How are innovative companies preparing for tomorrow’s healthcare?

What does the future of healthcare look like?

Jérôme Berton believes that while Covid has not created any new trends in healthcare, it has certainly exacerbated some existing trends. Take for example diagnostics. This clearly shows that we were unprepared to tackle such immense healthcare problems. Public authorities have well understood the challenge and are now implementing investment programmes to better manage the current crisis and also anticipate future crises.

A second underlying trend is, of course, digitalisation, where a noticeable effort has been made and major steps forward have been taken, be that in telemedicine or prevention, such as remote healthcare coaching.

"Globally, we are seeing what has tended to be very positive feedback from the field – from patients, doctors and paying agencies – with costs being significantly lower," adds Jérôme Berton.

Telemedicine goes well beyond a simple GP consultation. It is possible to manage chronic conditions including diabetes and hypertension, as well as cover areas such as ophthalmology and psychiatry. "For example, we have identified a company that makes a wearable medical device – a bit like a patch – that transmits blood sugar levels to the wearer's smartphone in real time, without them having to prick their finger. It's completely revolutionary. This provides personalised data and enables real tracking that the patient can send to their doctor, who can then adjust their treatment if necessary." A similar example is another company that has developed a wearable medical device which can detect potential heart problems.

This demonstrates that telemedicine goes far beyond on-screen doctor-patient interaction and still harbours considerable potential. Digitalisation will extend even further and play a major role in the actual development of drugs in the future, as laboratories will be able to track progress in clinical trials in real time, which will improve processes and productivity.

New technologies and a new investment approach

Overall, the current crisis has enabled validation of some new technology platforms, such as messenger RNA¹. This is completely disruptive and transforms the human body into a "drug production plant" to tackle diseases that are untreatable using more traditional technologies. These could include certain cancers, as well as viral and auto-immune diseases, which could be treated in this way in the years to come.

"Finally, another lesser-known trend which we believe is destined for significant growth is synthetic biologicals. For example, we take an interest a company that is capable of manufacturing synthetic DNA on a large scale and at a low cost. This could have multiple applications, not only in healthcare and new medications, but also in agriculture, chemistry and the development of new materials, or even IT and data storage."

In terms of investment, it should be noted that valuations are still attractive in different segments of pharma and healthcare in general. But the market has altered considerably. Structurally, the era of "mega mergers" between pharma companies is over. What we are tending to see now is large corporations buying innovative solutions developed by small companies via shares or acquisitions. A high level of diligence is therefore required when selecting securities.

¹ In molecular biology, messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) is a single-stranded molecule of RNA that corresponds to the genetic sequence of a gene, and is read by a ribosome in the process of synthesizing a protein.