....EQRx is a bet that they’re ready to. Insurance companies are very interested in generic drugs when available, and will often require patients to exhaust the existing lower-priced therapeutic options before they’ll pay for a more expensive one as well, but we really haven’t had that many examples of prescription medicines fighting it out on price alone.
But EQRx is also, of course, a bet that they can discover all these medicines in the first place. And that’s where I have comment to offer. It has not escaped my attention that they are picking up funding from some of the venture capital shops that have traditionally stayed out of biopharma, such as Andreessen Horowitz. Here’s their take, which tiptoes up to this question:
But how? What secret do they have that the multi-billion dollar biopharma industry doesn’t? Often the biggest innovations in technology address the process, not the product. Take Amazon, for example; by building a different retailer from the ground up and infusing tech throughout, they were able to deliver products faster, at a lower price and a higher margin. This simply can’t be done by revamping an existing company, as many retailers and other companies have tried. In much the same way, EQRX is now reimagining how medicines are created, tested, and commercialized by re-engineering the system itself.The hallmark of good engineering is where the solution is simple, but not easy; the answer elegant, but not overwrought. EQRx shifts science risk to execution risk by focusing on known biology, where drug targets have been validated and proven valuable for treating a disease. They remove friction within the system through early and deep partnerships across the healthcare value chain. And most importantly, they integrate data science and technology end-to-end throughout the discovery and development process. Engineering a better product is good, but engineering a better process is best.
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