Malaysia Sea cucumbers – odd-looking marine animals with leathery skins and elongated bodies – can be found on ocean floors worldwide. Although more famous as a culinary delicacy in East and Southeast Asia, one Malaysian company – Healwell – is using these primitive creatures to save lives.   Dr Hassan Yaakob,…

Innovation Carla Smith, Executive Vice President of The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) discusses the need to adopt innovation and retrain the workforce to provide healthcare without walls. If we are short-sighted and base our future workforce projections upon outdated models, we will experience a significant shortage in the…

Canada Brian Hilberdink, President of Novo Nordisk Canada, calls for collaboration between government and industry to ensure that Canadian patients get swift access to the best treatments.    As a Canadian who spent several years working globally for a biopharmaceutical company, I saw firsthand how pricing and investment decisions can be made…

Japan Takeda’s proposed acquisition of Shire may have come as a surprise to many commentators, but the appointment of an audacious French CEO in the form of Christophe Weber had already set the tone for the radical transformation upon which the Japanese company has embarked in its dual quest for internationalisation…

USA David H. Crean, PhD, Managing Director for Objective Capital Partners, a leading investment banking advisory firm examines the healthcare market for 2018.     Following a decade high of VC invested in 2017, and on a record pace again in 2018, valuations continue to move higher across all stages within…

Canada John Fowler founded 7ACRES, a licensed producer of cannabis, in 2013. In 2014, 7ACRES went over to become part of The Supreme Cannabis Company, which today stands as a unique business model in the Canadian medical cannabis sector.   Indeed, The Supreme Cannabis Company operates as a wholesaler, a decision…

UK Aditya Bhattacharji manages Eurasia Group‘s healthcare analysis. In his second piece for PharmaBoardroom, Aditya examines the dangers of nationalism and populism for the private sector.   The biggest global risk I see is with active pharmaceutical ingredients, most of which come from China, which has been at the centre of trade tensions,…

Algeria Key recent investments from Middle Eastern companies into Algerian Pharma.   Saudi company Tabuk Pharmaceuticals invests USD 20 million into a plant in Blida (2014) “We arrived in Algeria in 1997 with imports only. Then Tabuk partnered with the Central Pharmacy of Hospitals (PCH) in 2004. We had a renewed…

South Korea A Korean research team at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) have developed a cunning technology for treatments that attack cancer cells.   Treatments that travel through the body to deliver a cancer destroying substance are hindered by hundreds of proteins that stick to the drug delivery system…

Korea From Wednesday 31st October to Friday 2nd November, Seoul hosted the KoNECT-MFDS International conference, promoting South Korea’s clinical research capabilities on a global platform. The fourth of its kind, the conference was based around the main theme of embracing change in clinical research. The conference was organised by KoNECT –…

Korea Celltrion Healthcare, the marketing arm of the biopharmaceutical company Celltrion won a huge deal in France last Friday (2nd November 2018) with big tenders for Herzuma, a biosimilar of Roche’s blockbuster breast cancer treatment Herceptin.   Herzuma, with indications for positive metastatic breast cancer, early cancer, and metastatic gastric cancer…

Innovation Buck Dossey, an expert in digital marketing and audience manager at Adobe, discusses consumer needs in healthcare and the importance of adopting a digital health strategy.  Joining the digital transformation race today means that many companies will have to transform to become digitally agile.  While the topic of digital transformation permeates…