Story snapshot: Sandoz and Pear Therapeutics break up. Novartis' unit Sandoz teamed up in 2018 with Pear Therapeutics, one of the pioneers in launching a prescription digital therapeutic for substance use disorder, to potentially bring a new type of therapy to market. While Pear's reSET and reSET-O are FDA approved and have evidence of efficacy, perhaps that is not enough to enable Sandoz to help commercialize the solutions. Our recent report assesses the digital activities of the top 10 Pharma, and we have identified that Digital Therapeutics is the top area of partnership activity by big pharma. So, this announcement may shake things up a bit. 

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Why is it notable? Pioneers may not always pave the way

• As one of the earliest and most publicized partnerships, the industry was almost reliant on the Novartis/ Sandoz - Pear Therapeutics partnerships to pave the way for others, and publish the 'how to' guide. 
• Sandoz doesn’t have a molecule portfolio to match this investment in a digital therapeutic focused on substance overuse. Without a clear overlap or link between drug and technology, it seems like making DTx work as a franchise in itself is not as easy. 

Industry Implications - DTx enabling platforms, new business models

• The oh-so-frequent leadership change can impact pharma strategy so significantly as to cause reverberations across the industry.
• Changes in bus models: A number of digital health start-ups were banking on partnerships with pharma to help accelerate their road to market, and/ or reimbursement as we outlined in our Digital Therapeutics Report (bus models). However, that may no longer appear as safe a bet and start-ups may prefer to go solo.
• A real opportunity for Pear Therapeutics to lead the way for other digital health start-ups on how to build a non-drug product pipeline, generate robust clinical evidence, gain regulatory approval, commercialize their solution and get reimbursement. 
• A big pull for prescribing platforms like Xealth, RxHealth, and AppScript as the right place for a digital therapeutic to be in order to get in front of HCPs and patients.

Story snapshot: Amazon has acquired Health Navigator, a startup that develops APIs for online health services. Health Navigator will become part of Amazon Care, it’s pilot healthcare service program for employees (Pill Pack is part of this already). 

Why is it notable? It’s Amazon! 

• This is Amazon's second deal after Pill Pack. So, despite a hiatus since that deal, this may be an indication that they are here to stay in the healthcare business. 
• At this point, the offerings are limited to Amazon employees only. It isn't time to make a big deal of it just yet. Many employers invest in such offerings for their employees. 
• Health Navigator's CEO, David Thompson is well known in the medical sector for developing a set of protocols, called Schmitt-Thompson, often used by triage nurses and clinicians in call centers to guide patients to the right place. Health Navigator aims to do this through technology. 

Industry Implications - Nothing major just yet 

• We are yet to get outcomes data - what have all of these deals actually resulted in? The pharmacy-PBM space has not been 'disrupted' yet by the PillPack acquisition. 
• It remains to be seen how this Amazon Health Care group relates to "Haven" which is the joint healthcare initiative between Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and J.P.Morgan, which also was to provide service to employees of those companies.

Story snapshot: Massachusetts company MC10 does biometric-sensor-enabled analytics and has been quite active in collecting biomarkers for neurological conditions. The collaboration will utilize the BioStamp nPoint system to collect continuous data allowing for the creation of algorithms to provide a quantitative assessment of disease progression, specifically for movement disorders.

Why is it notable? Fills a knowledge void in the objective assessment of movement disorders 

• Movement disorders such as Huntington’s and Parkinson’s lack of objective, quantitative understanding of disease progression, and therapeutic efficacy. This initiative can help fill this knowledge gap. 
• The University of Rochester and Dr. Ray Dorsey, Professor of Neurology, already have an established background and expertise in Neurology research. The University of Rochester was recently named a Morris K. Udall Center of Excellence for Parkinson’s research and awarded a grant to work towards understanding the disease progression of Parkinson's. 

Industry Implications - Potential new treatments for debilitating neuromuscular diseases

• Our Digital Health Evidence Review in July identified digital health technologies for Neurology and Musculoskeletal conditions as those with the highest level of evidence. This initiative will further augment this knowledge repository of research in Neurology. 
• A better understanding of the use and quantification of digital biomarkers. 
• A potential replacement for failed or insufficient drug treatments for severely debilitating neurological conditions.