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Amgen is so keen to expand its digital health team it contacted me!

Amgen is looking for a senior counsel as part of an expansion of its digital health team. Guess who they contacted?

The pharmaceutical industry’s interest in digital health is getting kind of hectic, if my experience this week is any indication. Amgen contacted me (ME!!) to gauge my interest in a senior counsel role. Wha wha whaaat?

It seems Amgen is rapidly expanding its digital health team to advise on navigating the regulatory bush country of digital health apps and patient education, among other things. But rather than focusing on law firms, it would prefer to recruit from the front lines of digital health. It’s particularly interested in what tracking complex cancer drugs and treatments could do for adherence.

Pharmaceutical companies have long been interested in the potential of harnessing the beyond the pill trend, but it has come in fits and starts. No shortage of people tell me on a regular basis that the pharma industry moves slowly. No kidding. Different pharma companies are operating at different comfort levels with digital health tech and their program stages vary widely.

Sachin Jain joined Merck and served as CMO and chief innovation officer to help connect the big pharma company with health systems, EMR providers and health technology startups to find new ways to leverage health data, only to leave a couple of years later. But just as one pharma door closes another opened. Exit Jain from Merck, enter Naomi Fried from Boston Children’s at Biogen Idec. Novartis and Qualcomm Life launched a fund earlier this year to invest in digital health companies.

And the exciting thing is that the pharma companies on the forefront are seeing results. Boehringer Ingelheim and GlaxoSmithKline’s collaborations with digital health companies like Propeller Health, for instance, recently got the blessing of regulators. Those are just a few examples, but Amgen’s initial interest in me speaks louder to the level of activity happening on the sidelines.

There are just so many facets to providing digital health services, the complexities of each patients’ experience, how pharma companies work with patients doctors, and health systems, the ethics of accessing data from remote monitoring tools. It’s a dream job for someone as passionate and knowledgeable about digital health as they are about addressing the legal questions raised by it.

Less than 24 hours later a senior recruiter for the west coast pharma business took the wind right out of my sails. No, as it pans out, of course they would require the person they seek to have a JD. I returned to my original status as a humble, but increasingly called upon, network contact. Still, it’s an important reminder for digital health players across the landscape, including me: It’s truly a dynamic time.

Photo: Flickr user Neetalparekh

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