Whether you manage a start-up with a novel marker, a traditional IVD company competing for market share, an established company with a new research platform, a pharmaceutical company struggling with companion diagnostic commercialization, or a clinical laboratory exploring expansion of testing services, the Health Advances Diagnostics and Life Science Tools team can help you realize your business’ potential.
Life Science Tools
Lab and Point of Care Product Strategy
Hospital Lab Strategy
Precision Medicine
Donna Hochberg: “One of the biggest challenges to commercializing a new research or diagnostic technology is clearly identifying your true target customers. We’ve had a number of recent successes assisting our clients in creatively segmenting customers into easily identifiable and targetable groups, deploying sales reps to the most productive prospects and thereby enabling more effective launch.”
Mark Speers: “It is very fulfilling to be involved with clients periodically as they advance their technologies and see opportunities to refresh their competitive and customer intelligence. Over the course of several years, we assisted a client in the decision to invest in a nascent technology, develop the market to adopt the new technology, and prepare for an exit. The company was recently purchased by a large, established IVD player for several hundred million dollars.”
Gary Gustavsen: “A key focus area for the practice recently has been global commercialization of companion diagnostics. We recently completed a large project for a major biopharma that further validated the need for a globally-orchestrated, but locally-tailored strategy. The barriers to CDx adoption across markets are so unique; every country needs its own set of tactics.”
Diagnostic Assay Global Launch
Drug Discovery Strategy
Test Menu Optimization
View additional diagnostics and life science tools examples here.
Oncology
Due Diligence
Technology Commercialization
Health Advances is pleased to announce that healthcare executive Chris Karras, has joined the firm as a Vice President, Diagnostics.
Chris joins practice leaders Donna Hochberg, Gary Gustavsen, Peter Origenes, Arushi Agarwal, Kristen Amanti, and Daniela Hristova-Neeley in providing strategic advisory services for diagnostic and investor clients around the globe.
Personalized medicine (PM) approaches have revolutionized healthcare delivery by offering new insights that enable healthcare providers to select the optimal treatment approach for their patients. However, despite the consensus that these approaches have significant value, implementation across the US is highly variable. In order to address barriers to widespread PM adoption, a comprehensive and methodical approach to assessing the current level of PM integration within a given organization and the broader healthcare system is needed. A quantitative framework encompassing a multifactorial approach to assessing PM adoption has been developed and used to generate a rating of PM integration in 153 organizations across the US. The results suggest significant heterogeneity in adoption levels but also some consistent themes in what defines a high-performing organization, including the sophistication of data collected, data sharing practices, and the level of internal funding committed to supporting PM initiatives. A longitudinal approach to data collection will be valuable to track continued progress and adapt to new challenges and barriers to PM adoption as they arise.
Health Advances Vice President, Kristine Mechem, PhD, recently was a presenter at the American Association for Precision Medicine annual Meeting.
Her presentation was part of the session AI Driven Traditional Research and Diagnostics and focused on the application of AI, specifically machine learning, in training diagnostic algorithms or improving the performance of diagnostics overtime. Additionally the presentation looked at some of the challenges associated with the use of AI in diagnostic development.
Health Advances Partner, Donna Hochberg, will be participating in a Massachusetts High Technology Council, Inc. roundtable next Monday, November 23rd at 8am EST to discuss the current status of the COVID19 pandemic, existing testing capabilities/capacities, and implications for the future.
Defeating COVID-19, our 2020 Virtual Roundtable Series returns! Join us Monday November 23, 2020 from 8 to 9 AM for an executive-level update on the state of COVID-19, advances in testing capabilities and capacity, and implications for important decisions employers and policy makers face during the current resurgence of infections world-wide.
This one-hour roundtable features Steve Pagliuca, co-owner Boston Celtics and co-chair Bain Capital; Marc Casper; President & CEO Thermo Fisher Scientific; Donna Hochberg, Partner, Health Advances; David Walt, HHMI Professor, Core Faculty Member Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Brigham and Women’s Hospital; and David Weiss, SVP Player Matters, National Basketball Association.
Prior studies have established that broader incorporation of active surveillance, guided by additional prognostic tools, may mitigate the growing economic burden of localized prostate cancer in the USA. This study sought to further explore the potential of a particular gene expression-based prognostic tool to address this unmet need. Materials & methods: A deterministic, decision-analytic model was developed to estimate the economic impact of the Prolaris® test on a US commercial health plan. Results & conclusion: When adopted in patients classified by the American Urological Association as low or intermediate risk, the assay was projected to reduce costs by $1894 and $2129 per patient over 3 and 10 years, respectively, largely through the increased use of active surveillance.
Read the article here.
Read an interview with Gary Gustavsen, Partner at Health Advances, about the article.
We are delighted to announce the promotion of Arushi Agarwal, to Vice President. Arushi has excelled during her 9 years with the firm and will continue in her leadership role in the Diagnostics and Precision Medicine Practices.
Arushi’s varied expertise in point of care testing, specialty lab testing, companion diagnostics and digital health make her a trusted and knowledge advisor to her clients. Arushi will continue to leverage these skills with a focus on helping clients navigate launch of less and minimally invasive testing technologies in liquid biopsy, digital biomarkers and beyond.
Prior to joining Health Advances, Arushi received her Masters in Biomedical Engineering from Columbia University where her research focused on the use of microfluidic technologies for regenerative medicine applications. She received a Bachelors in Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Health Advances is pleased to announce that seasoned life sciences executive, Kristine Mechem, has joined the firm as a Vice President. Kristine will principally focus on Health Advance’s expanding Precision Medicine practice.
With over 15 years of healthcare experience, Kristine has earned an excellent reputation as a skilled strategist and market planning executive. Immediately prior to joining Health Advances, Kristine served as Vice President of Marketing and Planning for OncoCyte Corporation, a publically traded company focused on developing liquid biopsy-based diagnostics for early cancer detection. She was responsible for all aspects of commercial and market planning including product development requirements, market access, commercial operations, and business development initiatives. Kristine was also instrumental in supporting the company through its IPO in early 2016, assisting in various SEC filings and investor relations activities.
Earlier in her career, Kristine was a Director of Business Analytics for Abbott Diabetes Care where she led several market analytics and forecasting initiatives. Prior to that she was a Senior Market Planner at Genentech where she assumed several lifecycle management responsibilities. She has also held Director and VP roles in Business Development for the Zitter Group, Corra Life Sciences, and Invest East of England.
Kristine joins practice leaders Donna Hochberg, Gary Gustavsen, Kate McLaughlin, Kristen Amanti and Peter Origenes in providing strategic advisory services for diagnostics, life science tools and bioproduction clients. Health Advances has been successfully advising companies on the development and commercialization of diagnostic products from traditional core lab platforms, through high value novel diagnostics and precision medicine strategies. Our experienced multi-disciplinary team includes PhD researchers, MDs, and diagnostics industry leaders working to provide innovative strategies for both diagnostic and biopharma clients.
“Health Advances approaches a problem like they’re part of your company and have a real stake in the game. We were a fledgling startup with a novel diagnostic capability and we needed to understand the markets where we could make a big difference in health care. Health Advances looked at the entire landscape of clinical diagnostics and directed us to a market that became a foundation for our company. We’ve now raised over $90 million and grown from 8 to 60 people.”
Donna Hochberg, PhD
Gary Gustavsen
Kristen Garner Amanti, PhD
Peter Origenes
Arushi Agarwal
Daniela Hristova-Neeley, PhD
Chris Karras
Mark Speers