Solid growth, but more work ahead for Philly’s life sciences sector

After thorough examination, the results are in: Philadelphia’s health and life sciences scene is doing better than ever.

This was the consensus of a group of key industry leaders during a Philly Tech Week 2016 presented by Comcast panel discussion in the Center City offices of the Public Health Management Corporation.

Conveners, startups and major stakeholders sat on the panel, which included Claire Marrazzo Greenwood of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce; Patrick FitzGerald, VP of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia; Laurie Actman, Chief Operating Officer of Penn’s Pennovation arm; Neil Gomes of the Jefferson health network; Max Perelman, cofounder of diagnostics startup Biomeme; and Anthony Green, VP of commercialization at the state-backed Ben Franklin Technology Partners.

The leaders’ voices stated a clear message: the sector is seeing remarkable growth, fueled in part by a major culture change at area research institutions.

Ben Franklin’s Green, who was particularly bullish on the Philly region’s prospects, came bearing figures.

“This region has over $1.4 billion in NIH [National Institutes of Health] funding, not all of which goes to the University of Pennsylvania,” he said jokingly (a lot of it does).

According to Green, the last 18 months have seen a surge in local health-tech commercialization.

“This represents a commitment from institutions to get their technologies out the door,” he said.

Read the original article here.

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