Thoughts on COVID, Influenza, and the Mission of Vivaldi Biosciences Inc.

Among the key tools* for any seasoned investor are:

• A network of credible scholar relationships
• An eye on societal ROI

Venture capital plays a key role in cultivating societal return-on-investment and system-level impact by curating big opportunities and supporting innovation. At the existential level, there may be no wiser investment than in innovation to prevent disease.

The pandemic serves as a global and fearsome contemporary wake-up call on disease prevention investment and societal impact: Witness two years of dropping life expectancy in the US. Back in 2014 — early days in conceiving Health2047 — American Medical Association CEO Jim Madara, MD, said, “Prevention can make an even greater impact than diagnosis and treatment of disease.” He was not wrong.

The creation of Vivaldi Biosciences Inc. was rooted in similar insight. In 2005, as a VC discussing new company formation, I met with Elliott Kieff, MD, PhD. I put this question to him: “If you only had one chip to play in medical innovation investment and scale of human impact, where would you place your bet?”

Elliott — a virologist and immunologist, member of numerous National Academies, and Chief of Infectious Disease at Harvard/Brigham/Channing Lab, had a ready answer: an improved universal flu vaccine. Echoing in the background was the grim history of the 1918 Flu epidemic. I agreed.

Elliott recruited U.S.-based Peter Palese, PhD and Adolfo Garcia-Sastre, PhD — leading reverse genetics inventors and Live Attenuated Influenza Vaccine (LAIV) scientists. We formed and venture funded Vivaldi Biosciences, a biotechnology company devoted to advancing pandemic preparedness using designer genetic flu vaccine technologies and commercializing them for scale and impact. Its scientific founders— subsequently joined by Vienna-based Thomas Muster, PhD—have tenaciously pursued their influenza vaccine improvement premise in both the US and Europe for more than three decades.

Fast forward to the waning days of 2019 and the emergence of SARS-CoV-2. For global civilization, COVID represents the modern era’s nearest-scale disaster to the 1918 flu epidemic.

To quote Mayo Clinic Vaccine Research Group Director Greg Poland, MD on the progression of the prolonged pandemic:

“There was not one virologist I know of, including myself, not one of us thought we would see anything other than Delta subvariants. Instead, out of nowhere came Omicron. None of us expected that. And now what Omicron is demonstrating is something I have never really seen in my career before called convergent evolution, which means that what we’re seeing is a swarm of Omicron subvariants battling one another for dominance.”

In the fight against COVID, breakthrough mRNA vaccine development, and technology even newer than Palese’s reverse genetics, became a foundational pillar in immediate response to initiate recovery from the pandemic. But the full toll has not yet been tallied and future threats loom large. Disease prevention innovation remains essential at societal scale.

Elliott was right in calling out the imminent risk of future pandemic. Between 2006 and 2020, close calls with influenza, two previous SARS outbreaks, and Ebola rapidly emerged and burned out. Global influenza surveillance and annual vaccine adaptation for drift-and-shift mutation strains were in place. But the global community was still left scrambling to react to the sudden emergence of COVID-19 and its unprecedented evolution of highly transmissible and lethal strains.

We have been harshly reminded that we must continue to prepare on many levels and across many disciplines. Among the addressable issues:

• Support of governmental funding priority for fundamental scientific research, with advocacy and focus in the vein of Research!America
• Insufficient attention on vulnerable and aging populations
• Barriers to and gaps in universal healthcare access in all nations
• Global air travel networks and instantaneous outbreak spread
• Consistently parsimonious public health spending
• Gaps in WHO disease surveillance and epidemiology
• Incomplete understanding of zoonotic disease emergence and cross-species transmission
• Antibiotic resistance
• Insufficient vaccine preparedness, distribution, cold-chain logistics, and public acceptance
• The need for more vibrant research-based pharmaceutical innovation and industry
• Enormous burdens placed on our physician workforce, a global treasure

Mother Nature has put us on notice again. We’ve had our wake up call. Vivaldi Biosciences has not lost sight of future influenza pandemic risk, with every bit of the morbidity and mortality hallmarks of COVID. It continues its quest for improved universal influenza vaccine. Investing in preparation and prevention is never the wrong bet.

