Digitalis Commons

Our Partnerships team is growing! Digitalis Commons partners with funders like ARPA-H to support early-stage health innovations including data, infrastructure, devices, and therapeutics. We're looking for a product-minded individual to enhance delivery for current clients and grow our services. This equal parts product and business development role involves refining and expanding our service offerings.

Biomedical innovation advances at the speed of scientific progress. And scientific progress is driven by advancements in available tools. For this reason, we've been increasingly curious about the systems, structures, financial products and models available to support the creation of research tools. Our latest newsletter explores this critical link between tool development and medical breakthroughs. From microscopes to CRISPR, we examine how scientific tools have shaped healthcare and why their development often faces unique challenges. Discover creative initiatives supporting tool innovators and join us in asking: are we limiting medical progress by underinvesting in the tools of discovery?

LISTEN to Misti Ushio's interview with Kate Adams on #StartupSuccess to learn about her entrepreneurial journey from investor in life science companies to founder of the cardiovascular biotech firm TARA Biosystems to Managing Partner at Digitalis Ventures and Board Director at Digitalis Commons. Also available on Apple, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts. #entrepreneur #founder #womeninscience #leadership #venturecapital

Our Executive Director, Lara Mangravite, teamed up with a group of life sciences enthusiasts to highlight new models of funding and accelerating innovation. Check it out below!

Check out Eric Gilliam's latest piece at @freaktakes, where he discusses how organizational structures must adapt in semiconductor research to accommodate evolving goals in a maturing field. As with biological systems, structure also determines function at research organizations. https://lnkd.in/etxPRzJa

Excited to see Melinda doubling down on investments to advance social progress for women through Pivotal Ventures. Pivotal is a shining example of how flexible capital - including a combination of venture investment, impact-focused funds and grant-giving - can be strategically aligned and work together to realize mission goals.

Digitalis Commons is growing! We are seeking Commercialization Leads at multiple levels of expertise to join our team. Are you excited about using your business skills to support early-stage innovation in healthcare and life sciences? If so, apply below! https://lnkd.in/eCA7b-Js

We're thrilled to introduce, Eva Martin, a physician, innovator, and passionate advocate for women's health, as our next XIR! 💡 Q: Please share a bit about your background and experience. A: I am lucky to have a career focused on meeting patients' needs through development of new ideas into life-changing innovations. I received my undergraduate degree in Social and Cognitive Neuroscience from Harvard College with a secondary field in Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality. Prior to medical school, I worked at the University of California, San Francisco conducting breast cancer research. I received my medical degree from Harvard Medical School. After my Obstetrics and Gynecology internship training at Kaiser Permanente San Francisco, I founded a women’s health medical device company and developed a novel medical device for use in pregnancy and labor. The device received FDA clearance, a utility patent from the USPTO, and a US National Institutes of Health research grant. I joined Roche, a biopharmaceutical company, in 2018 and have held roles in clinical development, data strategy, and partnering. I am grateful for the opportunity to support product development to meet the needs of patients worldwide. Q: What excites you about working with early stage innovation? A: I can't imagine a more exciting way to spend one's career than turning new ideas into real solutions for people everywhere. The path from idea to solution is long. A new technological breakthrough or biological discovery may open the door to solving a previously unsolvable problem. However, this is only the first step in unlocking real value. It takes dedication, creativity, and perseverance to work through the uncertain months and years of development to transform new ideas. As such, it is an honor to work with early stage concepts on the development pathway that eventually makes these innovations real and accessible. Q: What is one thing you hope to achieve by the end of your career? A: Working in the healthcare field is a tremendous gift, because we are given the opportunity to positively impact millions of lives. My great hope for my career is that I can contribute to a new era in the field of women's health. Women face a great many unmet medical needs, and it will take a concerted effort from passionate individuals across disciplines, stakeholder groups, and vantage points to unite and tackle these problems. By the end of my career, I hope that we look back to this moment as the spark that ignited a new renaissance in innovation for women everywhere.

Claire Meunier, our next XIR, has dedicated her career to supporting innovators and forming creative public/private partnerships to improve outcomes for patients in devastating diseases like Parkinson's. ⚖ Q: Please share a bit about your background and experience. A: I've spent my career growing mission-driven organizations in drug development and healthcare. My experience has focused on the shortage of clinicians trained to care for the geriatric population, the need for ecosystem engagement to develop critical tools to support a cure for Parkinson's Disease, developing novel measures of health using digital signals from sensors, and founding and leading precompetitive collaborations to collate best practices across the field. Across all of my experiences, I've focused on commercial strategy and partnerships to bring together the right collaborators to develop and implement solutions that address healthcare's most intractable problems. Q: What current trends in healthcare innovation are you most excited about? A: Since I work across drug development and healthcare, I have two: FDA's acceptance of digital biomarkers to support drug approval – it's been a long time coming, but with the recent qualification of the first digital biomarker for use as an endpoint in a clinical trial, I think we could finally see immense efforts in this category deliver a flurry of follow-on qualifications. These measures integrate data that reflect continuous, lived experience of disease instead of relying solely on clinical snapshots. More qualifications of novel measures will revolutionize how we measure and assess drug efficacy. Virtual care as a model for rethinking care delivery – the pandemic forced us into providing most care virtually, and now we are settling into a new normal where the field is thinking more strategically about what can be virtual, who should be providing care along the patient journey, and how to marry virtual with brick-and-mortar. There are several promising technology capabilities being integrated here, including AI that predicts who is at risk and technology that supports follow-on actions for care teams to intervene early. Q: What is one thing you hope to achieve by the end of your career? A: Helping more of the most promising solutions win! We need solutions that: are inclusive and work for everyone; result in better outcomes at a lower cost; precisely measure what works for specific patient subgroups; predict who might be at risk, and then have the tools and incentives in place to intervene sooner once we know a trajectory of decline is likely. Impacting progress on these goals by the end of my career would be amazing.

Introducing Jahanara Ali! Jahan has championed healthcare innovation from multiple perspectives, including VC, tech transfer, and as an operator. 🔦 Q: Please share a bit about your background and experience. A: I have spent my career catalyzing the commercialization of early-stage life science and healthcare innovations. While doing this, I have been fortunate to have sat on different sides of the table. I started out in university technology commercialization, where I developed an appreciation for the university as an innovation engine. I then joined a small biotech company, where I learned how successful teams can make things happen. Subsequently, I joined an investment firm, where, in addition to making investments, I learned the power of programs to help early-stage companies overcome challenges. I also led the entrepreneurship program at a medical school, where I was able to connect the dots to help faculty and students successfully launch businesses. Q: What excites you about working with early-stage innovation? A: I love seeing the myriad of ideas that people come up with and what motivates entrepreneurs. In healthcare, it is often personal, and I love hearing people's unique stories of what inspired them to solve some of the most intractable problems. One of my favorite entrepreneurs is someone who navigated the healthcare system for his ADHD. He subsequently disrupted the mental health space by enabling online therapy (i.e., in the privacy of your home). He launched his company around 2010, way before many similar companies followed. And it was nice to see the company exit as a sale to a large insurance company. Q: What’s one piece of advice that you would give to healthcare funders or founders? A: For founders, I would say: do your homework and start early. Look at the other companies the investor has invested in, what stage they invest in, and what the company looked like when the investor invested. Also, look at other investors they have invested with and reach out to those investors. Talk to people who know them. Talk to the companies they turned down as well as the ones they invested in. Always try to reach out to investors through warm introductions if possible. And start to develop these relationships before you need money.