Episode Details

At the beginning of 2021, my guest in this healthcare podcast, Paul Simms, had come up with a set of predictions for 2021. Some came true; some didn't. But I was fascinated by a bunch of things, one of them being Paul's sort of implicit and explicit assessment of the context of these predictions. Right now, Pharma is in a weird moment: It's a confluence of technology, consumer expectations, changes in care delivery accelerated by the pandemic, policy at the state and federal level, and the financial realities of where we're at today. So, if you meet patients or providers or payers where they were last year or the year before that, you're gonna potentially be pretty far off the mark.

There's also the financial realities which Pharma kind of exacerbated for themselves when some, many, spent the past however many years making their numbers by raising prices on existing drugs and developing drugs for mostly rare diseases but then, at the same time, not innovating antibiotics or for other diseases that impact so many lives.

I mean, no comments on these strategies, but is it safe to then assume that an environment that allows for this sort of thing will continue indefinitely? Not only from an "Is this really the most patient-centric thing we can do?" standpoint, especially when you consider how many patients are being left behind as a result of both the narrow focus and also the price points—upwards of 40% of Americans have said they've abandoned meds due to cost, after all—but potentially also from a business continuity standpoint. Right now could be a decent time to start getting creative and experiment with new models and new ways to reach and engage.

My guest in this episode, Paul Simms, is the former chairman of eyeforpharma, which ran the largest events in the pharmaceutical space for a number of years. His new company, Impatient Health, helps a very conservative industry find ways to deliver and provide patient value.

During our conversation, Paul made a bunch of thought-provoking points; but one of them I keyed onto was a counterpoint to the ye old pharmaceutical conventional wisdom that high drug prices are needed for innovation. He said that actually all the money sloshing around could inhibit R&D innovation. Here's the thinking: If you can make a ton of money not being super innovative, then why be innovative? If you can make a ton of money not really improving OS (overall survival) in a meaningful way and not really helping a whole lot of patients, then why bother doing anything else, especially if the "anything else" might require risk or new business models that are going to take time and determination?

During our chat, the work of Clay Christensen comes up more than once. Just to remind you, Clay Christensen is the one who coined the term disrupters. He wrote The Innovator's Dilemma back in the 1990s. Keep in mind that the main point of that whole book is that if you're a big incumbent, it's pretty easy to cruise along thinking everything is great until you get kneecapped by a competitor who takes advantage of a new business model or consumer preference or technology or law—all of which are coming out of the woodwork right now. Paul Simms has put it this way: When the habitat changes, evolution happens and entities that are able to adapt will thrive. I've also heard it put this way: It's not IQ or even EQ that matters most when change is afoot. It's AQ—the ability to adapt.

Paul Simms is known as the "pharma provocateur" for his efforts to realize the unfulfilled potential of the life sciences industry. His journey started in 2003 with eyeforpharma, an organization which he quickly grew into the