Following the trend of the broader pharmaceutical world, Johnson & Johnson’s medtech division is interested and ready for partnering out – pushing a decentralized business model that focuses heavily on external collaboration.
“We have the humility to understand that we don’t own all the information or knowledge on medical technology,” Martin Fitchet, global head of R&D for J&J Medical Devices, said in an interview at this week’s AdvaMed 2015 conference in San Diego. “There’s a big world out there. Academia. Startups. Other companies. Government. All working on technologies that we’d love to partner with, and add our expertise.”
Indeed, despite a pattern of stagnant funding in the medical device industry, the medtech behemoth is optimistic and looking to branch out – pursuing early stage technologies. J&J already has a well-established innovations arm and a venture capital team – and it’s looking to expand.
“I think the funding and the budgets are there, and we have the ability to fund and develop R&D internally at scale,” Fitchet said. “But we are very selective about the highest potential technologies.”
The company’s looking at outcomes-driven programs, it says – and is completely agnostic of where innovation is coming from.
But the company takes exception to the idea that innovation is stifled in the medtech arena. J&J has, after all, built innovation centers around the world, with outposts in San Francisco, Boston, Israel, London and Shanghai – and holds the belief there’s a lot of compelling work being done around the globe in medtech.
“Since we’re in these different environments, we can pick and choose among the best partnerships out there,” said Bruce Rosengard, chief technology and medical science officer of J&J’s global surgery group. “We’re watering and fertilizing the environment to help build an innovation ecosystem that’s really bidirectional.”
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Rosengard didn’t directly address which technologies that J&J is specifically interested in pursuing – couching that by saying they’re looking to solve a disease issue, not chase the latest and greatest new technology. What matters is whether an acquisition or partnering target holds innovation that will change a patient outcome, or change a procedural process.
“We look for what’s missing,” Fitchet said. “We don’t look at the technology first – but the problem, the medical need.”
As evidenced by its announcement earlier this year that J&J is partnering with Google Life Sciences to develop advanced surgical robots, the company’s looking to develop some pretty compelling futuristic technology.
The areas attracting J&J’s investment dollars include trauma, osteoarthritis and related joint replacement, metabolic diseases like obesity and diabetes, colonic and lung cancer, and cardiovascular disease.
“There will always be disruption in terms of what doctors do,” Rosengard said. “But diseases are manifold, and they change over time – and you change your focus.”