*My toolkit includes experience as: a Massachusetts General Hospital and Mort Schwartz/Bob Moellering-trained ID clinical specialist at the onset of the HIV/AIDS crisis; a University of Chicago and Elliott Kieff-trained virologist and human herpesvirus scholar; a JHBSPH Health Advisory Board (HAB) member for 18 years through the tenure of three deans focused on the practice of public health; a Max Essex associate on the HSPH International Council and HIV/AIDS Institute/Initiative, chiefly in Botswana; a member of the University of Chicago Biological Sciences Division and Pritzker School of Medicine Visiting Committee (former chair) for 30 years; a member of the AMA’s Health2047 Inc. and Health2047 Capital Partners ecosystem since 2014, supporting Jim Madara, MD; a serial biotech and healthcare entrepreneur and operator in the VC ecosystem for 30 years; and a 25-year collaboration with Larry Cohen, PhD, CEO Health2047, and Bill Wick, MBA, CEO Vivaldi.

By Douglass Given MD, PhD

How refreshing to be back in the real world instead of the virtual, and enjoying the “loyalty of friends.” Boston hosted the HLTH 2021 conference Oct 17–20, with 6,000 attendees and an open exhibit hall ensuring a return to inspiring social interactions.

First things first, all attendees were proven vaccinated, tested onsite as a prerequisite to entry, and masks were mandatory. We have entered the era of the pandemic of the unvaccinated. As with past flu pandemics, this one will have lasted about two years before we have it in the rearview mirror, hopefully by end of Q1 next year.

Investment Surge Atmosphere
Most notable as a VC, investment in digital health is breaking all records and racing to a tipping point. The $21B invested by the venture community in the first three quarters of 2021 exceeded the entire 2020 annual tally, which hit a record on its own. Investors now have comparables for digital health and more paths to liquidity, as well as optionality.

Investor panels sounded a common refrain, from Robbert Vorhoff at General Atlantic, to Andrew Adams at Oak HC/FT, Julie Yoo at a16z, and Alyssa Jaffee at 7wireVentures. With the wave of capital surplus, the speed of diligence is astoundingly accelerated. We are marking days to evaluate deal diligence in lieu of weeks or months of quantitative, market, competitive, and financial research. Valuations, milestone-driven and risk adjusted, may be replaced by multiples of the last round or simply target dilution. Unit economics are ignored, revenue multiples in support of valuations are stretched, and the search for hiring quality talent is often deferred for the given company stage, as are scaling forecasts. In the crush, we are overlooking that businesses lack the execution capacity to build in an enduring way. Nothing in healthcare works easily or without undue friction hinging on talent, available workforce, infrastructure, strength in operations and reimbursement, regulatory and licensing gates.

Selected insights by experienced industry leaders participating in HLTH (noted below) illustrate promises and gaps in moving from innovation to commercialization. Healthcare in America is a public trust. As such, we must get innovation and transformation right to deliver our potential for society.

Insights
Dr. Alan Lotvin, EVP of CVS Health and President of CVS Caremark, outlined innovation challenges for incumbents. In his view, it’s hard for big business to be entrepreneurs, and they’ve indeed missed some really good companies like GoodRx, ro Pharmacy, and hims. But as a $270B company with $15B in rebates alone, it can be hard to figure out what not to do. To address “death by pilot,” he emphasized the need to ensure solution scalability and address a real business purpose. CVS did 75 pilots recently and all failed evaluation. On the issue of drug pricing, Lotvin noted that pharmaceuticals are 10% of the national spend, a trend that has remained consistent for decades. High-deductible health plans and specialty medications create access and affordability issues, and the drive for generics and biosimilars accelerate competition, which is a good thing. As for PBMs, there is a push for greater transparency, but scale matters for infrastructure, technology, reliability, predictability, plumbing, and a counter-price balance to patent-holding innovators.

Dr. Gianrico Farrugia, President and CEO of Mayo Clinic, emphasized institutional values: “Our patient’s trust is sacrosanct.” Purpose-driven development drives Mayo — the duty to evaluate pilots, publish, prove it works, and see the possibilities is what “we owe to our patients.” His exemplars include vaccine development and administration achievements and the accelerated adoption of telehealth and virtual care during the pandemic. He noted that we all agree that healthcare needs transformation. But consensus stops there, descending into debate on what it is, how it is delivered, what it will cost, and who will pay for it. Speaking on intelligent information, he outlined the Mayo four-part data mantra: gather, discover, validate, and deliver with partners. Mayo has more than 100 partners in platforms and products, and algorithms running in the background with new knowledge allow each patient’s care to be increasingly individualized. Treatments can use Mayo data, but the data can’t be taken out of the system because patients trust Mayo —and that trust is inviolable. In his transformation assessment, he estimates that 30% of hospitalizations could be managed at home if everything else were in place, including factors such as housing and food, and that 70% of patients would rather be cared for at home. His hope is that more people will adapt and adopt pandemic learnings, building a better healthcare system in the US.

