All eyes are on the healthcare industry in eager anticipation of vaccines and treatment in the global fight against Corona. Hospitals and other companies in life sciences and health care are focussing all their attention on this. In turn, there is less focus on other issues and projects. Science | Business, the European network bringing together Industry, Research and Policy, published an interesting article about this.
The editor states that, where some in the sector prosper in this crisis, others are not able to continue important studies and clinical trials and have to close their labs until further notice.
Carl Lens, Managing Director Europe and Practice Leader Life Sciences within Kennedy Executive Search agrees this is a threat and that it can have bigger consequences than we might think: “For companies with early stage product pipelines that are depending on investment money, the Covid crisis is less of a problem. They can work on. This is different however, for companies with products that are clinically tested. As all the hospitals have shifted priorities to the treatment of infected people, the clinical evaluation of new products is severely hampered. Regulations remain the same though. The EMA and FDA will not accept incomplete datafiles. This is a real threat for individual companies and also the innovation for the branch as a whole. And as can be read in the article, ultimately it will be patients that fall victim to this”.
The article ‘Balancing the scales in healthcare: winners and losers from COVID-19‘ was written by Helen Albert and published on April 14th. It can be read here.
Carl Lens is founder and owner of Lens / Kennedy Executive Amsterdam and Managing Director Europe and Practice Leader Life Sciences of the Kennedy Executive network.
