Biotech investments point to the future

Peter Nichol
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Biotech investments point to the future

A great way to better understand innovation in healthcare and life sciences is to follow the money. Where are the venture capital deals? Where did top indications secure Series A funding? Who are the moves in these deals? We’ll focus on  2019 for data consistency; let’s get into it!

Where the top mind believe value lives (investments):

  1. Biopharma $15.6B
  2. Health tech $7.5B
  3. Dx Tools (medical diagnostics), which combine next-generation sequencing and artificial intelligence and computational resources – $4.4B
  4. Medical Devices $4.9B

What are the top indications to be funded?

  1. Oncology
  2. Platform
  3. Neurology
  4. Orphan/rare disease
  5. Anti-infective: to prevent or treat infections; they include antibacterials, antivirals, antifungals, and antiparasitic medications

In biopharma, who’s the most active (U.S. and Europe, 2018-2019)?

  • Alexandria, 42 deals
  • G.V. Corporate, 17 deals
  • Novartis, 16 deals
  • Pfizer, 13 deals
  • J&J, 12 deals
  • AbbVie, 9 deals
  • Merck, 7 deals

Which indication areas had the highest valuations?

  1. Cardiovascular
  2. Orthopedic
  3. Imaging
  4. Neurology
  5. Ophthalmology

Who’s the most active corporate healthcare investor?

  • BlueCross BlueShield
  • Alphabet
  • Echo
  • Philips
  • Merck
  • Tempus

We also saw a lot of movement in Series A deals. I enjoy looking at these acquisitions and takeovers targets to understand better how these innovative companies fit view themselves in the bigger picture. Where are they investing, and likewise, where are they divesting? Here are several of the movers the caught my eye.

  • AlizePharama, France, $82M in funding, specializing in the development of innovative biopharmaceutical drugs, proteins, and peptides, for the treatment of metabolic diseases and cancer
  • Anthos Therapeutics, Cambridge, MA, stage II trials for some innovative therapies for high-risk cardiovascular patients
  • ArsenalBio, France, cell therapy, picked up $85M in round 1. Interestingly, even the University of California is a named investor in their Series A funding round.
  • Elevatebio, Mass, Cell and gene therapy, two years old and just raised $170M. They focus on the development and manufacturing of a specific type of therapeutic approach.
  • Talaris therapeutics, Louisville, KY and Boston, MA, IN 2019 they picked up $100M, then another $115M in Oct of 2020, crossing into phase III trials for crossed the Phase III with its lead drug, FCR001 –to prevent rejection of the donated organ by reducing infections
  • Passagebio, Philadelphia, PA, focusing on genetic medicines for rare monogenic central nervous system disorders. They picked up more than $200M in 2019 and recently went IPO, now with a market cap of $1.15B.
  • Mirum Pharmaceuticals, Foster City, CA, to developing drugs for rare liver diseases. Founded in 2018, now listed on Nasdaq with 604M in market cap.

Digital twins land on your doorstep

Peter Nichol
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Digital twins land on your doorstep

Patient value, intelligent systems, empowered workforces, and digital twins are starting to drag energy from the early adopters in life sciences.

Patient value is being pushed for healthcare outcomes and better patient experiences. Intelligent systems leverage context, real-time and secure patient data moving from systems of records to systems of insights and engagement. The empowered workforce is using digital experiences to drive culture and employee and patient behavior changes.

The most interesting is the digital twins. A digital twin is a concept first coined by Dr. Michael Grieves in 2002. Interestingly enough, NASA first used the concept in space exploration. It’s the first concept to connect the physical and digital worlds.
A digital twin is the generation of digital data to represent a physical object. It sounds very 2030; it’s not. Allow me to explain; the concept, while not named, has been around for a while.

  • Construction: used to model bridge structures and conduct force modeling
  • Energy: leverages this technology to simulate wind conditions for wind turbines
  • Offshore rigging: combines models with wave energy to model wave energy harvester system platforms to model motion of floats
  • Manufacturing: has been applying automotive car simulations and transforming them from models into real cars for what seems like forever

It’s only recently that healthcare can finally get on the wagon and start to apply this technology.