David Codani, CEO Cigna, always delivers good sense. He’s concise and to the point. His three themes were: precision pharmacological targeting (specialty pharma being key); alternative care sites (closer to the patient and more personal); and mental health implications (mind and body). His hope is that we supercharge these opportunities. As for pharma pricing, Cordani believes the US is lagging in leveraging biosimilars and that we need more precise use of precision medicines. A reward structure based on outcomes requires attention, as do clinical programs wrapped around the person. He outlined how payers have become more diversified health service companies including medical, pharmaceutical, and behavioral elements — and he suggested that similar evolution could be taken up by pharma.

Jonathan Bush, cofounder of AthenaHealth and CEO of Zus, and Glen Tullman, Transcarent CEO formerly with Livongo, are both operators, entertaining storytellers, and all-around flame throwers. Their conversation didn’t disappoint. Centered on a strategy that removes the cost and friction of middlemen in healthcare and focuses on consumer “experience,” their business model innovations win when they quickly deliver benefits with that customer focus. Their thrown gauntlet posits that, “Consumers and employers are the real buyers of healthcare, and providers aren’t the problem. Take the payer out!” My favorite Bush-ism of their talk was, “Wouldn’t it be nice if your doctor was your navigator?” The idea is to go direct, where the focus is the best care over the cheapest care. Functionally, you can’t navigate a broken system with narrow networks, by their estimation, noting that the average self-insured employer-sponsored health plan has 16 relationships trying to deliver better care and value — and they can’t take anymore solutions. An up and coming theme for both Bush and Tullman as healthcare futurists is reaching the underserved. They referenced CityBlock as a forerunner to the next space, where co-pays are eliminated and Walmart-style pricing makes healthcare easy and available to everyone.

Where to next
Dovetailing on Bush and Tullman’s modification model, there is new energy surrounding the role of primary care and where the medical professionals will come from to service these centers of the future. Reimagining the primary care sector is on fire with experiments like FireFly, Oak St, OneMedical, JPM Health, Amazon Cares, Walgreens/VillageMD, CVS Minute Clinics, WalMart, and more to come.

There’s a reason for all that intensity. Hemant Teneja at General Catalyst and Ken Frazier at Merck both see the next 3–5 years of innovation running the next 50 years of healthcare transformation. Values were the key theme I’d note from their discussion. Teneja observed that, with the pandemic, the incidence of anxiety and depression has increased four-fold. We are realizing that we haven’t developed mental health or elder care workforces and we need to confront these problems differently. They also addressed the values context superseding transformation objectives. No one wants their healthcare “disrupted.” Rather, they want to trust our intentionality as an industry with social responsibility as a core value. Teneja and Frazier emphasized putting the patient at the center, empowering providers, and caring about inequities and unequal access to care. They spoke of optimizing for all stakeholders, rather than maximizing for some, and living our stated values.

As you can gather, HLTH 2021 supplied a wealth of information worthy of reflection and analysis for weeks and months to come. I expect you’ll see interesting media coverage and commentary stemming from the event in the near term, and many of the issues discussed reverberating throughout our industry in the year ahead.

AI technologies are already transforming healthcare and impacting patient outcomes. There’s no question that everything from diagnostic methodologies to pharmaceutical development to health record management and even treatment strategy is being touched by advancements in machine learning and augmented/artificial intelligence applications.

It seems a day doesn’t go by without a new computational wonder or bold digital health promise atop the healthcare headlines. Dual areas of interesting AI impact include:

Physician Support — In accordance with Vinod Khosla’s belief that major technological transformation in medicine is on the horizon, AI has produced great strides in diagnostic capability. And applications of the technology also show great potential to help release physicians from crushing clerical burdens through augmented record keeping and data management. One project under development aims to streamline notetaking and generate higher quality clinical data using progressively optimized speech recognition and AI-interpreted commands. Such work indicates that Health2047 advisor Norman Winarsky is prescient in forecasting that soon “AI assistants will provide real-time and ongoing support and recommendations to the physician for diagnosis and treatment, as well as administrative support…all at scales impossible to digest via human effort alone.”

