ARTICLE SUMMARY:
Biogen Digital Health was established two years ago to facilitate the application of digital health technologies in the parent company’s quest to tackle neurodegenerative diseases. Its progress in multiple sclerosis, a debilitating disease with imperfect treatments that are challenged by a lack of sensitive biomarkers, highlights the potential of digital health to advance a traditional biotech’s core programs.
In terms of total dollars, medical device companies have played a comparatively small role in the clinical neurological market, but demographics, scientific advances, and the lure of the sheer size of the opportunity, add to the appeal of this therapeutic area. As digital technologies make inroads in clinical research and patient care, however, more companies are grappling with how best to integrate them into their businesses, although a clear, validated understanding of these technologies’ value is mostly lacking.
Biogen, one of the oldest independent biotech companies, has been among the most successful pioneers in developing neurodegenerative drugs. The company in particular has a decades-old dominant position in multiple sclerosis, with roughly half of its 2022 $11 billion revenues and significant profits generated by its franchise in that area. Now under new management and facing multiple challenges across its business, Biogen says it continues to consider MS as a bedrock of its existing portfolio—even as its clinical R&D priorities shift.
In mid-2021, the company established Biogen Digital Health (BDH) as a global unit, with the goals of identifying and validating digital biomarkers that could accelerate and improve neuroscience drug development (see sidebar at end of story, Neurology is a Booming Market Across the Life Sciences). Biogen aims to offer more personalized treatment—an important step advancing the adoption of targeted therapies, that is, precision medicine in neurology, much the way this approach has become a mainstay of oncology care. The unit’s strategy highlights the pros and cons of embedding digital technologies into traditional life sciences arenas.
