2021 LS&HC Horizons - Flipbook - Page 39
Life Sciences and Health Care Horizons 2021
39
Filling the digital pipeline – trends for cross-border licensing and
collaboration deals on digital therapeutics
Traditional pharma companies increasingly
realize that digital therapeutics (DTx) do not have
to be an alternative and replace conventional
pharmacological solutions. Rather, DTx can be
designed to complement and improve patient
compliance with drug therapies. However,
creating user-friendly digital solutions requires
specific digital skills and agility that are more
often found in tech start-up businesses than in
established pharma companies. Does that setup sound familiar – a smaller start-up with a
promising technology, but lacking money and
resources, and a pharma company with the
financials means and capability to do the
heavy lifting of developing and bringing a
product to market?
As with biotech companies, tech companies
with a promising DTx solution will be looking to
collaborate with pharma companies to benefit
from their expertise and experience in clinical
research, regulatory approval, reimbursement
procedures, and promotion of products in a
health care environment. Pharma companies, on
the other hand, will be interested to collaborate
with DTx companies to fill their pipeline with
complementary digital health technologies.
However, the collaboration between DTx
companies and pharma companies will often look
different than the traditional biotech-pharma
setting, where the pharma partner often purchases
or in-licenses the early-stage technology and
takes over the development program entirely. In
digital therapeutics, the pharma partner will often
continue to rely on the specific digital expertise
of the DTx partner much longer to pave the way
for a successful commercialization, as branding
and user experience are cultivated, delivered, and
measured in very different manners in the digital
world than in the analogue world.
Given the wide difference between the
development and commercialization of DTx and
conventional therapies, companies may even take
a targeted approach to digital asset development
where pharma and digital health companies
work together from inception. Understanding
each party’s key concerns and areas of exposures
will be key to create appropriate contractual
arrangements and to ensure commercial success
of the DTx solution.
Cullen Taylor
Partner, Northern Virginia
cullen.taylor@hoganlovells.com
Arne Thiermann
Partner, Hamburg
arne.thiermann@hoganlovells.com
Jörg Schickert
Partner, Munich
joerg.schickert@hoganlovells.com
