Category: Pharmaceuticals Authors: Source Type: news