  1. Representing the action of a therapy
  2. Modeling longitudinal biomarkers
  3. Patient-specific behavior predictions
  4. Simulation of optimization drug-dosing regimens
  5. Replacement of bench and animal tests
  6. Optimize product drug design, manufacturing, and even packaging
  7. Population-specific predictions of cardiotoxicity for arrhythmias, anticoagulant, and heart failure medications
  8. Novel drug delivery mechanisms for biologics
  9. Medical device designs, e.g., minimally invasive heart valves
  10. Precision electrical neuro-stimulation therapies

The challenge is that biotechnology companies are often limited to only a simple 1D model’s cellular level. This can make translating these principles into a human body difficult.

Combining digital twins and prediction models has high-potential implications for patients. Predicting the outcome of prescription drugs by applying machine learning to model lifestyle choices makes patient decisions for medication adherence and choosing a healthy lifestyle very obvious. It’s not just the technologies that are ready for this innovation; patients are ready too. Let’s move away from this one-size-fits-all dosing approach and pivot into a new paradigm of stratifying patients into groups with similar genetic, environmental, and physiological factors. Using digital twins, we can get there.

The U.S. stimulus package, under the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (the HITECH Act), has earmarked US$1.2 billion for the development of healthcare technology across the U.S.
Maybe digital twins should only live within the manufacturing world? Or perhaps there are just a few of us believers that believe innovation can spans industries.

Driving innovation for patients with medical research

Peter Nichol
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Driving innovation for patients with medical research

Medical research is pushing new ideas fast into healthcare.

These ideas need a landing place to be discussed, designed, modeled, and experimented with before reaching patients. This is where innovation labs start to become significant. There are hundreds of outstanding examples of world-class incubators dedicated to enabling patients. I pulled together some of the most exciting innovation labs on the fridge connecting medical research with patient outcomes.

  • A.I. Innovation Lab: Novartis and Microsoft are combining data sets and A.I. solutions. They tackle the most demanding computational challenges in life sciences and use machine learning for personalized treatments for patients with related macular degeneration (eye disease) to prevent irreversible vision loss.
  • Health2047:  this is the innovation arm of the American Medical Association (AMA). They focused on chronic care, healthcare value, and physician productivity. Two impressive projects are the First Mile Care and Akiri. First Mile care – personalized support for prediabetes, offering access to coaching, tools, and resources to live healthier. Akiri – network as a service health data platform (previous was called health2047 Switch), focuses on safe access to information for patients, physicians, providers, pharma, and other healthcare enterprises.
  • VSP Global Innovation Center: recently founded in 2020, is dedicated to getting eye care and eyewear to the world. They promise to deliver eye care for their members. A member that has reached nearly 90 million in their global network. The innovation center has delivered two fascinating projects, blue light, and sustainability effort. VSP blue light-reducing eyewear to address digital eye strain and spearheading sustainability efforts to bring new materials to the market.
  • GSK Warren Innovation Lab Suites and Digitisation Lab  – GSK, based out of the U.K. with innovation multi-labs. The Warren innovation lab is located in New Jersey and has consumer panelists testing products and performing shopper science. Open Lab is based in Tres Contos, Spain, and brings together scientists and academics to tackle topics like malaria and T.B. leveraging GSK’s resources and networks. At the GSK Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst campus, they offer space and partner with early-stage biotech startups to commercialize their technology. Also, they have an R&D Open Lab for African NCDs (non-communicable diseases) like cancer and diabetes in Africa
  • Center for Innovation (CFI): located in the Mayo Clinic, started in 2008. I love their tagline, “Think big, start small, move fast.” The Innovation Exchange is a Mayo Clinic platform for members to access scientists, facilities, and their network focusing on greater patient access.
  • FUSE: is led by Cardinal health and integrates engineers with medical professionals and digital design experts. MedSync Advantage is a web-based in-house developed tool focused on pharmacists for medical synchronization to simplify patient prescription fulfillment.
  • The Innovation lab: is the child of AARP with a passion for health, wealth, and self.  The Embleema platform allows rare disease patients to own and share their data. Ianacare, based in Boston, is a platform to enable caregiver coordination. Community Connections launched in March of 2020 addresses social isolation facing seniors amid the COVID-19 pandemic. This powerful platform helps community members receive emotional, financial, and physical support.

After reading all the fantastic innovation lab stories and learning of the new partnerships happening today, I came to a single determination; we still care about the patient.

Payers and providers are identifying new value

Peter Nichol
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Payers and providers are identifying new value

Traditionally, payers and providers stayed in their lane. They had an overlap on occasion, but that was infrequently and often temporary. Payer and provider partnerships in 2020 were significant. We see a trend of coopetition. Unlikely, players realize they need to partner to increase their environmental fitness.

