The Health Pulse

Are placebo-free clinical trials the next normal? Nino da Silva thinks so. In this episode, he shares his views on trends in drug development and clinical research, including the integration of genetic data into drug development with synthetic control arms and the importance of data protection.

Da Silva is an international leader in medical informatics, health care and business strategy. He is currently Deputy Managing Director at BC Platforms, a Singapore-based global data science solutions leader in personalized health, drug discovery and life sciences research.

Guest host Antonio De Castro talks with da Silva about advancements in drug discovery and development by combining genetic data with phenotypic data. For example, synthetic control arms incorporate external health data into clinical trials to speed up drug development, reduce trial costs and address ethical concerns. Improved access to data from many research fields and the real world make the adoption of synthetic control arms possible. Da Silva explains the importance of trusted research environments (TRE) and trusted collaboration environments (TCE) in enabling highly dynamic research with analytics, while protecting citizens’ data privacy. Also critical to this work is the ability to harmonize and make comparable data from multiple sources and geographies. Da Silva leaves us with his thoughts on the importance of diversity and representation in clinical trials and the role of the Asia Pacific region as a growing R&D hub for life sciences.

All presentations represent the opinions of the presenter and do not represent the position or the opinion of SAS.

Levana Sani is co-founder and CEO of NalaGenetics, a company bringing individual genetic information to patients and health care settings in Southeast Asia.

On this episode, Sani talks with SAS’ Antonio De Castro about the importance of ethnic diversity in genetic research. She explains that polygenetic risk scores, which calculate a single score for many variants in the human genome, are greatly improved when genetic samples from multiple ethnic groups are included. Sani and De Castro also discuss a range of considerations around making individual genetic information available to patients, providers and payers, including health data privacy, delivering practical recommendations to patients based on their genetics, and delivering the right information at the right time to improve health outcomes for individuals and the population.

All presentations represent the opinions of the presenter and do not represent the position or the opinion of SAS.

Could the bird flu cause the next pandemic? Dr. Robert Redfield thinks so, and shares his views on the public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic and lessons to prepare for new infectious diseases. Redfield is a virologist and former Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Public Health Advisor to the Governor of Maryland and Senior Medical Advisor at PERSOWN. 
 
Dr. Redfield joins host Alex Maiersperger to speak about public health measures against the COVID-19 pandemic and shares insights into what has worked, what hasn’t, and what learnings decision makers could apply in the future. The main challenge, in the United States, he explains, is that the public health infrastructure is extremely underfunded, leading to a lack of resources, including the workforce, equipment and funding for a modern data infrastructure. 

Building public health resilience - an approach that ensures public health systems have enough equipment and trained staff to respond to a pandemic - while maintaining the quality of routine health services, is a major need Redfield speaks about. He suggests redundant resources can be diverted to diagnostics for chronic diseases, when there is no pandemic. Dr. Redfield believes the great pandemic is yet to come, which will likely be a bird flu pandemic with significant mortality rates. Having the mRNA technology in place to produce effective vaccines, is key a scientific advancement Dr. Redfield speaks about. However, he also highlights manufacturing and scalability issues slow down a fast response. Despite some of the challenges public health agencies are facing, Dr. Redfield remains optimistic about the future, as he shares his confidence in science and the power of modern medicine. 

All presentations represent the opinions of the presenter and do not represent the position or the opinion of SAS.

Tobias Kruse never dreamed of being an entrepreneur. He recognized a problem he knew he could solve and founded the clinical trial recruitment company Trials24, where he is now CEO. 

On this episode, Kruse shares his company’s inception story with Alex. As a young scientist working on a clinical trial, Kruse realized that dated, print-based patient recruitment tactics weren’t working. He had learned a thing or two about online marketing from one of his side hustles and decided to take a leap. He launched Trials24 to digitalize patient recruitment and to speed up drug development timelines. The company’s digital-first approach helps address the lack of diversity in clinical research by targeting awareness campaigns to underserved communities and recruiting more diverse populations for clinical trials. 

Kruse knows digitalization is the future of patient recruitment, bringing better patient experiences and more representative clinical trials.

All presentations represent the opinions of the presenter and do not represent the position or the opinion of SAS.

Eric Doherty is President of PERSOWN, the company striving to make a lifesaving impact by delivering accurate, rapid and affordable diagnostics to the point of care anywhere in the world.

In this episode of The Health Pulse, Doherty joins host Alex Maiersperger to discuss disparities in global health care and how access to high-quality, low-cost diagnostics can help close the gap. Doherty shares the shocking statistic that there are 0.23 doctors per 10,000 people in the world’s poorest countries. What’s more, diagnostic errors account for the deaths of 7 million children per year worldwide.

PERSOWN addresses devastating global health care access disparities with high-quality, affordable diagnostics with results in under two minutes. The company is working on assays for various applications, including COVID-19, tuberculosis, sepsis, breast cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and concussions. Doherty shares an inspiring vision of the role of technology in health care innovation and the importance of personal ownership of health care data.

All presentations represent the opinions of the presenter and do not represent the position or the opinion of SAS.

SAS’ Antonio De Castro is a truly global citizen. Having lived in Southeast Asia and Europe, now working for a US company, he joined Alex from a studio in Singapore to talk global and local trends in the wake of COVID-19 and his passion for data and analytics in health care. Later in this season of the Health Pulse podcast, he’ll be jumping into the conversation as guest host for Asia Pacific.

