2006 Roundtables
Always a popular feature, Breakfast Roundtable Discussions get executives swapping insights and experiences on some of the most vital issues facing the business of healthcare. Choose early, because tables fill up fast. Grab your coffee and breakfast and pull up a chair for a lively session on a timely topic.
1. Stem Cell Therapies -- It's the Business Model, Stupid
Bruce Cohen, MBA '82, is the founding President & CEO of Cellerant Therapeutics, a California-based company commercializing novel, adult-derived stem cell therapies for genetic blood disorders, cancer and autoimmune disease.
Stem cell-based therapies hold great promise, but the unanswered question is whether investors will ever see a return on their capital. Even if the scientific promise is realized and technology barriers are broken, it's not clear that the economics will be compelling. We'll take a look at various strategies, including those that rely on less controversial adult-derived cells, to determine if the business model challenge can be overcome. We'll also take a hard look at personalized therapies and the elusive cells-in-a-bottle concept.
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2. Potential Cost Savings from Offshore Outsourcing
Michael von Grey, MBA '89, is chairman of RevenueMed, Inc., which provides business process outsourcing (BPO) services to hospitals and physician groups. He has founded two healthcare-focused software companies: Speech Machines and Software Care.
US healthcare costs continue to rise while healthcare providers suffer labor shortages for various skilled professions. Explore the possibilities of saving money and tapping into new labor markets by moving key business processes offshore; review case studies from areas where healthcare “offshoring” is relatively mature; and explore strategies for identifying and transitioning healthcare business processes, including:
3. A Closer Look at Diabetes and Obesity: Tackling the Biggest Public Health Epidemic of Our Time
Kelly Close, MBA '95, is CEO of Close Concerns, a firm specializing in diabetes and obesity. Close Concerns advises industry and investors and publishes the popular newsletters Diabetes Close Up and diaTribe.
If you are an American born today, you have a one in three chance of developing diabetes in your lifetime. The inter-related epidemics of diabetes and obesity cost the American taxpayer nearly $200 billion a year. International growth has skyrocketed as troubling Western trends spread, and small and large-cap pharmaceutical and device companies alike have taken note. In this talk, Kelly will take a closer look at the trends, the trials, the blockbusters, the sleepers, the companies to watch, and related implications for providers, payors, patients, and investors.
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4. New Horizons in Behavioral Healthcare
Len Brandt, MBA '80, is CEO of CNS Response, the first company to provide objective brain analysis to guide psychotropic medication selection. He spent the first 10 years of his career leading Norwest Venture’s healthcare investment activity.
Significant issues confront behavioral healthcare and the carve-out system for managing it. Disrupters include expensive, upcoming technologies such as FDA-approved Vagus Nerve Stimulation Implants, and Deep Brain Stimulation and Trans-Cranial Magnetic Stimulation. Personalized medicine is coming through the Roche’s Amplichip for testing possible adverse medication effects, Cordance measurement for predicting response to antidepressants and the rEEG medication guidance system. Questions include: How will the Payer respond, and the desperate consumer? What will be the impact of technology?
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5. Private Equity Meets Specialty Pharmaceuticals – the Endo Pharmaceuticals Story
Carol Ammon, AMP 149, is founder, former CEO and Chairman of the Board of Endo Pharmaceuticals. Jeremy Goldberg, MBA '88, is Managing Director, Corporate Development for Endo Pharmaceuticals. Michael Goldberg is lead Private Equity investor at Kelso and Co.
Endo Pharmaceuticals' story is the subject of several recent HBS case studies. It has grown from approximately $80 MM in sales and $300 MM in enterprise value as of the management buy-out in 1997 to an estimated $900 MM in sales and over $4,000 MM in market value (as of July 2006) as a leading specialty pharmaceutical company focused on pain. Join the key players in discussing decisions involved in creating, financing, building the company.
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6. India & Drug Development: Moving Up the Value Chain
Trent Lu, MBA ‘06, is currently in a dual program with Harvard Medical School and MIT.
Indian pharmaceutical firms such as Ranbaxy and Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories are well-known for their low-cost manufacturing and expertise in producing APIs and generics, often at the ire of the large Western pharmaceutical players. Yet recent investments in R&D and drug development indicate these firms are eager to move up the value chain -- from generic manufacturing to discovery and export of innovative compounds to Western markets. Such moves have large implications on the future landscape of the global drug development industry.
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7. Physician Clinical Ventures: Timely Innovation or Serious Mistake?
Bob Harrington, MBA ’72, is part of the Cambridge Management Group (CMG) in Cambridge, MA, a general management consulting firm serving hospitals and physicians around the country.
Are physician clinical ventures the long-predicted advent of “focused factories”? Are they the precursors of a disruptive innovation that will restore access and consumer-centric pricing to health care services? Since most hospitals do a delicate balancing act of cost-shifting to meet specialists’ capital equipment needs while finding resources to meet community expectations, ventures like these threaten to drain away profitable business. So, what makes the most sense for policy makers, physicians and entrepreneurs? What’s in it for medical device and drug companies? How do you keep local hospital stable and modern?
