Advancing through partnerships

  If any reminder were needed of the power of collaboration in healthcare, it is the global efforts underway to stem the current coronavirus outbreak and to develop treatments for it.  Chris Round, Merck ’s Head of International Operations& Global Core Franchises, speaking to eyeforpharma ahead of his eyeforpharma Barcelona Conference 2020 keynote, mentions that Merck is lending its heft to industry efforts to help tackle the emergency. “The industry has shown what it is capable of with HIV and Ebola in the past, so I am hopeful that the industry can pull together very fast.”  Partnerships at scale at the intersection of biology and technology will unlock progress on many other fronts in the coming decade, says Round, who will be speaking in part on the topic at this year ’s (now virtual) conference.  They are a means of mitigating the increased level of risk around innovation that has been rendering the classical pharma model less productive and with a decreasing return on capital. “One of the ways to balance that is to share risk, particularly for mid-size companies,” says Round. “In oncology there are lots of collaborations going on. No individual company is going to be able to tackle these in isolation going forward.”  Strategic partnerships The big breakthroughs in healthcare will increasingly happen through broad partnerships and Merck is already pooling its resources with others, says Round. Merck is a company that is willing, able and pr...
Source: EyeForPharma - Category: Pharmaceuticals Authors: Source Type: news