CLEVELAND – The biopharma industry has found itself between a rock and hard place, or at least that was the premise for a panel of experts across the drug development supply chain that convened at the 2016 Medical Innovation Summit sponsored by Cleveland Clinic Innovations.

CLEVELAND – Medical technology may have scored just as many hits on the Cleveland Clinic's 2017 Top 10 list of medical innovations, but biopharma won the race to the top, taking the top four spots among breakthroughs expected in the coming year, including liquid biopsies to find circulating tumor DNA, cellular immunotherapy to treat leukemia and lymphomas, diabetes drugs that reduce cardiovascular disease and death and, at number one, the arrival of the microbiome to prevent, diagnose and treat disease.

Medical technology may have scored just as many hits on the Cleveland Clinic's 2017 Top 10 list of medical innovations, but biopharma won the race to the top, taking the top four spots among breakthroughs expected in the coming year.

CLEVELAND – Addressing the state of health care innovation at the 2016 Medical Innovation Summit sponsored by Cleveland Clinic Innovations, a diverse panel of executives from disparate segments of the health care system agreed on one general principle: The industry is changing rapidly and in ways that look different from the face of innovation in any other industry. The reason, they also concurred, is that patient care is fundamentally different from other industries, where consumers might be willing to accept a lower priced model rather than the top of the line. "The difference with heath care is that patients don't...

CLEVELAND – Funding for health care innovation remains robust, according to a panel of venture investors at the 2016 Medical Innovation Summit sponsored by Cleveland Clinic Innovations. Although they found plenty to like across biopharma and med-tech, investors nevertheless voiced caution about excessive costs built into a system that talks value-based reimbursement but continues to deliver care on a fee-for-service basis. No single platform will transform that dynamic, according to Leslie Bottorff, managing director of health care investments for GE Capital, who said her organization is investing in an innovation ecosystem. "A few venture capitalists...

CLEVELAND – Funding for health care innovation remains robust, according to a panel of venture investors at the 2016 Medical Innovation Summit sponsored by Cleveland Clinic Innovations. Although they found plenty to like across biopharma and med-tech, investors nevertheless voiced caution about excessive costs built into a system that talks value-based reimbursement but continues to deliver care on a fee-for-service basis.

CLEVELAND – Funding for health care innovation remains robust, according to a panel of venture investors at the 2016 Medical Innovation Summit sponsored by Cleveland Clinic Innovations.

As a veteran health care journalist, I appreciate the need for biopharmas to recoup R&D costs and to operate profitably, so it’s hardly surprising to me when newly approved drugs are priced at a premium. But I’m also a consumer and a caregiver. In the context of those roles, the convoluted prescription drug supply chain with its multitude of handoffs seems purposely designed to obscure the true cost of branded drugs and, in turn, the true value of patient assistance programs (PAPs). The mysteries of drug pricing and efforts to mitigate patient out-of-pocket costs through PAPs hit home at the...