-: I am Chrissy O'Brien.
I'm a senior partner at BCG,
and I have the distinct honor
of being our moderator this morning.
Joined on stage with an all-star group
of healthcare executives
to discuss a very exciting topic around innovation.
What are you most excited about?
What do you think the opportunities
will be from an innovation perspective?
-: We've heard terminology, "the golden era
of innovation in healthcare."
I really think that that's the case.
On the biopharma side,
precision medicine remains top of the list.
RNA technologies, both in terms of generating proteins,
also silencing proteins.
On the services side, AI and ML,
alternate-site care, digital care, very exciting.
And then on the devices side,
sort of AI/ML-driven product ecosystem, the product suites.
-: The innovation cycle is going to hit healthcare
like a truck, and it's going to make a huge impact
on patients' lives.
-: The pace of change of innovation,
I think has gone through a sort of step function
over the course of the last five years.
And this convergence with technology
is having a profound impact upon medicine
in every single aspect of the spectrum that we look at.
Speaker: Healthcare companies spent 2023
understanding the potential of AI.
In 2024, they'll focus on implementation.
-: What AI and ML is going to help us do,
it's going to help us with efficiency, and it's
going to help us bring high-quality medicines faster.
We talk about target identification.
Also within making chemical matter,
having the tools to more quickly get to the composition of
matter that you want to get to is going to be so critical.
-: 80% of the challenge of bringing AI
to a new therapy is wrestling with the data
and getting it labeled and organized and curated,
and dealing with the appropriate care of who has permissions
to use the data, and being careful about protecting
and ensuring the privacy of patients.
Speaker: GLP-1 medicines have shown potential
that goes far beyond weight loss.
-: As we think about the GLP market, the weight,
we've been thinking about the market will carved up.
It's a comorbidity with weight loss.
We have a product that we're bringing in for
NASH with obesity.
And so I think you'll see this theme
just kind of carved up into different diseases.
And then I do think the reimbursement will catch up
as you have the hard clinical outcomes
and the long-term data to go along with it.
Speaker: The Inflation Reduction Act
has created a new set of challenges for biopharma companies.
-: You have such a high fail rate in this business,
the capital in terms of large trials that you're spending.
Now you have to ask yourself,
How many of these trials you have to bring forward
from day one?
It impacts the way you fund,
it has a knock on effect on maybe other trials
that you're thinking about for other molecules.
As the IRA becomes real,
you'll see a market correction on
especially those with small molecules
because the biotechs don't have the luxury
to prosecute like a big pharma.
-: It's strategically very important for biotech companies
to think about this, because again,
it may change their strategies on partnering clinical
trialing and capital allocation.
Speaker: 2024 Will be a busy one
for mergers and acquisitions.
-: Financial conditions are easing.
The big companies want and need growth.
This allows for more transactions.
-: Innovation happens not just inside our own walls,
but it happens a lot in other startup companies,
other technology companies.
So we're being very disciplined about evaluating those
for potential tuck-in acquisitions.
-: The patent cliffs for many of our peers,
they're still in a window
where they're going to have significant patent cliffs,
so there's going to be a desire and need
to bring in high-quality late-stage compounds.
-: The market this year is going to continue
to be quite challenging from a private equity standpoint.
It's partly because you've still got
relatively high interest rates.
I think you are going to see
some more bespoke solutions arising
where people have got specific targets or assets in mind
where they want to bring in a partner
to create a win-win situation.