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8. How New Technologies Affect Health Care Communications
Arthur Fried, MBA '83, is a Founder and Principal in Healthcare Media Group, a New York based health care communications company. He has extensive experience working with large pharma and has successfully introduced several media programs into the market.
As emerging communication technologies pervade the lives of physicians, patients and caregivers, we will examine which appear to have the greatest chance of success, and why. Will small, nimble innovators steal the day? Are existing technologies doomed? Will there be a Google in health care communications? How will these technologies affect compliance, payment and delivery? What role can you play in their development?
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9. When and How to Use Intermediaries (Or Not!) to Increase Shareholder Value
William Lear, MBA '68, is Mid-west Managing Partner of Focus Enterprises, an advisor to $5-$300 MM companies about how to maximize shareholder value/liquidity using both buy and sell side strategies and OPM.
Come and share best practices regarding what has and has not worked about outsourcing to a professional intermediary the responsibility to find and close financial and strategic relationships which add real value to an enterprise. “I already know dozens of companies and equity groups interested in my business. Why should I need much less pay for outside advice?” We’ll look at a full range of examples and discuss how best to make the process work.
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10. In Vitro Diagnostics – Is the Industry Changing?
Kate Torchilin, PhD, MBA’03, is Senior Manager of Strategic Initiatives at Thermo Electron Corporation, a leading manufacturer of life sciences research and clinical diagnostics products.
Traditionally, the field of diagnostics offered a bleak reality for new technologies (i.e., price-continuous environment with unfavorable reimbursement, minimal professional training of lab personnel, commercial channels dominated by few major players, etc.). Many startups trying to introduce new products discovered how hard it is to break the existing barriers for adoption. Diagnostics tends to lag far behind therapeutics in terms of attractiveness to entrepreneurs and investors, and in visibility in the international healthcare debate. Will genomics, proteomics, and biomarker discovery change the face of the diagnostics industry?
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11. The Future is Now for Regenerative Medicine: Building Human Tissues and Organs
Steven Nichtberger, MD, is President and CEO of Tengion, Inc., based outside Philadelphia. Dr. Nichtberger was a senior executive at Merck, a successful founding entrepreneur, and is a board certified internist and cardiologist at Mount Sinai Medical Center, NY.
Founded in 2003 to develop and commercialize a medical breakthrough developed by Dr. Anthony Atala that harnesses the body's power to regenerate neo-organs and neo-tissues using autologous cells, Tengion has over 60 patents from Harvard's Children's Hospital Boston and MIT. This technology can potentially augment, repair or replace impaired tissues and organs without donor transplants or risk of rejection. Hear the incredible story --from founding to their excellent scientific progress to date and successful $50 Million Series B -- directly from the successful, venture-backed CEO. Presented by Heritage Partners International www.HeritageLeaders.com
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12. Consumer-Driven Healthcare: A Cost-Cutting Magic Bullet?
Martin November, MD, MBA ’98, practices OB/GYN at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, and is developing a healthcare immersion program for MBAs through the HBS Healthcare Initiative. Lekshmi Venu, MBA '03, is a director in product management at Express Scripts, a pharmacy benefits manager.
Spiraling healthcare costs are crippling American industry and there appears to be no magic bullet. Consumer-driven healthcare (CDHC) is the latest candidate, but is it the answer? Its goal is to reduce costs not by depriving care but by helping consumers make better, more efficient healthcare decisions. What tools should CDHC plans provide to make this happen? What roles will managed care, financial services, providers and others play, and how will they work together?
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13. Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Health Care Blogs
David Williams, MBA ’94, is a Co-founder and Principal of strategy consulting firm MedPharma Partners and the author of the Health business blog, a daily weblog focusing on health care business and policy.
Millions of blogs have sprung up over the past few years, and a growing number of them are devoted to health care. Doctors, nurses, patients, pundits and business people share their views online at blogs such as ChronicBabe, Diabetes Mine, GruntDoc, Health Care Renewal, Hospital Impact, Medgadget, PharmaGossip, Respectful Insolence, and The Well Timed Period. But what’s the point exactly? Are blogs just a diversion, a fad, a waste of time? Or are there opportunities to utilize the blogosphere for networking, business development, and market intelligence?
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14. The Healthcare "Informing Crisis" – Implications for Care Delivery Models
Eleanor Herriman, MD, MBA ‘00 is Chief Science Officer at NorthPoint Domain, an e-health company that provides an Internet-based “Informed Care” approach for specialty physicians. Akram Boutros, AMP 168 is a board-certified internist and serves as an advisor and coach to several multinational executives.
As patients become healthcare consumers, informing patients and providers is becoming mission-critical in medicine. However, the traditional physician care delivery model (reimbursement system and trends, constraints of face-to-face encounters, etc.) works against providers trying to inform patients and referring clinicians effectively. The pros, cons and practicalities of various solutions to this “Informing Crisis” (e.g., Internet applications, provider alignment, new ancillary care providers) will be discussed.
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©2006 Harvard Business School Health Industry Alumni Association
Conference Co-Chairs
Anula Jayasuriya, MD, MBA '93
Wolfgang Klietmann, MD, OPM 12, Vice President