Despite last week’s historic rainfall in San Francisco—which downed a tree outside of our hotel—the activities around the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference were as well-attended as ever.
During the conference, BrightInsight hosted a private C-Suite digital health dinner featuring a lively fireside chat with Aashima Gupta, Global Director, Healthcare Strategy and Solutions, Google Cloud, and Chitra Nawbatt, Venture Capital Investor & Growth Advisor that explored leveraging the cloud to drive patient engagement. Attending were leaders in the biopharma and medtech industry, adding to the conversation’s depth.
The discussion offered several insightful viewpoints around building, launching and scaling digital health, starting with using the power of imagination. One area of great potential is technology’s role in eliminating logistical steps. Aashima offered the example of a child with a swollen foot. Instead of tackling each step of getting medical care separately, how can AI and other technologies remove friction to be more helpful? In this case, that meant scheduling the doctor’s appointment at a location that accepts your insurance and has flexible hours, rescheduling the parent’s work meetings during that window and ordering the ride-share, if needed.
To build an impactful cloud-based tech architecture, it’s worth noting that cloud adoption involves several levels that organizations must work through, from infrastructure to facilitating innovation. No one model fits all organizations. Each use case brings its own opportunities and challenges.
The life sciences are leveraging the cloud in several areas, particularly around R&D for drug discovery and design, as well as in imaging. One use case highlighted by Aashima involved a hospital currently saving imaging results to the cloud and layering on an AI model that auto contours tumor tissue, delivering a faster auto assist to clinicians.
But challenges persist around cleaning data. Not all data is clean and ready to use at the start, requiring the time-consuming process of scrubbing it to make it usable. We discussed how shiny objects, aka exciting new technology, will only get you so far. Innovation needs to be part of the company DNA for these tools to have real impact.
One potential challenge that is often mentioned involves data privacy and security. Aashima was quick to note that privacy is a core tenet for the cloud, with safeguards and protections in place to ensure all data has the appropriate protection.
Finally, we discussed key questions that pharma and medtech leaders should be able to address about their digital solutions, namely:
We hope everyone attending enjoyed the thoughtful dialogue as much as we did.
On Tuesday morning, we had the incredible privilege of ringing the opening bell with Nasdaq and the other Deloitte Technology Fast 500 winners! This list includes the fastest-growing technology, life sciences, media, telecommunications, fintech and energy tech companies, both public and private, in North America.
We are honored to be ranked 217th on the list and to have joined the other companies on the Nasdaq tower!
We launched our C-Suite Series at JPMorgan in 2019. It was great to be back in person so we could continue the tradition. Over the course of the conference, we recorded interviews at the Nasdaq studios with executives from leading digital health, life sciences, tech and investment firms including Sanofi, ixLayer, EVERSANA, Eclipse Ventures, BioLinq, Cooley and bioMérieux.
We look forward to sharing the video series with you very soon!