“The future of healthcare is digital healthcare,” said Bill Taranto, head of the Merck Global Health Innovation Fund (GHIF), one of the main speakers at our London Global Corporate Venturing Symposium this week, and at our media partner TechTour’s Healthtech Summit in Lausanne on June 30 to July 1.
Taranto has built Merck GHIF into an investment powerhouse over the last five years.
He said in an interview with Global Corporate Venturing, ahead of his speech, on Wednesday: “Our primary investment thesis is based on the assumption that data is the currency we will use to transact in the future healthcare market and all that data is derived from digital health. All of our portfolio companies are considered data companies. Whether they are aggregating data, analysing data, monitoring data or even data from diagnostics is digital health to GHI” Taranto added Merck GHIF views digital healthcare as an investment initiative to better understand healthcare data, which is becoming more and more important in the healthcare system.
The key to make the most out of the data which is being developed is to be able to understand it, Taranto added. “Data for data’s sake doesn’t serve any purpose. What is important is how you turn the data into a result and outcome. The question becomes how do you take data and understand it across the healthcare continuum of a patient. For example, cardiovascular remote patient monitoring does not work just because you are monitoring, but in how it informs you in preventing a stroke or heart attack is the desired outcome.”
Given the complexity of the sector, Taranto is trying to invest broadly across digital health. He said: “There are a lot of moving parts in healthcare. This is why we have taken the approach of ecosystem investing, which should allow us to begin to integrate and aggregate the different pieces of healthcare. This is going to take aggregating many digital health companies to do that.”
Taranto has trumpeted the digital health efforts as a way to move “beyond the pill” in healthcare. He said: “Pharma has traditionally focused around the pill. Yet there are now service solutions where you can treat the patient across a continuum. The question is how do you create a care pathway, which manages the patient with multiple digital health tools. The pill is great, but there are other pieces of the care pathway that need to be integrated to traditional drug therapy.”
He added: “It is a great time for digital health to meet the pharma industry and play a very important role in treating patients. For instance, a diabetic may have to go on a diet as well as take a pill. A pill doesn’t help with the diet, yet digital health can help with an exercise programme and diet to make them much more healthy. This is a marriage with all the pieces coming together.”
The emergence of new technology partnerships is set to be transformative for the sector. Taranto said: “The digital health space is a relatively new space in healthcare. The key for us as an industry is to partner with the right partners in the technology industry. We are working with as many partners as we can. Novartis started their partnership with Qualcomm, which I think is fantastic for industry, with two groups coming together to create a digital health platform. We are comfortable partnering with the Apples and the Googles which have great technology to assist us on all the pathways the patient has to follow.”
Taranto added “We have evolved to become a rolling evergreen fund. We are deploying $100m year and bringing $100m back in. We are also looking to roll up different companies into an ecosystem. To do this we started growth equity firm, Global Health Innovation Private Equity. We are now using more tools in the toolbox. As corporate venture evolves, we are adding more components.”
Toby Lewis, editor of Global Corporate Venturing, will also be moderating a panel with Taranto at the TechTour’s Healthtech Summit in Lausanne on June 30 to July 1. TechTour’s Marc Sluijs will be in attendance at the symposium this week.