Biogen, the biotech company, has decided to shut down its digital health division, formerly known as Biogen Digital Health. The 150-person group focused on a range of digital health activities, particularly the use of digital data from mobile phones and smartwatches. In addition to this announcement, they’ve also terminated a clinical trial which was being conducted with Apple. 

Why It’s Notable:

• Biogen Digital Health, established in 2021 with hubs in Boston, Paris and Zurich, was initially dedicated to pioneering personalised and digital medicine. The unit boasted a diverse portfolio encompassing digital health, digital medicine and digital therapeutics products across the therapeutics areas of neurology, immunology and mental health. While the specific reasons behind its closure remain undisclosed, Biogen stated that it reflects a realignment of their resources and priorities. This shift underscores a change in the company’s digital health strategy, which previously centred on utilising data from digital devices. It suggests a potential pivot toward other aspects of digital health that could open up opportunities for external partnerships. 

• Notably, they have decided to terminate their partnership with Apple as well, highlighting the challenges in conducting clinical trials with digital technologies. The partnership was first announced in 2021 to investigate the use of Apple Watch and iPhone in monitoring cognitive performance and screening for decline in cognitive health, with the ultimate goal of developing innovative digital biomarkers for these indicators. 

Industry Implications:

• Pharma’s interaction with digital health has grown more sophisticated and purposeful over the last number of years, with a number of pharmaceutical organisations having separate digital health divisions e.g. Novartis’s Biome. However, over the last year, amongst the general economic uncertainty of 2022, digital health innovation has become the object of budgetary scrutiny, with a number of industry backed digital health initiatives struggling to prove ROI or gain significant adoption. It will be interesting to see whether other pharmaceutical companies with separate digital health divisions follow Biogen’s suite with cost cutting measures and potentially integrate digital health teams within the wider pharmaceutical organisation. 

• Digital health offers pharma a direct channel to the end users far beyond that of the small window of drug administration or treatment and choosing the right partners, as well as nurturing a dedicated ecosystem of external partners, may be vital to the success of pharma in digital health. Biogen’s decision highlights the company's exploration of alternative avenues and partnerships to drive digital health innovation. Combining the expertise of pharma in commercialisation and market access with the specialised capabilities of digital health companies may be the best recipe for success. 

Interested in learning more about Digital Health’s role in Pharma? Check out our industry report on Pharma 3.0: Doing Digital Health Better.