Patient Empowerment — In addition to highly publicized developments in consumer wearable products that feature AI-powered personal health-monitoring applications, AI may help stem the rising tide of chronic disease management. A study in the Journal of Medical Internet Research found that AI “has the potential to enable the creation and delivery of better management services to deal with chronic diseases,” noting in particular that “artificial intelligence methods are being progressively established as suitable for use in clinical daily practice, as well as for the self-management of diabetes. Consequently, these methods provide powerful tools for improving patients’ quality of life.”

And all this activity is driving an increasingly dynamic market in the sector. Frost & Sullivan estimates that AI’s use in healthcare IT (HIT) is will top $1.7 billion by the end of 2019. Acumen Research recently reported that the market for AI in healthcare is expected to reach over $8 billion by 2026 and grow at CAGR 49.7% during the forecast 2019–2026 period. And Accenture predicts that key clinical health AI applications can potentially create $150 billion dollars in annual savings for the U.S. healthcare economy alone within the next decade.

It is, indeed, an exciting time for both technological and medical transformation. But what is often underplayed is the necessity of sustainable commercial infrastructure and strategic investment to support the widespread adoption and diffusion of these advances across the healthcare sector.

For example, billionaire Blackstone cofounder Steve Schwarzman recently made admirable and enormous horizontal investments in educational support for humanities and AI ethics with donations to MIT and Oxford University. But it occurs to me that these generous donations, while interesting and noble, are not actionable. And while big tech companies like Google and Microsoft are developing incredible AI technologies with myriad potential healthcare applications, their expertise lies in horizonal solutions.

Time and again, broad horizontal solutions fail when attempts are made to establish business units to penetrate vertical industry sectors. Unlike water, innovations such as AI technology do not naturally flow downward and fill in the gaping voids. This is particularly true in the slow moving, highly regulated, necessarily human constrained, and uniquely sensitive healthcare industry — which is cause for concern about all those billions of investment dollars projected to flow though the AI healthcare economy in the near future.

We at G5 Partners, as advisors to Health2047, on the other hand, begin from the unique healthcare vertical point of view. We’re laser-focused on a mission to harness the power of technology for the aggressive advancement of American healthcare, and everything we pursue must be actionable, scalable, commercializable, and demonstrate measurable progress toward achieving that goal.

The investment strategies and funding collaborations that will underpin this kind of purpose-built application of AI for broad healthcare impact require as much development and deliberation as do the technologies being implemented, and must weigh barriers to adoption, feasible market entry points, and the identification of synergies between partners to bridge the divide between what exists and what is possible.

G5 Partners’ Doug Given attended the Imec Technology Forum in Antwerp last quarter, where visionaries from around the world discussed the future of technology and how innovation is best brought to market in application domains such as health.

Viewing through the prism of Health2047’s mission to meet healthcare transformation challenges and opportunities, Doug was struck by several concepts circulating at the forum:

• Information security will get worse (for next 3–5 years) before it gets better. Conference consensus indicated profligate first-generation IoT deployments have ushered in true crises, as they have supplied seemingly unlimited attack points. Further, there is a costly and breathtakingly large impact aligned directly to digital health breaches, with stolen records valued at $100 PHR (and rising). Advocacy for much more stringent IoT manufacture and deployment standards, as well as greater use of personal keys, two-factor authentication, and multi-level security protocols leveraging identifiers such as location tracking were among ameliorating techniques discussed.
• Neuromorphic computing and AI present the biggest potential frontiers, and speakers discussed how such technologies are giving birth to entirely new architectures and interfaces that will revolutionize human thinking, outcomes, and actions. Hardware and software interplay, issues of latency, bandwidth, wireless and network evolution…all play a part in these new architectures, as do algorithmic innovation. There exists a future solution space stemming from smart semiconductors, which can weave knowledge gold out of data lead, actuating quantum computers (viable by 2025), unhackable security, neuromorphic characteristics, and digital-physical interfaces. Interesting use cases included the development of machine learning training sets that have enabled real-time, nine-language translation capabilities, and AR/VR status video examples that showed remarkable progress in display, camera, and signal processing producing dramatically improved immersive image quality of content.
• The need for a Digital Geneva Convention may be imminent to constrain government surveillance of citizens, who are increasingly being hacked by nation states in peacetime (consider what the NSA mantra: “collect all, know all, exploit all” means for individuals in the digital age). Big data means bigger breaches and bigger risks to privacy; balancing the needs and rights of individuals, technology companies, governments, and law enforcement requires rethinking architecture and embracing more secure building blocks, particularly in regard to health information, as well as establishing robust auditing of all information access capabilities.

