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From Hackathon Weekend to Corporate Accelerator
More than just a weekend competition, Ipsen's "NET Patient Accelerator" provides long-term support to four digital projects and is part of the pharmaceutical group's global digital strategy.
How the NET Patient Accelerator Started
The Ipsen operation started like a traditional hackathon. On the 9th and 10th of April 2016, 24 teams of hackers and startups attended a "proof of concept" weekend to build digital solutions for improving the quality of life, monitoring, and care of patients with neuroendocrine tumors (NET).
The aim was to "implement innovative solutions by bringing together all stakeholders, patients' associations, health professionals, developers and employees of Ipsen" and confirm the group as a leader in treating such diseases, explained Jacques Maydat, director of Ipsen's endocrinology business unit and head of the NET Patient Accelerator.
Beyond the Prototype: A Two-Month Acceleration
After the teams pitched their prototypes to a jury of key players in Ipsen's ecosystem, four were selected for a two-month incubation.
"Generally, the labs that organize these type of events don't go further than the development of prototypes over a weekend, with the objective to generate buzz in the media and on social networks. Our aim was to drive these projects as far as possible by proposing an accelerator whereby they could benefit from qualitative coaching and mentoring", explained Jacques Maydat.
The selected teams received scientific, medical, legal, financial, and technical coaching, along with physical workspace provided by BeMyApp, the organizer of the operation.
Support From Patients & Health Professionals
Throughout the program, teams stayed connected with the endocrine tumor patients' association (Apted) and with health professionals, endocrinologists, and gastroenterologists.
"It was an enormous enrichment", said Pierre-Antoine Bastian, president of the startup MyRobotics, which worked with Ipsen's support on a connected electrogustometer to measure taste disorders linked to cancer drug side effects.
"We had no idea of the procedure for releasing a connected object into the medical world. The acceleration program helped us a lot on the legal side and with business development", said the 27-year-old computer engineer, who had previously worked with major groups such as EDF, SNCF, and Areva.
A Virtual Incubator for Health Startups
From Demo Day to Funding
In June, Ipsen invited investors from the health ecosystem to a "Demo Day" where project leaders presented their results. "Investors have been able to provide useful feedback to the startups in terms of project reliability, maturity and business potential", said Jacques Maydat. Ipsen also committed to help finance two projects through crowdfunding, at €5,000 per project.
Help Beyond the Checkbook
For the selected startups, the collaboration did not end there. Ipsen's digital transformation director, Malika Mir, pointed to plans for "a form of virtual incubator".
"Unlike other companies that have physical space to incubate the projects, we want to bring together innovators and find ways to help them other than financially", says Malika Mir.
These fixed-term partnerships might offer specific skills, international mentoring, and IT infrastructure, or connect startups with Ipsen's network of scientists, doctors, technical experts, and technologies.
Why does this matter to Ipsen? "We're getting closer to the IT ecosystem of developers and startups because we are aware that, as a large company, we do not always have their agility and creativity", says Mir.
Anticipating Future Partnerships
Each startup keeps the intellectual property of its solution, but the selected teams could ultimately add value to Ipsen's own work.
A Potential Partnership With MyRobotics
A trade partnership has already been discussed with MyRobotics, to use its electrogustometer in laboratory testing protocols.
"We offer a drug toxicity variable that has never been measured before and could enable Ipsen to bring value to their product compared to some competitor products, and help them obtain authorizations to make it legal on the market", said Pierre-Antoine Bastian. He indicated discussions should open in the first quarter of 2017, when MyRobotics hoped to obtain CE marking for the device.
The ZebrIA Project
Similar discussions were possible between the laboratory and the ZebrIA project, led by Guillaume Palacios, a physicist who worked for the CNRS and CEA. The voice-analysis tool uses artificial intelligence to measure a patient's response to treatment, based on information sent to their smartphone such as side effects, symptoms, and medications.
Then being tested by Apted volunteers, ZebrIA was the "first gear for patients", but it also drew interest from the pharmaceutical industry wanting to "understand how patients live treatment in their everyday life and gain information to better orientate medical research", said William Palacios.
Even though the project leader wanted his startup to "remain independent and the owner of its technology and expertise", he confirmed several laboratories had shown curiosity. But "none has entered an advanced exchange like that which occurred with Ipsen", he noted.
Ipsen's Broader Digital Health Strategy
More Projects From the Accelerator
The NET Patient Accelerator also included Bress, a tele-expertise platform to help doctors exchange and communicate with NET experts, and Diappnose, an app that supports diagnosis through automated queries. Both contribute to the lab's work on neuroendocrine tumors.
For Malika Mir, these tools must first "improve the lives of patients. We do not necessarily seek a return on investment in cash", she said.
Getting Closer to the Patient
Alongside this "Beyond the pill" approach, one of the lab's three priority lines of action, Ipsen uses new technologies to get closer to patients. "In England, we've launched a collaborative platform between patients and health professionals – Know Your NETs – and we work on its implementation on a global scale", said Malika Mir.
Transforming Internal Processes
The final axis of the group's digital strategy is transforming internal processes in two ways: exploring data further to build a true big data approach, and giving employees, partners, and suppliers better tools to communicate across Ipsen's international ecosystem.
April Smallwood
Originally written and published by Raphael Moreaux on TICPharma, a media specialized in the digital transformation of the health industry.
Thinking About Launching Your Own Accelerator or Innovation Program?
Ipsen turned a single hackathon weekend into a long-term accelerator that connected it with startups, patients, and health professionals, and did it in one of the most tightly regulated industries there is.
If you want to build something similar, BeMyApp can help you organize your hackathon and spark innovation from strategy through to incubation and follow-up.