The development of new drugs requires years of painstaking, risky, and expensive research that, for a new pharmaceutical compound, takes an average of 11.5 to 14 years of research, development, and clinical trials at a cost of $1.7 to $3.2 billion. Many nations either limit or are considering limiting drug prices as a way to shrink the growth of health care costs, even though drug prices in nations that belong to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) grew more slowly than total health care costs from 2005 to 2013. This is a mistake, because price controls come at the cost of a slower pace of drug discovery, as expert studies show that the relationship between drug company revenues and research and development is almost one to one.

Xerox invented most of the technologies that we use in personal computing today. But Xerox is not one of the largest computing companies in the world today. Kodak invented the digital camera and still filed for bankruptcy in 2012. Nokia was one of the pioneers of the smartphone and still lost significant market share to the iPhone.  

Keiron Shepherd, Senior Security Specialist at F5 Networks, discusses how the threat landscape will change as smart cities become more of a reality and the security considerations we need to make before we begin reaping the benefits of connected devices We are in an era of intelligent and urgent urban innovation. Our homes are connected, our streets are thriving labyrinths of interconnectivity, and our businesses are a hive of data streaming and surveillance.

In the past year or so, I've sat down with dozens of CEOs and senior executives from enterprise cloud companies that have had successful exits, whether via IPO or acquisition.

Things are looking up for women—or so they seem. In the era of #MeToo, more and more women are speaking up about workplace harassment and discrimination, and the perpetrators are increasingly held accountable. Industry groups, like the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO), and states, such as California, are implementing rules to increase the proportion of women on corporate boards.

Image: Lia Shaked/Questex Media

While several biopharma giants (including Amgen, Novartis, and Merck & Co.) reported third-quarter earnings that beat expectations in recent days, biotechs appear to have been caught up in the past month’s stock market swoon. As of October 26, according to Zacks Equity Research, the stock prices of companies in its “medical-biomedical and genetics” sector, which includes smaller as well as larger biotechs, had fallen 10.3% over the previous six months, compared with a 1.6% increase for the overall S&P 500.

On November 1, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services finalized changes to the 2019 Physician Fee Schedule and the Quality Payment Program.

One of the adjustments involves telehealth.

For the first time, Medicare will pay providers for communication technology-based services like brief check-ins between patients and clinicians. It will also pay separately for the remote evaluation of recorded video and/or images submitted by an established patient.

The Bay Area’s gravitational force has so far overcome the negatives of cost and congestion; we have not seen peak Silicon Valley and probably won’t soon.

Maybe it’s just me, but I sometimes feel that accountability is a rare talent in business today. In big businesses, people are quick to defer with “that’s not my department,” and even startup founders too often blame failures on the economy or the lack of investors. As an investor and advisor to entrepreneurs, I see accountability, or lack of it, as an override to even the best idea.

Image: https://blog.startupprofessionals.com

This proof of concept study published in the online edition of the Annals of Neurology has provided intriguing results that will add to the continued stem cell debates.

Johns Hopkins researchers showed that 11 out of 15 adults rats with virally induced hind limb paralysis were able to walk again following treatments with injections into spinal cords with treat mouse embryonic stem cells.

Maryland is well-known for its world-class academic institutions, which are shipping everything from medical device innovations to education technology. While the narrative tends to focus on grants and inventions delivered by faculty, students are changing the way we think about entrepreneurship on campus.

Last month, in a speech to the Intellectual Property Owners Association, the director of the Patent and Trademark Office, Andrei Iancu, challenged a fundamental feature of U.S. patent law, the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2014 ruling in Alice Corp. v. CLS International on Section 101 of the U.S. Patent Act. His criticism was mistaken.

Image: Illustration on patent trolling by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times

I applaud the resurgence of a focus by new ventures on saving the environment and having a positive social impact. Yet, when you are pitching to investors, this has to be balanced by generating enough profit to keep the venture thriving, growing, and providing a healthy return-on-investment (ROI) to investors. Founders who avoid the use of the term “profit” had better have deep pockets of their own.

Image: https://blog.startupprofessionals.com

Zebra stands for Zero Evidence but Really Adamant.  Zebras are people who see things in black and white.  They are sure of their own opinions and they disdain information or science which undermines their beliefs.  The king of the Zebras is Donald Trump. Tom Nichols is the author of the 2017 book, The Death of Expertise.  In it he writes that ignorance is now seen as a virtue.  ‘To reject the advice of experts is to assert autonomy, a way for people to demonstrate independence from nefarious elites and to insulate their fragile egos from ever being told that they are wrong.’

There is a disconnection between the pace and progress of the technical achievements made by innovators and entrepreneurs and the ways in which those technologies have added to human happiness.

We have increased our technological powers many times and still we are not happier; we do not have more time for the things we find meaningful.

Venture capital investing has already reached a 10-year high in 2018, according to a report last week. However, while investment trends in life sciences have been similar to those in technology generally, a venture capital investor specializing in life sciences said there are some significant underlying differences too.

Canada and England top a new list of best cities to launch an online business. The report was produced by Sellics a software platform helping Amazon sellers drive traffic and track profits. Researchers used criteria such as financing, ease of imports & exports, set-up time and costs, as well as monthly wages and cost of living. The results reveal smaller locations around the globe beat out their big city counterparts, with places like Leipzig and Detroit offering overall better value, affordability and infrastructure than startup hotspots like Berlin and London.

Get out there and Vote!

It’s a line you’ll frequently hear from Gov. Phil Murphy.

“New Jersey was Silicon Valley before there was a Silicon Valley. We’ve lost a little bit of that leadership position, but we still have great, tremendous assets,” said Tim Sullivan, CEO of the New Jersey Economic Development Authority.

Is there a VC mold? Yes, there is. But it is not what some think. VC is not focused on white males as a number of writers seem to think. If you go to Silicon Valley, you will find that many entrepreneurs of Chinese and Indian descent get VC. Jensen Huang of Nvidia is one such example. And if Satya Nadella (Microsoft), Sundar Pichai (Google), or Shantanu Narayan (Adobe) decided to quit their corporations and start a venture, I am sure there would be lines of VCs seeking to fund them.