December 6, 2022

Our CEO, Michael Levy, was honored to be invited to a roundtable discussion hosted by HealthXL – a global company connecting digital health leaders to solve their challenges through unique real-world learnings from their community, combined with expert insights from their advisory team –  to delineate the roadmap to execution of partnership between Digital Therapeutic (DTx) and pharmaceutical companies.

Despite areas of agreement between the two parties and the huge potential of a DTx-Pharma alliance, translating research into practice has presented many challenges. For example, while some partnerships between DTx and Pharma exist, there has been a lack of sizable success due largely to a lack of commitment and poor strategy and execution. 

However, success can occur on the heels of a clear roadmap that ensures alignment of both parties’ objectives and committed execution to turn ambition into reality and collaboration into results. 

As part of the webinar, Levy and other digital health leaders, directors, and CEOs discussed in detail some of the key objectives required to ensure successful partnership and collaboration between DTx and Pharma companies. Some essentials include:

  • Securing a deep bench of Pharma company champions. The high turnover rate in Pharma can make project continuity incredibly difficult as pre-existing work and knowledge may be lost.
  • Ensuring exhaustive research has been done before closing a deal to ensure right-fit, budget concerns, and partnership qualifications are met. Particularly from the DTx perspective, they will want to ensure that their Pharma partner is committed to the project financially and culturally. For example, adding disincentives within the partnership contract could help DTx avoid Pharma’s loss of interest.
  • Maximizing the interactions between Pharma’s business development (BD) teams and DTx companies since putting the BD team behind the negotiation sends a clear message internally that digital therapy is an important asset. Additionally, Pharma companies tend to have a well-defined process for BD deals, which would ultimately work for DTx, too.
  • Ensuring thematically relevant and clear nomenclature can prevent Pharma companies from devaluing DTx therapy solutions; for example, using the term ‘therapeutic’ rather than ‘app’, ‘platform’, or ‘solution’ will resonate better with Pharma.
  • Ensuring all local and global teams are engaged across both institutions through allocation of part of their budget to the project. Additionally, a cycle of continuous internal selling and clearly defining interim milestones can motivate the management team and all stakeholders involved.

Many thanks to HealthXL – you can check out many more of their insightful meetings here – for allowing Michael and DHIT to be a part of this productive conversation. It is incredibly important to continue to foster dialogue around partnerships across the digital health community, so stay tuned as we continue to share learnings and best practices across the spectrum of talent and knowledge within the digital health ecosystem.


Talk soon,

The DHIT Team