What’s in store for biomedical research and development (R&D)? Health Affairs recently published an article written by FasterCures’ Kimberly McCleary, managing director, and Kristin Schneeman, director, programs, forecasting the industry issues they believe the community will encounter in 2018. 

After a turbulent 2017, the article notes that the coming year may see progress happening in the background, with stakeholders pushing forward historic ideas into reality. The predictions include greater utilization of the patient perspective across the industry, an increase of philanthropy’s innovative impact within R&D, and a growing “sharing economy” with regards to the use of health data.

Throughout the last several years, the biomedical research and development community has made an important pivot toward increasing the significance of patients in medical product discovery, development, and delivery.

In response to this shift, FasterCures held a workshop in June 2017 that provided valuable insight into the benefits of patient-reported outcomes (PROs) and the challenges faced while gathering and utilizing them.

That discussion last year resulted in the creation of our recently published white paper, “Patient-Reported Outcomes: Design with the End in Mind,” which includes the next steps for making PROs a useful tool within R&D.