You can read more of Doug’s takeaways from the Imec Technology Forum on Health2047’s blog here.

G5 Partners’ Doug Given shares his thoughts on simplifying healthcare through the lens of small data on Health2047’s blog. Health2047 is an integrated innovation company whose mission is to develop, guide, and harvest disruptive ideas that enhance—at the system level—the practice of healthcare.

We all know it: Technology hasn’t made the impact in healthcare that everyone was expecting. The McKinsey Global Institute’s May 2017 update on innovations in digitization, analytics, artificial intelligence, and automation noted that the healthcare sector had not achieved the digitalization benefits outlined in its 2011 big data research. In fact, healthcare “had captured less than 30 percent of the potential value highlighted previously.”

It’s a conundrum: We find incredibly sophisticated technology being used for diagnostics and treatment, but at the same time, less than 20% of payments to healthcare providers are done digitally, and it’s still virtually impossible for people to share their health records across providers.

We’ve been approaching digitalization in healthcare from the wrong vantage.

For example, Microsoft has 168,000 enterprise customers in healthcare and a huge sales force, yet scaling its HealthVault personal health record platform floundered—as did Google Health’s personalized health information centralization service. Both companies misjudged HIE business models, underestimated the weight of healthcare technology’s myriad ingrained standards and moved forward before solving for key legacy information stuck in an analog quagmire.

Instead of looking at simplifying healthcare through the lens of “big data”—as so many technology companies do—we need to be looking to achieve “big health” through the lens of small data.

You can read more of Doug’s thoughts on precision medicine in his latest post on the Health2047 site here.

• Collaboration at Scale: The NIH says precision medicine is a shift from a “one-size-fits-all” approach to a new form of customized care. But good medical practice has always been customized to the patient. So what this really means is that the convergence of new developments in science/tech and medicine will enable the health community to provide more precise care based on genetics and a holistic view of a person’s health, lifestyle, and environment. How can this be done effectively and at scale? The first hurdle to be cleared involves bridging the gap between the medical community and technology innovators, eliminating those distinct silos, educating physicians in advanced medical genetics, incorporating the physician’s perspective in development and innovation cycles, and cultivating active patient engagement. That’s no small task.
• The Financials: With skeptics noting that current federal funding models are insufficient to accomplish outlined goals, how can we achieve a more sustainable funding structure and market-sensible approach to the development of precision medicine? I believe it will happen through cross-industry and public-private collaborations to optimize market-ready solutions, movement toward valued-based healthcare measurements and reimbursement models, enhancing workflow for care providers, applying realistic time horizon expectations to allow change, and turning our attention to chronic disease care.
• Making Sense of the Data: How can we ensure that the massive amounts of clinically relevant information can be securely and productively translated to the singular physician-patient relationship? This question naturally ties to the need to develop decision-support tools that relay actionable, high-quality, and accessible information, at the point of care in time and place, as well as educational efforts for physicians. The choreography of current scientific depth and expertise is raising standards of living, accelerating longevity, and making overall positive contributions in human capital. We may never be a prophet in our own land, but the affirmative contributions into the planet’s human capital bank have our future looking good.

As mentioned back in January, after a national CEO search the AMA invited G5P managing partner Doug Given to serve as Health2047’s CEO. Passionate about this amazing opportunity, Doug accepted the AMA’s offer.

Doug remains active on the G5P board, but the rest of the G5P team will serve G5P client needs until Doug returns to the firm in an operational capacity sometime in 2018. However, if you’re curious as to what Doug is creating at Health2047, here’s an excerpt from a U.S. News and World Report’s article on the launch:

The firm reflects the AMA’s desire to take an active role in reshaping a health care system buffeted by converging market forces, such as the push to exploit new technology, drive down costs, improve quality, promote transparency and heighten accountability for the outcomes of care.

From doctors’ offices to retail clinics to operating suites, these pressures are inescapable, says Dr. James Madara, CEO of the AMA and chairman of Health2047. The challenge: “How do we make physicians’ practices sustainable in this new environment?”

Health2047 seeks to combine AMA’s medical expertise with Silicon Valley technology and business know-how to develop solutions to the problems that “burden physicians and detract from patient care,” he says.

