Former Verily executive Amy Abernethy outlined her plan to streamline clinical research on Thursday, revealing the first projects that her company, Highlander Health, will fund.
Abernethy, who previously served as the No. 2 official at the Food and Drug Administration, has spent a lot of time thinking about how to leverage data to improve our health, telling STAT in September that the idea for Highlander Health dates back to 2009.
Her resolve to make research more efficient has grown over the years as the cost of clinical trials has skyrocketed. On Thursday, at the 2024 STAT Summit, Abernethy recalled a presentation at last year’s J.P. Morgan by BeiGene CEO John Oyler, who noted that the company spent about $150,000 per clinical trial patient in 2010. By 2023, that cost increased to around $300,000 per patient.
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