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By Christina Farr
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Genentech Inc [ROGING.UL] is on the hunt for partnerships and investment opportunities in medical-technology startups, Chief Executive Officer Ian Clark told Reuters, underscoring the industry's growing interest in digital healthcare.
Genentech, which is owned by Roche Holding AG, is interested in mobile health startups that help people monitor diseases.
Clark said in an interview during a conference sponsored by venture fund Rock Health that Genentech was looking for technology similar to an iPhone application that can be used to store photos of an eye condition and monitor its progress.
He noted how consumer technology companies, such as Apple Inc and Google Inc, are increasingly moving into healthcare as evolving mobile and digital technology allows more sophisticated monitoring and data collection than in the past.
"It's a combination of two things: People are seeing a way forward in healthcare, and there's lots of money in it," he said late on Thursday. "We're looking for technology that we think can help patients."
But technology companies might find it difficult to move into healthcare, a highly regulated sector. Clark noted there was an "arrogance" among the largest Silicon Valley tech companies about their prospects.
Regulation and red tape are a hurdle for them because the Food and Drug Administration is "inserting itself in a random sort of way" when it comes to new diagnostic tools, he said.
Clark recalled how Genentech would transport "trucks-worth" of information to the FDA just to bring a new drug to market. At the conference, he told the audience it typically costs $1 billion to research and manufacture a drug.
But "they may decide to go at it alone," he said. "They do have very deep pockets."
On the thorny issue of patient privacy, Clark argued that people should be able to access their own health information. A pool of aggregate patient data would also be useful to developers and research groups.
Still, it is unclear whether patients should share their data without some restrictions, he said. In recent years, clinical trial participants have blogged about their experiences or shared their perspectives on social media sites.
That worries biotech companies such as Genentech because trials are designed to be "blinded," meaning it should be unknown who gets an experimental drug and who gets a placebo.
"There's a growing tension between the regulated world of health and the totally unregulated world of social media," Clark said.
Clark was less interested in wearable devices, an area attracting heavy investment and that many pundits identify as poised to drive future growth in the technology sector.
"People who wear Fitbits are not the people we want to be wearing them," Clark told the conference, referring to the popular health-tracker that is worn on wrists.
(Editing by Edwin Chan. Editing by Andre Grenon)