The La Palma-based Innovation Institute, a provider of business services and products and investment management services to health systems, is taking a broad role in championing its cause.
The institute was established in 2013 with an investment by Irvine-based St. Joseph Health. It encompasses an innovation lab, an investment fund, and a group of companies that provide shared services, including Healthcare Design and Construction LLC.
It’s one of about 90 dedicated “health accelerators” in the U.S.
The accelerators serve as launching pads for healthcare technology and service companies. Industry observers credit their growth to the passage and implementation of federal healthcare reform.
The institute recently hosted an innovation center summit at its Newport Beach laboratory that drew officials from innovation centers started by hospital systems and other providers around the country.
Getting funding and succeeding in the acceleration process were among the topic areas covered by participants.
Larry Stofko, the laboratory’s executive vice president, co-chaired the event with Mike Squires, vice president of innovation and public policy for Cranbury, N.J.-based BluePrint Healthcare IT, a software and services company.
Three major themes emerged from the workshop’s breakout and brainstorming sessions, according to the Innovation Institute:
• Engage people outside the innovation centers and healthcare systems, including chief executives, doctors and patients.
• Examine and reinvent the healthcare delivery process, as well as innovation development.
• Measure developed innovations in order to ensure progress and corrections, and in order to judge their success.
Slowing M&A Predicted
Large healthcare merger and acquisition deals like Irvine-based Allergan Inc.’s pending $68 billion buyout by Actavis PLC are less likely in 2015, according to Chicago-based Morningstar Research.
“Recent changes in U.S. tax policy will likely slow the torrid pace of M&A seen over the past two years, as the new policy will limit the benefits of reducing the tax rate for U.S. firms merging with an international company,” Morningstar said in a recent research report.
Analyst Damien Conover mentioned Allergan and Actavis in commentary regarding deals.
“… The white knight acquisition of Allergan by Actavis to fend off Valeant [Pharmaceuticals International Inc.] looks likely to complete and showcases the importance of scale and cost-cutting between two major healthcare companies,” Conover said.
Ambry Wins Patent Case Appeal
Aliso Viejo-based Ambry Genetics Corp. said late last month that a federal appeals court found three patents covering DNA-based breast cancer diagnostic tests that were asserted against it by Salt Lake City-based Myriad Genetics Inc. “do not contain subject matter eligible for patent protection.”
“Myriad did not create or alter any of the genetic information encoded in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes,” the justices said in an opinion posted on the court’s docket. “The location and order of the nucleotides existed in nature before Myriad found them.”
Ambry Chief Executive Charles Dunlop reacted strongly to the court’s decision:
“I knew intellectually that we were right, and our basic arguments were correct. I have cancer and I could not believe—I found it offensive, actually—that somebody with cancer would not have options for genetic testing,” Dunlop said. “Because we believed our position was correct under the law, we decided to move forward and defend Ambry from Myriad’s claims.”
Myriad told Bloomberg that it was disappointed in the decision and would consider all of its options.
Myriad, which has annual sales of $778 million and a recent market value of about $2.6 billion, originally sued privately held Ambry in July 2013.
The action was triggered by a June 2013 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a case involving Myriad that ended the 30-year practice of awarding patents for human genes. That case was over a pair of genes known as BRCA1 and BRCA2 that are associated with breast cancer.
Justices ruled that naturally occurring human genes can’t be patented but also ruled that patents could be claimed on modified DNA.
Ambry said at the time that it planned to market its versions of the BRCA tests.