  • BCBS of California acquires a 2,700 physician group
  • CVS-Aetna open ~1000 drive through COVID-19 testing sites in May as part of its MinuteClinic expansion strategy. Today that has expanded to over 4800 CVS test sites
  • Optum Acquires post-acute care management platform Navihealth
  • Partners in Primary Care, the Humana-owned medical group, opens 20 new primary care centers.
  • Independence Blue Cross and CHOP enter a 5-year agreement to expand value-based care initiatives
  • Cigna partnered with Spectrum health of Michigan’s health plan. They prioritize health and increase provider access
  • BCBS of North Carolina incentivizes primary care providers with advanced, lump-sum payments to participate in BCBS’s value-based care program in 2021.

It’s evident from the payer and provider partnerships that something has changed from the days of the past. There is a renewed sense of urgency. The timeline has been compressed. Ideas that months or years ago were unheard of now are the discussion starters at leadership meetings. Unlikely partners are finding common ground by identifying shared objectives. What we’re experiencing in the healthcare ecosystem is the first private step towards healthcare interoperability.

The quiet transformations affecting health and life sciences

Peter Nichol
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The quiet transformations affecting health and life sciences

Innovation, disruption, and change lead CIOs’ minds as we explore the future of healthcare and life sciences.

The “Advancing and Enhancing Patient Care” panel was insightful and spanned topics such as innovations with care management, health-based investments, and connecting medical research to life-saving innovations. The panel discussion was lively, and as a result, much was covered. There was also a lot that I didn’t have time to cover within our limited timeframe. I want to introduce new insights; I didn’t have time to share them today fully.

The earlier pioneers in life sciences

New technology is reaching far beyond the bill and paperwork. Artificial intelligence and advanced analytics investments will enable the more intelligent use of multi-sourced data. This newly created data can help fuel clinical trials and accelerate research and development initiatives in the labs. Innovation is driving change in how we interact with patients.

  1. Remote patient monitor
  2. Start drug delivery systems
  3. Biometric trackers
  4. Ingestible sensors
  5. Medication adherence
  6. Diseases management apps

We’re hopeful that the 21st Century Cures Act will accelerate interoperability and patient access. This is a decisive step towards making the theory of continuum of care a reality. The recent MyHealthEData initiative promises to enable better access to patient’s medical information to promote better decision making. The Medicare Blue Button 2.0 initiative has solid traction and over 1,100 organizations already involved spanning 3,000 developers dedicated to making a change in patients’ access. This is compounded with the Patient Access API, which required health insurance exchanges to allow patient access to data through third parties, which went into effect on January 1, 2021.

There still are significant obstacles to providing seamless care, akin to a one-click amazon buy button. We’re not there yet. How will access to video CT scans be provided? To what device will patients download their MRI images? Who’s supporting this bandwidth? In the haste to introduce new technology, software companies forget about their customer: healthcare forgets about the patient experience. We can do better. Connectivity is the answer.

Italy has already figured this out. In Italy’s Lombardy Region (near Milan), the Agency for Innovation and Procurement (ARIA) has created a digital information hub integrating into a single platform more than ten years of health data for 10 million people living in the region. This sets an excellent foundation for virtualized care.

Peter Nichol Recognized as 2021 Top BRM by the BRM Institute

Peter Nichol
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Peter Nichol Recognized as 2021 Top BRM by the BRM Institute

Peter B. Nichol was recognized as a 2021 Top BRM on February 9, 2021 by the BRM Institute.

Each year’s Top BRM list is revealed during #BRMWeek in February. BRM Institute’s global BRM community recognizes the top BRMs that have achieved success through their BRM efforts, strengthened the global BRM community and BRM discipline, enriched lives through excellence in BRM within their organizations, and contributed to the community on a local, national, and global level.

The BRM Institute’s global BRM community recognizes the top BRMs that have achieved success through their BRM efforts, strengthened the global BRM community and BRM discipline, enriched lives through excellence in BRM within their organizations, and/or contributed to the community on a local, national, and global level.

The 2021 Top BRM awards were evaluated based on the following major criteria:

Overall Impact:

  • Explain the impact the BRM has contributed to others around the globe!
  • Share the outstanding accomplishments the BRM has delivered
  • Highlight the amazing organizational accomplishments the BRM has delivered including notable contributions, improvements, discoveries, how they have demonstrated the BRM Code of Conduct, etc.

