FasterCures Quarterly Update—January 2024

In This Newsletter

New FasterCures Team Members
Recent FasterCures Publications
Events and Convenings Recap
FasterCures in the Community
LeadersLink Opportunity

New FasterCures Team Members

FasterCures is pleased to welcome our two senior advisors:

• Lee A. Fleisher, MD, former chief medical officer and director of the Center for Clinical Standards and Quality at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), will provide his insights and counsel on CMS and policy matters.

• James Nicholas Bethell, 5th Baron Bethell, former minister of innovation and minister of life science for the Department of Health and Social Care in the United Kingdom, will advise on special projects in the UK.

Additionally, we welcomed the following team members to FasterCures in Q3 2024:

• Erin Cieslewski, associate

• Sruthi Meka, senior associate

• Aneri Suthar, senior associate

Recent FasterCures Publications

• Innovative Finance Models for Global Early Warning Systems for Pandemics
  FasterCures partnered with the Milken Institute Financial Innovation Lab^® for this report exploring the innovative financing models that would incentivize the private sector to support early warning systems. The Institute spoke with more than 50 stakeholders as part of this Lab.

• Protecting the Progress for Biomedical Innovation: A Post-Pandemic Scorecard
  Since 2020, FasterCures has been actively documenting lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic. Our initial report, Lessons Learned from COVID-19: Are There Silver Linings for Biomedical Innovation?, provided recommendations for applying pandemic-era innovations to other health conditions. We subsequently created an Implementation Roadmap and have been directly involved in implementing its policy recommendations. In our third report focused on COVID-19 lessons learned, FasterCures looked back at all the recommendations in the original white paper and developed a post-pandemic scorecard to keep these issues front and center with the biomedical innovation ecosystem, highlighting positive progress and areas requiring additional focus and resources. Learn how we scored as a country.

• Data Governance for Early Warning Systems: Approaches to Community Engagement
  FasterCures' three-year initiative on early warning systems brought together health, finance, data, and tech experts to advance global coordination. Communities play essential roles in early warning. Responsibility for collecting the information that underpins public health data systems often falls to community workers. As the eyes and ears on the ground, people living within a community can detect anomalies and potential threats much earlier than formal surveillance systems. This issue brief reports the findings from three virtual consultations conducted in July 2023 with community health advocates and workers in several African countries.

Events and Convenings Recap

• Future of Health Summit 2023
  The Milken Institute Future of Health Summit brought together hundreds of leaders from across the public, nonprofit, private, and philanthropic sectors to discuss topics including biomedical research, public health, chronic disease, health equity, global health, and other pressing health issues focused on the theme “Closing the Gap: Better Health for More People.” Read our brief with the top 12 trends discussed at the summit.

  FasterCures curated 13 public sessions. Watch these sessions on demand:

  • Closing Gaps in Health and Health Care

  • AI's Moment in Health

  • Putting Your Money Where Your Mouth Is: Return on Investment in Patient Engagement

  • No Turning Back: Protecting the Progress from COVID-19 for Biomedical Innovation

  • Bringing Health Research Closer to Your Community

  • Digital Health Equity and Technology: Where Are We Now?

  • Can Cell and Gene Therapies Be Made Cheaper?

  • A Health System that Meets Patients Where They Are

  • Will Digital Therapeutics Scale or Fail?

  • Revolutionizing Investment Models for Rare Disease Research

  • The Next Century of Health: Predictions on the Future of Health Care

  • Separating Facts from Fiction: Navigating the Medicare Drug Negotiation Program

  • A Global Priority: The Fight against Antimicrobial Resistance

• Middle East and Africa Summit
  The Milken Institute Middle East and Africa Summit, themed "Navigating Complexity through Collaboration," brought together diverse stakeholders to address critical issues in the region. Watch the two sessions curated by FasterCures:

  • Health and Medical Research | Part 1: A Conversation with His Excellency Mansoor Ibrahim Al Mansoori, Chairman, Abu Dhabi Department of Health

  • Health and Medical Research | Part 2: Preparing for the Next Wave of Biomedical Breakthroughs

• Implementing a Dynamic Venture Philanthropy Practice
  How can nonprofit organizations develop and implement a venture philanthropy investment strategy? As part of The Research Acceleration and Innovation Network (TRAIN) webinar series, FasterCures collaborated with MI Philanthropy to take a deeper dive into the investment strategies used by four biomedical-focused foundations: Foundation for Prader-Willi Research, CureDuchenne, American Cancer Society BrightEdge, and the National Brain Tumor Society. Watch the recording.

• What’s Next for the UK’s Subscription Model in the Fight Against Antimicrobial Resistance
  In 2019, the National Health Service in England and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence pioneered a pilot subscription model, where the government pays a fixed annual fee to incentivize R&D of new antimicrobial drugs. The UK now plans to expand this model. This FasterCures webinar discussed lessons learned from the pilot and the UK's approach to implementing this antibiotics subscription model.

• First Cup with FasterCures
  In mid-January 2024, FasterCures hosted a First Cup with FasterCures featuring Lee A. Fleisher, MD, former chief medical officer and director of the Center for Clinical Standards and Quality at CMS and new senior advisor at FasterCures. The discussion focused on CMS health-care regulation in 2024. First Cup is an invite-only breakfast designed for policy experts to network and engage with colleagues across sectors in targeted discussions to advance ways to accelerate biomedical innovation.

FasterCures in the Community

• October

  • FasterCures Director Yasmeen Long spoke at the virtual DIA Innovative Trial Designs Conference on “Improving Clinical Trial Inclusiveness: Strategies and Examples for Increasing Race and Ethnicity Diversity during Trial Planning and Implementation.”

  • Long spoke as a panelist at MedTech Conference on "Digital Health's Role in Diverse Clinical Trials" in Anaheim, California.

  • FasterCures Director Hadly Clark spoke as a panelist for the PLEN Health Policy Seminar.

  • Long was a panelist at the C3 Summit on “Patient Recruitment and Inclusivity—Engagement Strategies for Diversity and Accessibility” in Princeton, New Jersey.

• November

  • Clark spoke as a panelist at the CRC Screening Summit hosted by Digestive Cancers Europe on patient preferences in colorectal (CRC)/digestive cancer screenings. (Her panel starts at 1:27:32)

• December

  • FasterCures Associate Director Mark Williams spoke at the High-Level Forum on the Silver Economy about “Antimicrobial Resistance and the Next Wave of Innovation.”

LeadersLink Opportunity

FasterCures is now accepting applications for the new LeadersLink cohort. We are looking for emerging leaders of patient-driven nonprofit organizations that fund or conduct biomedical research to participate in this unique mentorship program. The new cohort will focus on engaging diverse patients in R&D. Learn more and apply by February 16, 2024.