Here's What Investors Need to Know About Medical Diligence

How do companies bring their health products to market quickly and responsibly? Companies like Pfizer (PFE -0.22%) and Moderna (MRNA -2.58%), which brought their coronavirus vaccines to market faster than any other vaccine in history, made medical diligence a top-of-mind issue for healthcare investors in 2020.

Ruby Gadelrab is CEO and Founder of MDisrupt, a platform that connects digital health companies to the scientists and healthcare industry experts they need to build, commercialize, and scale health products quickly and responsibly. Ruby joined Olivia Zitkus and Corinne Cardina of Fool.com's Healthcare and Cannabis Bureau on a Jan. 22 episode of Fool Live to talk about the hard work of medical diligence and how investors can make sure they're investing in companies that are going about their health product development effectively and safely. 

Corinne Cardina: I want to dig into the medical diligence aspect of MDisrupt. Diligence is important for investors in any sector. But in the healthcare sector, the stakes can often be life and death. Stakes are high. Investors can only base their decisions on information that the company makes available. We've seen instances of management either withholding certain material information, or even outright lying about what its technology is capable of. Looking at you, Theranos. Ruby, what have you learned about medical diligence, and how can investors have re confidence in a company by harnessing this knowledge about diligence?

Ruby Gadelrab: Great question, Corinne. Thank you. This is interesting when founded MDisrupt, because we went to market thinking that this was what we could add value to investors with as we go out to market. Before we could even engage with any investors, what we found was a new breed of digital health founder that were truth seekers, and they were determined to create impactful, responsible, health products, and get them to the market quickly. Really quickly, many of these founders contacted us. They had business and they had tech background, and they understood that access to the health industry experts was going to be critical to their success. They contacted us and started to ask for chief medical officers, regulatory experts, health economists, lab scientists, product managers, behavioral scientists. That was from the company side. At the same time, we were inundated with messages from scientists, and clinicians, and health system administrators basically saying, "We want to help some of these digital health companies that you're talking to, Ruby. How can we help and how can we get involved?" What we quickly realized is that we needed to build a platform that could connect the digital health industry with the scientists and the health industry experts they needed to commercialize and build their products quickly and responsibly. While we initially went out thinking that investors were our market, it turned out to be health tech truth seekers. One of the things that is interesting here is that now, we have access to all these types of experts. If investors do want our help, we are more than happy to help them diligence their investments too.