For a commercial-stage biotech company with an approved treatment for a rare condition, reaching the full population of patients who could benefit was a persistent challenge. Patients had to be found, diagnosed correctly, started on therapy, and kept on it. Physicians had to recognize the condition, know that an approved treatment existed, understand that it was covered, and believe it was the right choice. Any broken link in this chain means a missed opportunity for both the patient and the drugmaker.

The need to win the total addressable market was more urgent than ever: Updated clinical guidance had strengthened the treatment’s position in the standard of care and the prospect of new competitors entering the market was increasing. At the same time, the digital health and AI landscape was evolving rapidly, making it difficult to distinguish promising solutions from noise.

The biotech’s C-suite was eager to move quickly, but had limited resources available to evaluate and select the right solutions internally. And after a previous technology partnership fell through, the team wanted to limit risk while pursuing a meaningful investment in high-value partnerships. They needed a practical strategy for determining where digital solutions could have the greatest impact — and which potential partners could actually deliver. This lean, savvy team had little patience for landscape reports that gather dust; they needed a trusted advisor to deliver specific, actionable recommendations.

Luminary Labs structured an eight-week digital innovation sprint to unfold across four stages: rapid grounding in the current state, opportunity identification, participatory prioritization, and clear partnership recommendations.

Rapid grounding in the current state. We started by learning the business, then expanded our view to assess the market. We conducted a slate of expert interviews with company leaders across commercial, operations, and patient services functions, as well as outside voices in the broader ecosystem. We reviewed earnings materials, brand research, and the results of previous AI initiatives. This work helped us reframe the problem: The company’s challenge was not only finding more patients; it was a leaky funnel, in which patients were misdiagnosed, treated too late, dropped too early, or lost in enrollment paperwork.

Opportunity identification. We mapped the digital and AI landscape against this funnel, evaluating dozens of candidate companies and narrowing the field to seven potential opportunity areas. Every idea was framed against a foundational question: Where does this find, convert, or keep a patient? We aligned with the client on three evaluation criteria — strategic value, active patient impact, and workflow readiness — before scoring potential solutions, then prepared to engage the broader leadership team in further narrowing the field.

Participatory prioritization. We facilitated a half-day, in-person workshop with eight company leaders, including the executives who would fund what the team decided. After reviewing pre-read materials and stimuli in advance of the session, we walked the group through all seven opportunity areas and scored them live, surfacing and addressing disagreements about clinical realities and operational hurdles. The group ultimately prioritized the opportunities with a clear path into the company’s commercial model, converging on two high-potential solution areas: AI-powered physician engagement, and enrollment and access automation.

Clear partnership recommendations. After the workshop, we worked with the client to identify real workflow problems within these focus areas, then scanned more than 20 potential vendors. For the top three, we ran product demonstrations and conducted identity-shielded interviews to verify fit and readiness. Our evaluation pressure-tested the unglamorous conditions that might otherwise end partnerships before they start: business associate agreements and patient privacy obligations, federal requirements for electronic records and signatures, and the rules governing who may contact a patient and under what circumstances. We delivered final recommendations in the form of three deep-dive, evidence-graded vendor profiles and a consolidated diligence checklist.

In just a few months, the biotech’s leadership team moved from an open-ended question about digital innovation to three concrete, vetted partnership opportunities. Most importantly, the team had what they needed to take action and move forward at speed.