In January, the Foundation’s Director of Operations, Emily White, MD, traveled to San Francisco for JP Morgan Healthcare Week. This annual event is an opportunity to hear talks by the thought leaders, survey the trends in healthcare, meet with investors, and help support focused ultrasound manufacturers looking for investment.
This year, the topics included:
- asset light companies focusing on virtual healthcare
- financial decision support software specialized for healthcare
- collaborations between analytics and wearables companies
- social determinants of health
- cybersecurity and block chain to protect patient data
- the benefits of precision medicine
- the increasing access to genetic data and how it may influence healthcare insurance coverage long term
- a focus on exciting developments in immune-oncology
“JPM week is the most important week in healthcare investing,” said White. “In addition to seeing the trends in healthcare investing, the 2017 data presented at this year’s meeting indicate the average cost to get a medical device to market is $80M. Whatever the Foundation can do to help educate investors on the technology and connect them with focused ultrasound companies gets this technology to patients sooner – our ultimate mission.
“The most promising thing I learned was that across the board, both companies and investors are really pleased with Scott Gottleib, MD, the new commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration. His promise to fast-track breakthrough technologies is happening, and that’s really exciting because focused ultrasound certainly falls in that category.”
The next JP Morgan Healthcare Week will take place January 7-10, 2019, in San Francisco, CA.