1
Nov
2020
Rebuffed as Overlords, AI Experts Return in Peace, Seeking Partnership with Clinicians
Why not healthcare? That’s the core question at the heart of efforts to apply emerging digital and data technologies to healthcare and life science. As Suchi Saria, an entrepreneur and a computer scientist at John Hopkins, where she directs the Machine Learning and Healthcare Lab, puts it, in the 2000s, these technologies transformed sectors, such as banking, in a fashion... Read More
7
Oct
2020
Learning From COVID-19: The Lessons For Real World Data
The COVID-19 crisis created an urgent need for healthcare data. For starters, it was necessary to characterize the spread of the pandemic. Quickly, reports were needed on the capacity of healthcare facilities responsible for care of the severely afflicted. Then there was the urgent need to assess the trajectory, and outcomes, of patients admitted to hospitals. The profound difficulty our... Read More
2
Sep
2020
Tech Impact Requires Deep Engagement With Biopharma Lead Users
In today’s Wall Street Journal, I review The Innovation Delusion, a new book arguing that innovation is overrated and maintenance is underrated; moreover, the authors assert, we have magical thinking around innovation, and often view it as fairy dust that can be imported from Silicon Valley then sprinkled on ossifying organizations to revive and rejuvenate them. (Steve Blank discussed the... Read More
26
Aug
2020
An Underappreciated Aspect of Power: Listening
As the summer draws to a close, I thought TR readers might enjoy a final August distraction. I’ve always been an avid reader, and lately, I’ve found myself increasingly drawn to the history and science of American politics. On the history front, and inspired by Stanford professor Jeffrey Pfeffer (an expert on power and leadership), I’ve started Robert Caro’s famously... Read More
31
Jul
2020
Closing Medicine’s Feedback Gap: Can Tech Help Integrate Clinical Care and Clinical Research?
Medicine is plagued by a feedback gap, or perhaps more accurately, a feedback paradox. On the one hand, clinicians are bombarded by feedback. Every day, there are a slew of process and billing metrics to review, providing an accounting of the volume of patients seen, and the intensity of each visit. How thorough was the exam? What procedures may have... Read More
30
Jul
2020
Jill Hagenkord’s Rags To Riches Story Reminds Us Why We Still Admire Entrepreneurs
Entrepreneurial stories, often told through the narrative framework of the hero’s journey, are by now well past the point of cliché. Yet, it’s important, perhaps even instructive, to remind ourselves every now and again about the exceptional, transformative power of entrepreneurship, the can-do thinking it motivates, and the remarkable progress it can propel. This potential emerged as a central theme... Read More
20
Jul
2020
Clinical Trials: High-Value Attack Surface For Pharmatech Entrepreneurs
There’s an emerging sense among early stage investors that there are profound opportunities at the intersection of healthcare and technology, and no shortage of white papers from consultants and venture groups addressing this topic. Consultant white papers tend to be focused on the inevitability of “digital transformation,” emphasize the $X billion dollar opportunity, and argue that if large organizations don’t... Read More
11
Jul
2020
Can Novartis Digitally Transform Clinical Development?
