Pharmaceutical companies were on the clock in early 2020, racing to develop potential vaccines and treatments for Covid-19. And they didn’t scrimp: Pharma and the US government invested at least $30 billion to find a vaccine.

Some investments were extremely successful, like the vaccine jointly developed by Pfizer and BioNTech. It raked in $36.8 billion in 2021 and became the top-selling pharmaceutical product ever in one year.

But not every company saw results like Pfizer’s. Johnson & Johnson, for example, brought in just 6.5% of the amount Pfizer made in Covid vaccine sales in 2021.

By the end of 2022, sales of Covid vaccines and treatments fell steeply across the board. Analysts told Healthcare Brew they believe Covid-related revenues have hit a ceiling and will only continue to decline in 2023.

Winners and losers: Pfizer was the clear winner in terms of Covid vaccine profits. In 2021, the company made $36.8 billion from its vaccine, while Moderna made $17.7 billion.

Although neither company has reported 2022 calendar year results yet, Moderna slashed its 2022 annual vaccine sales projection to $18 billion–$19 billion, down from $21 billion, as of Q3 2022. The company also reported a 35% decline in vaccine sales compared to the prior year.

In contrast, Pfizer reported Q3 sales of $4.4 billion, which prompted the company to increase its annual vaccine sales projection to $34 billion—a $2 billion increase on its original projection for the period.

Johnson & Johnson fell far short of both Pfizer and Moderna, reporting just $2.39 billion in vaccine sales in 2021 and nearly $1.5 billion in 2022 through Q3. Keep reading here.—MA

CES, or the Consumer Electronics Show, is where the biggest names in tech (Google, Amazon, and the like) often unveil their newest and shiniest products.

Though it’s not usually thought of as a place for healthcare professionals, CES 2023 featured a large digital health section in the sprawling Las Vegas Convention Center. There were dozens of consumer biowearables, remote patient-monitoring devices, and sleep technology on display. Many of the products also brought healthcare into the home—an emerging healthcare trend.

“The accessibility shortfalls in many global health systems represent a major opportunity for the technology sector to drive solutions,” René Quashie, vice president of digital health for the Consumer Technology Association, the organization that produces CES, told Healthcare Brew.

Morning Brew reporters battled it out to see who would get to witness all the newfangled tech firsthand at January’s conference. (Just kidding...but I won, by the way.) Here are some of the coolest and most useful gadgets from CES 2023:

Remote monitoring wearable from BioIntelliSense: The startup, founded in 2018, created a device called the BioButton that hospital patients can wear overnight. It reduces the need for a nurse to check patient vitals every few hours. The device, roughly the size of a potato chip, adheres to the chest below the collarbone and tracks heart rate, respiratory rate, skin temperature, and a range of other biometrics. The data goes to a dashboard called BioMobile for clinicians to monitor.

Wrist wearable for senior care from CarePredict: Founded in 2013, CarePredict created a wrist wearable—similar to Apple or Fitbit smartwatches—that tracks how often older adults go to the bathroom per day and their risk of developing depression, among other data points. Keep reading here.—MA

It’s not all up from here. Record healthcare investments in 2021 and 2022 might be outliers rather than indicators of a trend, according to a new analysis of the US, EU, and UK markets.

Venture capitalists poured in nearly $22 billion in 2022, second only to the record $28 billion allocated in 2021, but that’ll likely dry up in 2023 as investments return to 2020 levels ($16.8 billion), according to a January report from SVB Financial Group, the parent of Silicon Valley Bank. (Not that we’re laughing at approximately $15 billion this year in anticipated VC fundraising for healthcare ventures—an area which has grown steadily over the last decade.)

The report highlighted some areas to watch:

• Biopharma: Investment in the biopharma sector totaled $29.5 billion in 2022, down from $38.7 billion in 2021 despite a strong first quarter. It is expected to hover around 2020 levels ($27.4 billion in total) this year, but with increased funding in autoimmune and respiratory companies.
• Medical devices: The sector kept pace last year with the 2021 record investments (a total of $8.5 billion compared to $9.2 billion, respectively). Investment in 2023 is expected to largely mirror what we saw in 2020 ($6.6 billion), but we can expect fewer $100+ million deals, given fundraising for top companies in 2022.
• Medical diagnostics: Investment in medical diagnostics and tools companies is likely to rebound from the second half of 2022 and finish the year at $8 billion–$9 billion, just below the 2020 pace ($10.9 billion). Sector investment fell from a total of $14.7 billion in 2021 to $9.9 billion in 2022.

Even amid the slowdown, top companies can expect to see continued investments in 2023 as their valuations climb. Keep reading here.—SY

Do you work in healthcare or have information about the industry that we should know? Email Shannon at [email protected]. For completely confidential conversations, ask Shannon for her number on Signal.

Today’s top healthcare reads.

Stat: Diabetics in the US pay up to 10x more than what their international counterparts pay for insulin, according to a Rand report. (Stat News)

Quote: “It’s very hard to put devices into the patient home or in the hospital, but everybody is just walking around with a cell phone that has a network connection.”—Andrew Gostine, CEO of the sensor network company Artisight, on the capacity of smartphones to augment healthcare (Kaiser Health News)

Read: Republicans struggle to support abortion bans without isolating swing voters. (the New York Times)

Catch up on the top Healthcare Brew stories you may have missed:

• Upstate hospitals bring traveler recruitment in-house
• Analysis: Healthcare increasingly unaffordable
• US healthcare struggles to tackle maternal behavioral health crisis