Leading with Purpose:

  • Bring more personal purpose in the workplace.
  • Identify the convergence of the personal and organization purpose to lead towards happier individuals, stronger relationships and durable communities.
  • Demonstrate how the BRM satisfied their personal or organizational purpose through their work.

Delivering Value:

  • Articulate the value delivered by the BRM engagement
  • Quantify the value realized through BRM organizational empowerment
  • Explain the impact of the value delivered through the BRM’s efforts.

Peter Nichol is a highly respected executive, BRM, and passionate evangelist for the BRM community. As a BRMP®, CBRM®, MBRM®, he is a change champion and has fully embraced the role, capability, discipline, and philosophy of the BRM Institute to achieve powerful results.

Peter is a positive voice among the BRM community. He is a member of the Value-Focused Organization Working Group, collaborating internationally with fellow BRM Institute leaders to amplify value. He was also elevated into the Vice-Chair role of the BRM Institute’s Executive Council (BEC), an advisory team comprised of executive-level individuals from leading organizations from around the globe, with a vision to advance the BRM discipline.

Peter has led businesses through complex changes, including the adoption of data-first approaches for portfolio management, data, analytics, lean six sigma for operational excellence, departmental transformations, process improvements, cloud migrations, maximizing team performance, designing new IT operating models, digitizing platforms, leading large-scale mission-critical technology deployments, product management, agile methodologies, and building high-performance teams. Peter is also a 4x author, MIT Sloan and Yale School of Management speaker, an avid blogger with hundreds of articles on BRM value, innovation, data science, artificial intelligence, and blockchain.

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“This year’s Top BRM winners are recognized as BRMs within the global community who embody the true spirit of the BRM discipline. Every year, I am blown away by the stories of leading BRM professionals’ significant achievements and how their efforts have strengthened the network of relationships that is the single, global BRM community.

Your tireless passion and devotion to impacting others through excellence in BRM contribute to more sustainable communities on a local, national, and global level. Congratulations on being awarded a Top BRM of 2021 and thank you for doing the hard work to create positive change in the world!” — Aaron Barnes, CEO BRM Institute

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“As a Master BRM, I am grateful to play a part in shaping the future of the BRM discipline into a single, global BRM community. Whether you’re officially called a business relationship manager, project manager, or agile practitioner, or have another title, the most important part of your role likely involves people. Leaders know that growing, fostering, and maturing cross-functional relationships that embrace an outside-in mindset is are the single most significant contributor to organizational success.

Artificial intelligence, machine learning, and cloud-first technologies are vital enablers, that’s true. However, if everyone is applying AI, everyone is using ML, and most companies are generating automation gains through cloud-first initiatives, then what is the differentiator between these companies?

The difference comes down to people—specifically the relationships those leaders develop. People are the number drivers of quantified business value. I’m excited to launch my 4th book in 2021 titled, Leading with Value. This book directly taps into how leaders quantify and articulate business value. This year will be another challenging year, and I’m confident we can tackle the challenges together as a single, global BRM community!” — Peter B. Nichol

References

BRM Institute. (2021). 2020 Top BRMs. https://brm.institute/2021-top-brms/

Leading With Value

Peter Nichol
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Leading With Value

February 9, 2020 — Peter Nichol published his 4th book, Leading with Value: How to Effectively Communicate Business Value.

In Leading with Value, author Peter B. Nichol provides access to secrets of how the best and most innovative companies tackle business value. His unique experience as a software engineer, architect, project leader, and CIO all synergize to provide you with clear, crisp, and actionable insights on how to capture and communicate business value. Based on his experience as a CIO, author of four books, and a data-science expert, Nichol captures the missing key for leaders struggling to quantify what impact they make and why it matters.

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Think Lead Disrupt

Peter Nichol
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Think Lead Disrupt

January 8, 2020 — Peter Nichol published his 3rd book, Think Lead Disrupt: How Innovative Minds Connect Strategy to Execution.

In Think Lead Disrupt, author Peter B. Nichol provides insights into how innovators can continually redesign products, services, and experiences in new and unique forms. Innovative companies don’t just appear. These disruptive companies evolve as a result of individual ideas, beliefs, and values. Individuals working together transform companies with original ideas. Nichol illuminates the mindset of innovative executives and explores how ideas lead to disruption. Based on his experience as a CIO, as the author of three books, and as a digital expert, Nichol captures how you can be part of the idea revolution.

