Business Models and Precision Medicine

The Health Care Initiative at Harvard Business School (HBS) announced the launch of its Precision Trials Challenge, a pioneering competition to generate ideas to bring precision diagnostics and therapies to market more quickly by reinventing the clinical trials process.

“Advancements in science and technology in the past ten years have led to great advances in precision medicine,” said HBS professor Richard Hamermesh. “However, many of the big challenges facing precision medicine today are actually business challenges. How can we develop business models that support the advancement of precision medicine? How can we get new therapies to market faster and at a lower cost? Our Precision Trials Challenge will help answer these questions by encouraging conversation and helping to put leading-edge ideas into practice.”

The clinical trials process is one of the costliest and most time-consuming parts of R&D in the health care industry. A typical therapeutic requires on average a $1.5 billion investment and more than a decade of trials to gain FDA approval. Generating innovative ideas from the medical, science, business, and patient communities, the Precision Trials Challenge aims to provide a roadmap for faster innovation, targeted medicine, and more effective treatments.

The challenge is open to all and will accept applications until March 13, 2016. A panel of judges will select one winner and two runners-up to share a $100,000 prize. The winner will be announced in April and have the opportunity to present at the prestigious 2016 Personalized Medicine Conference. The Precision Trials Challenge is funded by the Kraft Endowment for Advancing Precision Medicine, established last fall by a $20 million gift from the Kraft Family Foundation under the leadership of Foundation president Robert K. Kraft.