Over 60 people recently gathered in New York City for a panel program spearheaded by YaleFin, an alumni shared interest group for those working in banking, finance, and the markets.
The event, which focused on venture capital investing in healthcare innovation, also covered other topics and developments impacting the global healthcare sector.
Marc Appel ’08, one of the panel speakers, and managing partner of an investment platform dedicated to advancing high-potential biotech programs, noted the impressive scale and rate at which the industry was evolving.
“The pace of change is accelerating across all of healthcare,” he said. “Some of the drivers, like AI, are common across them all, and some of the drivers are unique to each subindustry.”
Appel opined that the emergence of new international actors over the past several years has dramatically altered the healthcare landscape, in which the United States has historically been the dominant player.
“The pace of innovation and level of competition is increasing enormously through the rise of the Chinese ecosystem,” he said. “This creates significant opportunity for those who are seeking to leverage the best of what each ecosystem has to offer and can meaningfully improve outcomes for patients.”
David Teten ’93, the event organizer, and partner at a firm that invests exclusively in AI companies, found this part of the conversation intriguing.
“A big takeaway was learning that 40% of global biotech deals now involve Chinese assets when just a decade ago, it was only 1%,” he said, adding that this poses a significant challenge to the position of the United States as an industry leader. “China has taken a huge lead in healthcare over the US.”
Tom Opladen ’66, co-chair of YaleFin, and president emeritus and a board member of the Yale Veterans Association, was also keen to learn more about the biotech competition between China and the United States, as well as the opportunities that could be realized through partnerships and collaborative efforts between the two countries.
“It was fascinating to hear that each country has unique advantages and should cooperate to advance development—China in clinical trials and the US in software development,” he said. “I hope the audience was impressed by the amount of resources and effort that are being focused on biotech and the possibilities that they can create for human health.”
Robin Tang ’11, who was attending her first YaleFin event, and is an executive director at a global financial institution where she specializes in working with Asia-Pacific family offices and ultra-high-net-worth clients, thought other discussion topics were equally engaging.
“I loved the representation from each big vertical of healthcare, spanning biotech, healthcare IT and value-based care,” she said. “I found the discussion around ex-US activity and the influence of AI particularly insightful—the panelists went beyond the typical headlines and gave much more nuanced interpretations of how each of their subsectors is being influenced by both.”
Tang, a New York chapter member of the Association of Asian American Yale Alumni, noted her interest in becoming more involved with YaleFin and connecting with other alumni who work in banking and finance.
“I am glad I was able to participate,” she said. “There are so many Yalies across Wall Street and finance in general—I hope the group can continue to get the word out and keep growing.”
