On Friday’s MedHeads, Digital Health Editor Stephanie Baum was joined by Health Technology Reporter Neil Versel and Life Sciences Reporter Meghana Keshavan to discuss news that came out of the Health Innovation Summit and BIO International Convention held this past week.
Watch the broadcast above, but also take a look at the five important topics we reviewed this week.
BioLabs Pegasus Park Cultivates Life Science Ecosystem
Gabby Everett, the site director for BioLabs Pegasus Park, offered a tour of the space and shared some examples of why early-stage life science companies should choose North Texas.
1. To avoid digital health failure, we need to design for behavior
Patient engagement has been called the blockbuster drug of the century. In the booming frontier that is digital health everyone is trying to activate and sustain end users. Despite digital health funding and healthcare consumerism advancing at a faster-than-ever pace,abandonment statistics reveal that approximately 50 percent of people who start using a digital health device stop using it within six months.
In an effort to make more information available about side effects of drugs from the people taking them to improve drug safety, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and PatientsLikeMe have formalized a longstanding relationship, according to an announcement at the Drug Information Association conference this week.
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.
3. #BIO2015: Open-source biopharma R&D improves late-stage success
The open-source model for biopharma R&D yields better results when it comes to late-stage success, according to a new report released by Deloitte at this week’s BIO convention in Philadelphia. Collaboration, even with competitors, helps usher a drug into successful development.
4. Which roles will stand out in new army of healthcare workers?
There is always talk, sometimes tongue-in-cheek but mostly sort of serious, that a lot of jobs will be replaced by robots or computers. Maybe that new iPhone I just bought will replace me by year end. Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla thinks that the most doctors’ current functions will be replaced by algorithms; many believe that lots of white collar jobs, such as lawyers, accountants, and bankers will be replaced by machines with warmer personalities.
5. Would Epocrates do better with management separate from athenahealth?
Consider it more wondering aloud than anything close to an official announcement, but athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush publicly mused Wednesday whether Epocrates might be more successful “outside of my management sphere.”
Photo: Flickr user Timothy Appnel