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New research to assess project management capabilities using demonstrated competencies

Peter Nichol
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New research to assess project management capabilities using demonstrated competencies

October 23, 2020 — Peter Nichol published new research that explains how to assess project management capabilities using demonstrated competencies.

Leading a new team it’s exciting. Unfortunately, rarely are the teams we inherit high-performing teams.

Taking accountability for a low-performing project management team is stressful. Your peers know the team isn’t performing well. Your business partners give signs that help isn’t welcomed. It’s a tough spot to be in, especially when you just joined a new company.

You know in your gut things are going south. Risks are being escalated. Projects are overspending. Post-production operations don’t exist. It appears that everything is falling apart at the same time. Your experience tells you that just attempting to put out all the fires will never be a sustainable plan.

Where do you start? You start with a demonstrated competency model.

Peter’s research takes into account his 19-years of portfolio, program, and project management experience leading teams at Fortune 100 companies. The research outlines a detailed process to systematically improve the project management capabilities of a team using quantified results. This paper is written for CxOs, VPs, and portfolio executives that are accountable for demonstrating measured project management capability improvements for their organization.

DOWNLOAD THE FULL RESEARCH PAPER – ASSESSING PROJECT MANAGEMENT CAPABILITIES USING DEMONOSTATED COMPETENCIES

Abstract

Abstract — This paper aims to present a practitioner approach to assessing project- and program-management capabilities across individuals, teams, and organizations. Executives must deliver value to business partners to stay relevant, engaged, and employed. Often, the value created doesn’t equate to the net organizational investment. This situation creates challenges for the entire organization. Value isn’t generated at a rate that sustains demand. When delivery is impacted, the expected project and initiative results aren’t achieved, and value isn’t realized. Many leaders blame individuals, focusing on the loudest but not necessarily the most critical areas. By applying a systematic approach to assess the management of an individual project or program, capabilities, the deficiencies within the team become self-evident. As a result, fixing the problem becomes quite straightforward. This paper will explain the method, approach, and technique to analyze and assess a team for demonstrated competency. Executive leaders will have a blueprint of what’s required to effectively assess individuals, teams, and organizational capabilities to align with future business demands.

What will you learn?

  • How to assess a team where everything seems to be going wrong.
  • The steps required to establish a quantified approach to measuring and reporting on project management capabilities.
  • How to roll up team strengths and deficiencies into executive-level visualizations and reports.

New research exploring quantifying project management in a value management office

Peter Nichol
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New research exploring quantifying project management in a value management office

October 11, 2020 — Peter Nichol published new research highlighting a practitioner approach to achieve value realization in a value management office.

Executives don’t want to have to sell snake oil. Explaining the value of your PMO—when it doesn’t add value—is challenging.

The number one challenge when transforming a failing PMO is changing the value, beliefs, and behaviors of the existing portfolio, program, and project management teams. In a nutshell, the challenge is education. No one wants to be executing projects that are not aligned with strategic corporate goals. Likewise, most employees want to deliver value to the enterprise, they just don’t know how to quantify it.

Peter’s research moves the idea of value management offices from conceptual frameworks to practical step-by-step instructions of what is required to captured, document, and report on value. This paper is written for practitioners who are challenged to deliver value-based outcomes every day.

The paper outlines a specific example of how to quantify value for a project management initiative.

DOWNLOAD THE FULL RESEARCH PAPER – QUANTIFYING OUTCOMES FOR PROJECT MANAGEMENT IN A VALUE MANAGEMENT OFFICE

Abstract

Abstract — This paper aims to present a practitioner approach to applying project-management principles of value realization within a value-management office. Portfolio leaders and program and project managers are confused about how to apply value management in the real world. Project-management offices are being shut down, because they’ve not delivered on the promise to add value to the business. What has emerged to fill this void is the concept of a value-management office. This new organizational construct is narrowly focused on maximizing value for the company’s strategic initiatives. The result is a huge divergence from the traditional project-management office, which has been viewed organizationally as a cost center that provides little if any value to the company. To optimize the value-management office, new techniques need to be applied and integrated into the existing processes and procedures to deliver projects and quantify results. By using a general-structure portfolio, program and project managers can deliver impactful and quantified value to business partners. In this paper, we’ll explore an example of how to achieve value realization. Leaders, by using this model, have a roadmap for achieving quantified outcomes for their value-management office.

What will you learn?

  • How to step-by-step capture, document, and report value for your project or initiative.
  • What are the steps to quantify outcomes?
  • The difference between process maps and value-stream maps.
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