Galen Atlantica

Navigating Complexity In Service To Health And Innovation

We believe that investment in innovation can and should enhance health system efficiency, while improving patient outcomes.

Strategy And Engagement Across The Business, Scientific, And Policy Domains

Galen / Atlantica is a boutique healthcare firm that enables corporate and institutional leaders to play a leadership role beyond their traditional borders.

Our Story

Galen / Atlantica is a boutique healthcare firm that enables corporate and institutional leaders to navigate “the new normal” and play a leadership role beyond their traditional borders.

We believe that investment in innovation can and should enhance health system efficiency, while improving patient outcomes.

We map and understand the complex set of interactions that drive value for individual institutions and society. We work across silos to integrate insight, formulate strategy, and effect change. And we draw on our experience leading multiple collaborations of senior leaders in government, industry, and civil society, bringing this network to bear in addressing complex global challenges.

Our Work

Innovation and Value Strategy

We developed new commercial models for antibiotics that reward innovation while safeguarding health system needs. These models are now being tested in national healthcare systems.
We led the development of an approach to clarify the value of a medicine after launch, in a collaboration between pharmaceutical developers and reimbursement authorities. This tool addresses lingering uncertainty regarding the patient and health system benefits of a medicine over its lifecycle.
We clarified the value proposition and market positioning for a new infection prevention technology and helped find the right partners to bring it to the US market

Health Systems Analysis and Design

We developed the first-ever multi-country, multi-stakeholder early advice process focused on the value of a pipeline medicine and how to demonstrate it to regulators, HTAs, payers, clinicians and patients.We co-created the approach with the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and eight national health systems, and it has since been institutionalized by the EMA. Read More
We worked with a leading medical foundation to integrate the development and use of therapeutics and diagnostics in infectious disease. We led a multi-stakeholder collaboration using clinical scenarios as the basis for understanding and addressing drug-resistant infections. Read More

Policy Development and Agenda Setting

We developed an integrated policy strategy for a global pharmaceutical company that is a world leader in oncology, to focus its resources on the greatest impact for patients and the business. We helped align the company’s external engagement strategy with the cutting-edge science and commercial approach for its largest therapeutic area.
We led a 30-nation Summit of scientists and policymakers covering human health and agriculture to advance national responses to antimicrobial resistance. The Summit prioritized 25 policy responses for immediate action, and is being used to inform the global agenda at both a scientific and political level. View Attached PDF

Stakeholder Engagement and Coalition Building

We served in the core group that developed a pharmaceutical and diagnostics industry declaration setting out a balanced set of commitments and requirements for overcoming antimicrobial resistance. The declaration was released at the World Economic Forum in Davos and has been subscribed to by 100 companies and 13 industry associations. Read More
We have co-lead multiple leadership networks of senior regulators, HTAs, payers, policymakers, KOLs and civil society to address the value of medicines, the sustainability of healthcare systems, and transition to reward for innovation on the basis of health outcomes.

Leadership Team

Matt Diver

Matt’s focus on the intersection of business and public policy has provided exciting opportunities to shape the agenda for economic, organizational, and social change on four continents. He believes that cross-sector leadership can best address society’s biggest challenges.

Matt’s career spans service as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Africa, as an investment banker focused on the technology sector, a strategy consultant at BCG, and a partner at Tapestry Networks. At Tapestry, he focused on aligning private sector innovation with public need. Matt has an undergraduate business degree from UC Berkeley and a masters in public policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School.

Nicholas Gertler

Prior to founding Galen/Atlantica, Nicholas was a partner at Tapestry Networks, where he led working collaborations among healthcare leaders from industry, government and civil society. He started his career as an environmental and energy lawyer in Washington DC with Latham & Watkins, and then worked as strategy consultant in Europe and the Middle East with McKinsey, and as head of the chairman and CEO’s office of a $5 billion ICT company.

He holds a BS in systems engineering from the University of Virginia, a Master’s in technology policy from MIT, and a JD from Harvard Law School.

Case Study

Harnessing distributed expertise to tackle drug-resistant infections

In many clinical situations doctors need to treat patients with antibiotics without knowing what is causing their symptoms. This leads to widespread use of antibiotics where they are not needed, and the risk of using the wrong antibiotic where one is needed.

The widespread adoption of faster and more accurate diagnostics would address this problem, but their development and introduction has been slow. Part of what’s missing has been a way to clearly define the different jobs to be done by diagnostics and the target performance characteristics they need to deliver.

The workshop also identified four distinct diagnostic typologies n infectious disease, along with the different performance characteristics required from each category. This much-needed specificity serves as a roadmap for clinicians, patients, technology developers, and policy-makers.

To address this gap we:

Modeled the patient treatment pathway and potential roles for diagnostics for several bacterial infections. Pre-meeting briefing
Convened an interdisciplinary group of more than 50 leading experts (including diagnostics and drug developers, clinicians, patient representatives, regulators, HTAs and policymakers) participant list.
Designed and led an interactive multi-day workshop using representative clinical scenarios to unlock the group’s collective knowledge
Worked with the Trust to synthesize and publish results
Participants identified the fundamental importance of focusing not just on technologies but diagnostic strategies informed by (1) the specific clinical and health system context and (2) human factors such as physician behavior and patient attitudes.