The CEO of a company that makes prescription apps to treat diseases asks one question to reveal how serious drugmakers are about using technology
- Corey McCann is the CEO of Pear Therapeutics, a company developing prescription digital therapeutics for conditions like substance use disorder and multiple sclerosis.
- As pharmaceutical companies have increasingly become interested in building their digital strategies, McCann has one simple way to sort out who is taking the new field seriously.
- "They should be able to connect what they're doing to a commercial business and to a P&L such that it's actually funded, as opposed to just being a prolonged survey with lots of conversations," McCann said.
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Pharmaceutical companies have some lofty ambitions when it comes to applying technology to the centuries-old industry.
That can make it difficult for health-tech startups like Pear Therapeutics to figure out who's seriously willing to invest in a partnership and find new ways to treat patients. Pear develops prescription digital therapies, like apps that help treat substance use disorder.
Corey McCann, the CEO of Pear, said he has a strategy for figuring out who's serious and who's not.
"Whose P&L pays for the upfront?" McCann said. "That's the question that you can use to determine who's serious and who's not."
P&L refers to profit and loss. In other words, he wants to know, does the pharma company think about digital therapeutics as a business strategy that's going to drive revenue in a meaningful way, or is it just a side project?
"They should be able to connect what they're doing to a commercial business and to a P&L such such that it's actually funded, as opposed to just being a prolonged survey with lots of conversations," McCann said.
Pear's approach uses software as medicine
Instead of using a pill or an injection to deliver a treatment, the digital therapeutics Pear develops use smartphone apps to treat patients.
Pear got its first prescription digital therapeutic, an app for substance use disorder, approved by the FDA in 2017, followed in December 2018 by its second approval for a digital therapeutic for opioid use disorder.
Pear's no stranger to working with pharmaceutical companies. Pear is working with Novartis to develop apps to treat schizophrenia and multiple sclerosis. Pear also had a relationship with Novartis' Sandoz generic unit, which ended in 2019 as part of a leadership change at the generic drugmaker.
Drugmakers are taking technology more seriously
Over the past few years, healthcare companies have hired chief digital officers to oversee efforts to make companies more tech-savvy. Each role carries its own priorities, from finding ways to enhance drug discovery and development to better connecting with consumers.
Gradually, the pharmaceutical companies McCann talks to have started getting more serious about using technology in new ways to treat patients.
"I think that every day that goes by, we see more and more partners in the right head space," McCann said. "But it's frankly a mixed bag even within some of the most forward-leaning organizations."
Sometimes, however, he'll be most of the way through a conversation and the potential partner asks a question that signals to McCann that the team isn't quite on the same page.
"That's just the way that this business works," he said.
One of the reasons it's difficult to get potential partners on the same page is the nature of the newly formed digital therapeutics market, which combines medicine and software.
"This is about building a new space, which is a hybrid of pharma and tech. And so by definition in, unless you've built your company from the ground up to do this, you will have people for whom this feels very uncomfortable," McCann said.
For tech companies, some of the regulation and work needed to show that a particular therapeutic tool is doing what it's supposed to do might not feel comfortable. And for pharmaceutical companies, some of the technologies used in digital therapeutics might not feel comfortable either, he said.
"I think unless you've really built up your team to do both these things, it's really, really difficult to be able to be a leader in this space."
- Read more:
- Pharma giants like Novartis and Sanofi are betting that the future of healthcare looks more like an app or sensor than a prescription
- We spoke with the execs tasked with bringing technology to some of the world's oldest healthcare companies. Here's how they're picking their spots.
- The first digital chief at $210 billion drugmaker Pfizer shares her top 5 priorities for using technology to transform the pharma giant
- Companies like Walmart, CVS, and Amazon are beefing up their healthcare strategies. Here are their plans to upend the $3.6 trillion industry.
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