In 2018, Dr. Vas Narasimhan, newly-installed as CEO, told the Wall Street Journal he saw Novartis as “a focused medicines company that’s powered by data science and digital technologies.” Since then, Novartis has tried to grow into this ambition, embracing the concept of digital transformation perhaps more conspicuously than any other large pharma. It’s not easy, as Narasimhan himself acknowledged... Read More
11
Jun
2020
AstraZeneca Opens Its Digital Komono
AstraZeneca has emerged with a reputation as one of the industry’s most imaginative pharmas – it was named the “most innovative” global pharma company by IDEA Pharma in November 2019, and was cast as Gallant to GSK’s Goofus in a recent Financial Times piece examining their contrasting trajectories. In this context, I was especially excited when I saw what looked... Read More
5
Jun
2020
Tech Integration Into Pharma: A Report From The Front Line
Most biopharma companies can talk at some length about embracing data science, and sometimes it’s hard to get beneath the surface of what they’re doing, at least publicly. But it was my privilege recently to frame and moderate a very insightful recent conversation – recorded for on-demand viewing at this year’s virtual BIO 2020 conference. This provided an unusual opportunity... Read More
2
Jun
2020
Digital Natives and Skilled Operators: Weaving Data Science Into Pharma R&D
An abiding challenge at the intersection of technology and pharma R&D is the need to bring together two historically disparate cultures. Tech companies tend to be led by engineers. Pharma R&D is generally run by chemists and biologists in the early stages, and by physicians further on in development. Each of these domains has its own distinct language, culture and... Read More
31
May
2020
Adtech Data For Health: Time To Get Past The ‘Ick’ Factor
If you were responsible for the health of a large population, and could access just one of the following types of data, what would you choose (assuming all were acquired legally and responsibly)? (a) Genetics and other –omics data; (b) EHR data; (c) Consumer/adtech data. For at least the last 20 years, we’ve been obsessively focused on the first two... Read More
20
May
2020
Pharma’s Digital Champions Should Focus On Solving One Problem Well
Come for the tech, stay for the culture. That seems to be the hope of most digital champions inside large pharma companies. These executives hope to instill in their organizations not only important new capabilities, but also a “Silicon Valley” mindset, an innovative spirit characteristically associated with tech entrepreneurs. The reality, of course, is more complicated; pharma executives – and... Read More
19
May
2020
COVID Doctors Navigate Tension Between Individual Autonomy and Systematized Care
I was recently speaking with a friend of mine, a pulmonologist at a large academic medical center in the Midwest, about his COVID-19 experience. I was especially interested, in the context of iterative experimentation, to learn how his hospital was working on improving the care of COVID-19 patients, especially those in the ICU, which he oversees. It’s real problem, he... Read More
7
May
2020
Randomized Controlled Trials For Healthcare Delivery Work; Now Let’s Do More At Scale
The value of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in healthcare delivery was highlighted earlier this year with the publication in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) of a paper that rigorously evaluated a deeply appealing hypothesis: that you can improve care and reduce costs by focusing on “superutilizers” – the patients who consume the most healthcare resources. I discussed this... Read More
22
Apr
2020
Build Back Better
As the nation has struggled to cope with the devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has become the voice so many have looked to for support and leadership. What Cuomo seems both to offer and effectively communicate is not just a mastery of the facts, but also a grounded yet hopeful narrative. The story he projects... Read More
7
Apr
2020
George Yancopoulos, That Rarest Of Species – A Physician-Scientist Still In Charge Of A Pharma
Growing up in an academic household (my parents are both professors at Yale Medical School, still engaged, as ever, in dyslexia research), it was perhaps inevitable that, outside of my parents, my first role model was the brilliant President of Yale University, the late Bart Giamatti (you know- Paul’s dad). The elder Giamatti inspired me so much as a teenager... Read More
31
Mar
2020
Diagnostic Test Developer Points to Academic Blind Spot That Hampers Translation
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need for reliable diagnostic tests for the new SARS-CoV-2 virus, and treatments that can cure or mitigate its devastating effects. To have an impact, these diagnostic tests can’t just work brilliantly in a single academic lab. They ultimately need to be rapidly deployable across this large country with 330 million people. Developing an approach... Read More
26
Mar
2020
Adjusting to Telemedicine: A First-Hand Account
One consequence of the present crisis is the urgent embrace of telemedicine, as I recently discussed. Whether the adoption is sustained beyond the crisis period remains to be determined, although use seemed to be increasing overall even before the pandemic hit. As more physicians and patients find themselves pressed to adopt telemedicine, I thought it might be helpful to better... Read More
24
Mar
2020
Digital Tools in Clinical Trials Find Opportunity During Pandemic
The current crisis represents a potentially defining moment for at least some health technologies and technology-enabled services. Telehealth, as discussed in my last column, is one conspicuous example, and the jury is still out. The potential benefit seems especially striking at a time when so many Americans are being told to stay at home, yet there are also serious concerns,... Read More