Page 9 - Spring_2022

The moment of disruption
An area where prevention has actually worked extremely well is vaccines. The childhood vaccination programs that were put in place over the course of the 20th century have helped drive down childhood mortality considerably.
Vaccines aren’t treatments - they are given to train your immune system to prevent infections. In the case of the highly successful mRNA vaccines against Covid-19, these were actually developed to train the immune system to fight cancer - luckily it turned out they are very good at training our immune system to fight SARS-Cov-2.
The speed at which these and other vaccines were developed speaks to the
forces that a major crisis can unleash on individuals, entrepreneurs, communities, companies all the way up to governments and their agencies. It’s these forces that are the catalyst behind the rapid rise of digital technologies in healthcare. Tech-enabled services companies such as Livongo and Omada in the US, and Albion’s portfolio companies Oviva and NuvoAir in Europe that support remote monitoring and treatment of chronic conditions have flourished. The list of examples goes on and on.
The pharmaceutical and medical device industries have also had a rough ride with
the worst-impacted part being clinical development which typically requires physical enrolment and follow-ups. The impact is also strongly felt by sales reps struggling to visit prescribers and large industry events cancelled or moved online. The beneficiaries have again been technology vendors. Companies that are successfully combining remote- enabling technologies in comprehensive decentralised or virtual clinical trial offerings have seen sometimes meteoric growth rates.
Exactly where we are going to end up on the healthcare digital technology adoption curve once Covid-19 is under control, nobody knows. One thing is clear: there’s no going back to the old ways.
Albion news | Spring 2022 09