More than 1 in 7 American adults has chronic kidney disease (CKD), with the majority of those affected unaware of it. CKD is associated with heart disease, stroke, kidney failure and early death. Chronic kidney care for patients who have progressed to end-stage renal disease (ESRD) or kidney failure — and thus require dialysis —...
On July 18, Novartis told analysts its Zolgensma launch was “on track.” Despite the gene therapy’s $2.1 million price tag, the company states the launch is “one of the most successful launches from an access standpoint in rare diseases.” Novartis said it had reached coverage deals with more than 20 commercial insurance plans, covering approximately 40%...
Chief Digital Officer (CDO) is the latest title to become a standard within the pharmaceutical company C-suite, with Takeda, Bayer, GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, Merck, Sanofi and others all making such appointments in recent years. As we’ve written before, this addition to the pharma senior management team reflects the growing importance of digital to pharma, which encompasses...
A recent survey published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reported that the medical marketing spend in the United States rose from approximately $17.7 billion in 1997 to just under $30 billion in 2016. The biggest growth came from Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) marketing, which increased from 11.9% to 32% of the total spend....
Each January, a large portion of the international healthcare industry descends on San Francisco for the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference and a variety of other concurrent industry events. The sentiment of the nearly 10,000 attendees — largely influenced by partnering news and big merger/acquisition deals announced around these events — typically sets the tone for...
Digital technology is becoming increasingly important in the healthcare space. This was clearly reflected by the growing number of companies and events focused on the digital healthcare sector during JP Morgan/Biotech Week in San Francisco and new conferences dedicated to digital technology applications in health and wellness that have been scheduled for 2019. Uses of...
Welcome to 2019. We hope you enjoyed the holidays and look forward to meeting and greeting many of you next week in San Francisco for Biotech Week. Several members of the Bionest team will be in attendance, and if you’d like to get together, we look forward to hearing from you. Last year, we...
Two recently published analyses are providing a more in-depth picture of prescription drug spending in the United States. Such evaluations illustrate the complexities facing policy makers and regulators seeking to help reduce patient and payer drug costs. In addition, they point to somewhat hidden issues regarding the pricing and reimbursement of generic drugs that can...
In early March, we wrote about the collaboration between Bristol-Myers Squibb and Nektar aimed at developing Nektar’s T-cell stimulating molecule NKTR-214 in combination with BMS’s checkpoint inhibitor Opdivo (nivolumab). That deal brought Nektar an eye-opening $1.85 billion in upfront cash and investments for a share of its development-stage drug, with the potential for an additional...
In our January post on what we planned to watch for in 2018, we predicted that digital health would come to the foreground of activity this year. And indeed, we are starting to see a lot of buzz around digital health. In March, Novartis and Pear Therapeutics announced the first development deal between a major...