Supplying the business savvy is CEO Dr. Douglass Given, a physician-scientist-entrepreneur with broad expertise in health care, venture capital and drug development. His resume includes stints running Vivaldi Biosciences, Inc., a biotech firm reinventing the flu vaccine. He has also played roles in traditional pharmaceutical companies, public health and academic medicine.

Given believes that doctors’ insights should play a pivotal role in health care’s evolution. “You think about the $3 trillion-plus health marketplace, with less than a million practicing physicians – think of the leverage they have,” Given says. “We need to leverage and unlock the insights of the AMA, and do that through partnerships with leading commercial enterprises that for one reason or another haven’t been able to penetrate health care.”

You can follow more news about Health2047 here.

G5 Partners’ Dr. Doug Given was featured in this two-part Q&A series with HIT Consultant’s senior editor Erica Garvin on how to solve for integrated innovation and EHR interoperability. Below is an excerpt:

As physicians, we aim to re-architect the system through thoughtful design, attention to user experience and security; we know we can do better. The healthcare provider today is living in a new world of social and mobile technology where patients and physicians alike are trying to adapt.

Technology integration and interoperability is variable in many organizations and limited by the capabilities of the technology, data collection and the IT skills on hand. As we shift toward focusing on outcomes and measurable factors, it is important to allow patient access to personal EHRs. As physicians, we are excited by empowering patients with actionable information. We want the same thing. We all want technology to intelligently innovate itself out of the way of the doctor-patient relationship…

…In healthcare, false information can be a life or death issue. The complex requirements of security, integrity and reliability require breakthroughs of the highest magnitude. The challenge with positively identifying patient records and the interaction with those records is a clear security, integrity and portability hurdle. New capabilities and systems that securely handle collection in a way that is designed to track, ensure validity and accuracy of each piece of data are required.

For example, as we use new methods of data collection, such as mobile devices, how the environment or medical team knows that data and device were actually with Patient A and the the data and information have not been spoofed or tampered with is a complex question to answer technologically. We see the opportunity in healthcare as an opportunity to lead in the data integrity, integration and security space related to the IoT and wearable devices…

The original series was published on HIT Consultant. You can read Part One here and Part Two here.

G5 Partners’ Doug Given shares his thoughts on a better way to foster healthcare innovation on Health2047’s blog. Health2047 is an integrated innovation company whose mission is to develop, guide, and harvest disruptive ideas that enhance—at the system level—the practice of healthcare.

— Benjamin Franklin

Welcome to the G5 Partners (G5P) website. We are an advisory services, corporate development, and venture investment firm specializing in the healthcare arena. G5P was founded to address intractable challenges in health and healthcare by assembling and deploying advisory expertise strategically. To execute on our vision, we have formed a network of high-performing expert advisors in distinct vertical disciplines; we decisively assemble exactly the right team on a per-project and/or problem basis.
Drawing from experience in the healthcare industry, venture capital, board service, and advisory postings to establish this network, we have been gratified by the reciprocal interest expressed by prominent leaders in domains adjacent to our core competencies. Working together, we are designing solutions and approaches to problems that will deliver a better future for healthcare. Effective collaboration is at the heart of the G5 model: teams of best-in-class professionals accomplishing things together that none of us could do alone.

Over the past 18 months, one of G5 Partners’ key assignments was to assist the American Medical Association (AMA) in formulating a vision for its future and fostering a means to accelerate innovation and achieve greater impact in select focus areas for the health of the nation. G5P did an audit of the innovation ecosystem of the AMA, made a proposal on how it could have greater impact, and formed an integrated innovation company—Health2047—whose sustainable business model is designed to finance and attract startup capital and finance to execute on the highest-priority healthcare problems.

By creating new and important linkages between the physician community and the AMA’s content and regulatory experts with leading commercial enterprises, emerging growth companies, and individual entrepreneurial teams, Health2047 intends to transform the way that individuals receive—and physicians deliver—care.
Bridging the view of problems and solutions as seen from the AMA’s perspective, given its central position in American medicine, and the technologically transformative view of problems and solutions perceived by Silicon Valley innovators will be key to realizing that future.

After a national CEO search, the AMA invited G5P managing partner Doug Given to serve as Health2047’s CEO. (Try as they might, they simply could not replicate Doug’s unique skills and experience set.) Passionate about this amazing opportunity, Doug accepted the AMA’s offer Q3’15.

Doug will remain active on the G5P board, but the rest of the G5P team will serve G5P client needs until Doug returns to the firm in an operational capacity.