Finance in biotech and medtech
biotech/medtech finance: burn rate and runway, milestone-based funding and partnerships, valuing pre-revenue pipelines, and reimbursement as the real gate.
Finance in Biotech and MedTech operates under conditions few other sectors face: long pre-revenue horizons, binary clinical outcomes, patent cliffs, and reimbursement uncertainty. This block builds sector-specific financial fluency for professionals who must value assets before they generate cash, model milestone-driven cash flows, and read the burn rate of a company years from market. You will apply core finance concepts to risk-adjusted NPV of drug and device pipelines, learn the metrics and benchmarks investors and analysts actually use across US and European markets, and master the financial regulation, risks, and due-diligence checks that distinguish credible programs from value traps. The emphasis throughout is practical, quantitative, and grounded in how capital really flows through this sector.
What you'll master
- Build a risk-adjusted NPV model for a drug or device pipeline incorporating phase-transition probabilities and milestone payments
- Calculate and interpret sector-specific metrics such as cash runway, burn rate, and R&D capitalization against US and European benchmarks
- Assess a company's financing structure and dilution risk across funding rounds, grants, and non-dilutive capital
- Perform financial due diligence on a biotech or medtech target, identifying reimbursement, regulatory, and IP-linked financial risks
Key terms
Modules
Applies core finance concepts to the specific realities of biotech and medtech business models.
Covers the key figures, ratios, and benchmarks used to analyze biotech and medtech companies and deals.
Explains the regulatory perimeter, financial risks, and checks needed to assess biotech and medtech investments.
Latest articles
Recent articles from the blog that apply to Biotech & MedTech.
- Pharma partnership terms that protect your pipeline when the science goes sidewaysMilestone-based deals are how most biotech companies survive long enough to see their drug approved, but poorly structured agreements can leave a CFO holding the downside while the partner captures the upside. This playbook shows how to build deal terms that align incentives across a decade-long development arc.
- Risk-adjusted NPV for pre-revenue biotech pipelines: how the math actually worksMost valuation frameworks break down when applied to a drug candidate that has never generated a dollar of revenue and may never reach patients. Risk-adjusted NPV fixes that problem, but only if you understand what the model is actually doing and where it quietly fails.