At no time in recent memory has it been more apparent that there is an acute need to scale innovations to improve healthcare. If the pandemic has taught us anything, it is that we are all interconnected. With that in mind, we are pleased to announce that, in partnership with Global Corporate Venturing, we are launching the Global Healthcare Council.
The council is intended to provide leadership towards developing a true, global, corporate venturing capital (CVC) healthcare investing community. As CVC healthcare investors, we all face common issues and challenges. While our individual mandates may differ, we are all tasked with trying to scale innovations to improve healthcare. That is an important distinction – while we require financial returns like our VC peers, at the end of the day, our limited partners really care about scaling innovation. Given the large footprints our companies provide, our organisations offer strategic advantages traditional investors cannot match. Can we collectively use our platforms to scale innovation in healthcare more quickly?
The council has outlined four areas where it will look to provide leadership in partnership with Global Corporate Venturing.
Share best practices – lessons learned across CVC topics, as well as for scaling innovations specifically within healthcare
Provide thought leadership – looking forward to where innovation is needed, sharing case studies, conducting surveys
Build talent – efforts to attract talent coming into the healthcare innovation ecosystem (not just investors but also within star-up companies) with a focus on diversity and inclusion
Build community – events and forums to build network and relationships, also to potentially drive deals or accelerate ecosystem development
During 2021, Rob Coppedge of Echo Health Ventures and Bill Taranto of Merck Global Health Innovation Fund will serve as co-chairs of the council. Members of the council are Megann Watters Vaughn of LabCorp, Dave Schulte of McKesson Ventures, and Sam Brasch of Kaiser Permanente Ventures. The initial focus will be on getting work streams underway towards addressing the objectives outlined above. As those workstreams mature, there will likely be many opportunities for interested healthcare CVC groups to get involved in a meaningful way. Keep an eye out for more information through GCV!
We look forward to building a stronger community of CVC healthcare investors!
