The promise of digital health is to improve the health and wellness of millions of patients through software as the delivery mechanism for therapy. It is radically changing the way health services are delivered. When biopharma companies enter this arena, they typically partner with an information technology-focused company. Most frequently these are startups specializing in digital health who do not appreciate the challenges of partnering with a big company.

A large, global biopharma company established an innovation office to partner with digital health innovators to explore how it could utilize technology to augment its medical health pharmacological offerings using virtual reality. Neither partner had much experience in co-development and co-commercialization alliances.

We applied our alliance startup process to make the terms of the contract understandable and actionable, to form governance committees and working teams, and to guide the building of teams to execute the work of this multi-product co-development and co-commercialization alliance. We advised the biopharma executives on integrating into corporate strategy, operations, and execution so that their innovation office initiatives were integrated and could secure necessary resources and support.

As of this writing, the first product has been released and meeting expectations for users. The next products are beginning their clinical trials. The working teams are collaborating well and governance decisions are being made timely. The partners are partnering well, achieving results for patients.