De Castro loves mathematics and problem solving and has a background in nutritional research. These passions shape his perspective on consumerism in health care and life sciences, where patient-centricity is contributing to significant advances, including decentralized clinical trials and more informed and engaged patient populations.

De Castro is infectiously optimistic that today’s global health care challenges will drive innovation that leads to a healthier tomorrow."

All presentations represent the opinions of the presenter and do not represent the position or the opinion of SAS.

What has disruption taught us about global supply chains? Dr. Robert Handfield shares his vision on what agile and resilient supply chain models look like in the future. He is Professor of Operations and Supply Chain Management at North Carolina State University, as well as Founder and Executive Director of The Supply Chain Resource Cooperative.
 
On this episode, Handfield joins host Alex Maiersperger to talk about the impact of the pandemic on global supply chains and provides insights into what has worked, what hasn’t, and what learnings we can apply in the future. 

Handfield speaks about the dependency on global supply chains for urgent medical supplies during the COVID-19 pandemic, such as masks and disinfectants, and inadequate national stock, due to a just-in-time inventory management system. Having strategic national stockpiles in place has become a major governmental and industry focus, as well as the effort to increase domestic sourcing of certain medical and pharmaceutical products. 

Handfield speaks about a shift towards regional supply chains and near shoring, a concept where a company transfers work to suppliers nearby in the region where possible, despite continuing to remain dependent on certain products from global supply chains. Finally, Handfield emphasizes that having the right technology, training and workforce in place, will be key to resilient and agile supply chain systems in the future.

All presentations represent the opinions of the presenter and do not represent the position or the opinion of SAS.

For Felipe Sotelo, it’s all about priorities. That’s why Dad & Husband are the titles on his LinkedIn profile. It’s also why he now believes demand forecast agility is more important than accuracy in the post-pandemic world of supply chain disruptions. 

On this episode of The Health Pulse, positive thinker, business reinvention leader and writer Sotelo joins host Alex Maiersperger to share his insights as a supply chain leader for organizations including Johnson & Johnson, Teva Pharmaceuticals and PepsiCo. Forecast accuracy can never be perfect, and in a scenario full of disruptions, Sotelo argues that it’s more important to focus on agility and speed so that organizations can respond more effectively to disruptions. In his opinion, prioritization plays a big role, and the organizations that succeed are those that have both a strong leadership strategy and investment in technology and analytics to drive insights into keeping the strategy on track. The main focus now is regulating supply chains to ensure essential equipment is available. And, the new normal will prioritize both cost efficiency and reliability over cost efficiency alone.

When asked about a light at the end of the tunnel for pandemic-related disruption, Sotelo predicts we won’t see it before 2024. But, that doesn’t keep him from being optimistic about the role of supply chain leaders in shaping a better, more sustainable future. 

All presentations represent the opinions of the presenter and do not represent the position or the opinion of SAS.

Is it too much to expect health care to deliver delightful experiences? Dr. Koen Kas doesn’t think so, and his vision includes digital twins, personal data stores and preventive medicine. He is a health care visionary, digital health and biomarker expert, health-tech entrepreneur, Professor of Molecular Oncology and Digital Health at the University of Ghent, international keynote speaker and author of Sick No More and Your Guide to Delight.
 
Host Alex Maiersperger and Kas talk about the concept of delight thinking, an approach that requires stakeholders to think outside the box – creating new health care delivery models, never imagined. Kas explains the fundamental difference between design thinking and delight thinking. Delight thinking has the patient at its core, rewarding health care systems for keeping patients healthy. 

Kas also speaks about the role of a digital twin for the future of health care and how far we are in the development. The twin is a full representation of the holistic health of a human, combining all health data from different sources into an avatar. Testing preventive or clinical measures on the avatar will enable a visualization of health outcomes, before implementing them on the human. 

Health care by default is another health care concept Kas introduces during the episode, including seamless health care via sensors in homes and automatic alerts to medical professionals.

Finally, he emphasizes the key to prevention and personalized medicine is data integration and encourages health care systems to reward providers and citizens for preventing, predicting and reversing diseases.  

All presentations represent the opinions of the presenter and do not represent the position or the opinion of SAS.

Dr. Sean Khozin is on a mission to break down silos and improve access to quality cancer care for all. Khozin is a board-certified oncologist, physician scientist, data scientist and the CEO of ASCO’s CancerLinQ, a nonprofit health technology company focused on improving health outcomes for all patients with cancer.

On this episode of The Health Pulse, Khozin joins host Alex Maiersperger to discuss how his organization is democratizing access to the best cancer care by bringing real-world evidence based tools to the point of care. As Khozin explains, only about 5% of cancer patients can access clinical trials. This means in oncology, clinical trial data often lacks external validity because it represents highly selective patient populations. CancerLinQ helps close the gap using real-world data to develop algorithmic support tools to inform personalized, multi-modal patient care in near-real time. Khozin also discusses precision medicine and reflects on how far we’ve come and opportunities to improve, particularly in the area of health care delivery. He also shares his perspective on regulatory science as translational science.

From deriving insight from complex data to tackling treatment artifacts we need to unlearn, Khozin shares his vision for improving precision and why data convergence at the point of care leaves him optimistic about a major inflection point for cancer treatment in the next 10 years.

Transcript available here.

All presentations represent the opinions of the presenter and do not represent the position or the opinion of SAS.