Dear clients and friends: Given your interest in health and medicine, we would like to share with you our collection of the most interesting perspectives on our industry's trends and developments. We are happy to share them with you — and hope you share your thoughts with us.

1. A NATO Model for Pharma

Call it the pharma paradox: “countries want new medicines, but want others to pay the higher prices that produce the needed returns on R&D.” This paradox is fueling the drug-pricing wars under Trump. Tomas Philipson, former acting chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers in the first Trump administration, offers a novel way forward:

NATO provides a useful model. [Just like NATO] requires member countries to spend at least 2% of their GDP on defence … European and other high-income countries should adopt minimum spending targets for innovative medicines. A sensible target would be the per-head share of GDP that America spends—ie, nearly 0.8% of per-head GDP…By contrast, Italy and Spain currently spend 0.5%, Germany 0.4% and France 0.3%. 

If those four countries alone matched the American share, biopharma revenues would jump by tens of billions of dollars. That would inevitably yield more new drugs, with health and economic benefits to match.

2. It’s Just a Phase

An anonymous blogger pulls back the clinical curtain and shares what it’s like to participate in Phase 1 trials. It reads like a satirical account of Soviet bureaucracy. Most stunning are the layers of half-truths, concealments, winks and nods:

Clinic staff will tell participants that they should be honest for the sake of their own health and safety, but this is a lie intended to appeal to participants’ own self-interest. The requirements clinical researchers are forced to comply with are well in excess of what’s necessary for participants to reliably avoid lasting harm to their health, and the practices of research clinics tend to filter out participants who are honest with them…The thing which most participants are truly hesitant to risk is reporting a negative response to a study drug.

What’s it add up to?

The overwhelming majority of Phase I pharmaceutical trials are almost certainly being performed on participants who’re not in compliance with the study criteria, and who’re not reporting all the symptoms they experience while taking the experimental medications.

3. Who’s the Boss?

Most pieces on AI in healthcare give hype-heavy predictions or scary screeds. Viola Zhou offers personal reflection about why her aging mom in China already prefers AI over HCPs:

My mother has told me that whenever she steps into her nephrologist’s office, she feels like a schoolgirl waiting to be scolded. She fears annoying the doctor with her questions. She also suspects that the doctor values the number of patients and earnings from prescriptions over her well-being.

But in the office of Dr. DeepSeek, she is at ease.

“DeepSeek makes me feel like an equal,” she said. “I get to lead the conversation and ask whatever I want. It lets me get to the bottom of everything.”

4. From Quant to Super Model

 Also: is AI already old news? McKinsey makes a bullish case that Quantum Computing (QC) “could transform the R&D process,” reducing costs and timelines in drug development:

By creating highly accurate simulations of molecular interactions from scratch, without relying on existing experimental data, QC enables researchers to computationally predict key properties such as toxicity and stability, significantly reducing the need for lengthy wet-lab experiments, and generating high-quality data that would otherwise be unavailable for training advanced AI models. This is not just an incremental step for R&D; it is a fundamental change that could transform the entire value chain, from initial discovery to patient delivery.

5. Pre-Bunking Fake News

Fake news about a medicine is a question of when, not if. A piece in HBR offers a response strategy that pharma should study. Consider a fictional organic food company, Vero. Its strategy is early and proactive stakeholder engagement:

As a preemptive strategy, Vero has cultivated relationships with key allies across the organic food ecosystem…Vero has invited these stakeholders to visit production sites and learn about its rigorous processes, ensuring that they are well-acquainted with its zero-pesticide policies and have seen the supporting documentation. To further build trust, Vero has welcomed external and independent certification agencies to assess its production processes, providing guarantees that the company meets the highest standards of organic production. Ordinary customers have also participated in tours of its farms, which showcase its sustainable practices.