Why is the confluence of healthcare and life sciences happening? What are the two biggest mistakes of technology in healthcare? And how can research insights be embedded into every care decision? We will find out all that and more with our guest Dr. David Feinberg, a medical professional and healthcare industry executive and current Chairman of Oracle Health.

 

http://www.oracle.com/life 

 

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Episode Transcript:

 

00;00;00;02 - 00;00;27;22
What makes multidisciplinary collaboration the key to health care innovation? What is the effect of bundled, integrated solutions on the patient experience and how can we invest in what matters most while streamlining the entire process? We'll find all that out and more on this episode of Research in Action. Hello and welcome to Research in Action, brought to you by Oracle Life Sciences.
 
00;00;27;22 - 00;00;52;08
I'm Mike Stiles. And today our very special guest is Frank Bateman, a digital health data and technology executive. He's currently a senior advisor to Oakland's De Silva and Phillips and was a former chief information officer of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Oracle Life Sciences has an e-book coming on the next phase of growth for the Life Sciences industry, and Frank was a really valuable resource for that.
 
00;00;52;08 - 00;01;22;00
He's got a lot of great thoughts on how pharma and biotech are investing in tech to support things like personalized medicine, improved clinical trials and drug safety tracking. That's why we wanted to get him on the podcast. So Frank, thanks so much for joining us. Thanks. It's great to be here, Mike. We appreciate it. Well, we got a lot of ground to cover, but I know you went into corporate strategy in the beginning of your career and through the bulk of your career, but obviously somewhere down the line you started crossing paths with government.
 
00;01;22;00 - 00;01;42;04
So what did that involve? How did that happen? Well, I've been lucky enough to pursue my interests wherever they took me. I hadn't expected to pursue a career in the life sciences and health care when I started out focused on nuclear arms control. But my interest in technology actually came about from my work on verification measures for a nuclear test ban.
 
00;01;42;21 - 00;02;09;05
Technology first took me to IBM Research and then under IBM corporate strategy, as you mentioned, when in in corporate, I oversaw the company's ten year outlook. And as a tech company, we saw high performance computing in the life sciences staring us in the face. We needed to be in it. And our chairman at the time, Lou Gerstner, accepted a recommendation that we invest 100 million to launch a business unit focused on the life sciences.
 
00;02;09;19 - 00;02;36;24
So I love the idea. You were actually serving in the Obama administration. White House Entrepreneur in residence. I love the idea of an entrepreneur in residence because one doesn't quickly equate government with speed, original ideas and innovation. Were you impressed by or frustrated by the speed at which you could bring things to full fruition in government? Impressed? Absolutely frustrated.
 
00;02;37;00 - 00;03;04;25
Yeah. Our times sometimes there are arcane processes that get in the way of novel solutions, but I always thought that had great admiration for the dedicated dedication the mission demonstrated by civil servants. Doing things differently was really a hallmark of the Obama administration. It wasn't just the Entrepreneur in Residence program you mentioned. Obama appointed the nation's first chief technology officer, the first chief information officer.
 
00;03;05;06 - 00;03;31;08
He launched the US Digital Service to provide agencies with a different approach to software development. He created challenge that guards as a means for agencies to seek innovations by awarding modest prizes as opposed to large government contracts. It brought new voices to light. I look at our current government a lot, like most governments, it's inherited its structure from the industrial age.
 
00;03;31;18 - 00;03;58;12
For the most part, it's organized by industry, by vertical. There's an Agriculture Department, energy, health, defense and so on. The congressional appropriations process is what exacerbates the problem in this information age. I really believe that Multi-disc culinary collaboration is what brings about solutions. And I don't have a background in biochemistry, but I worked with biochemists to explore therapies that made effective use in both of our disciplines.
 
00;03;58;25 - 00;04;23;21
If you think of Tesla for a moment, the company has innovations, it has inventions. But its real success was that of an integrator. It brought together knowhow from battery management, aerodynamics, automobile engineering, software development and legacy. Automakers had been working on these problems in building an EV for years, but their approach failed to deliver a car with mass market appeal.
 
00;04;24;00 - 00;04;47;06
And I think that's precisely what we need to do in the life sciences now, is bring the disciplines together and organize to solve problems. Now, I think the listeners are starting to see why you're such a fascinating person to have on the show. You've been exposed at high levels to nearly every component of health care, and through most of that you were tasked with being really a futurist and a trend spotter in it.
 
00;04;47;06 - 00;05;08;17
So just keep my head straight. I'm going to cover things with you in buckets now. The first being what the challenges and opportunities really are in life sciences. Fun fact for our listeners can bring up at their next dinner party. When things get dull, it takes about $2 billion and 10 to 15 years to get a drug to market.
 
00;05;08;17 - 00;05;30;27
Now, for most people who have gotten used to rapid advancement, getting things they want and need on demand, that sounds absolutely crazy. So can technology kind of change this equation soon? Mike I don't think that's crazy at all, and I really believe that we're on the cusp of change. One of the startups that I worked with, Empower Medicine, is a really great example.
 
00;05;31;11 - 00;06;04;00
What they're trying to achieve is a complex endeavor. It depends upon bringing together people from different disciplines to work across the universe of stakeholders. And going back to the Tesla example, GM and Ford built highly structured teams in engineering designed propulsion. But Tesla was a software company from the start. So I think the challenge is how do you, as a life sciences company, mimic what Tesla did to bring together the disciplines and focus on the entire process of drug development?
 
00;06;04;14 - 00;06;33;17
It's almost like if technology isn't the answer, what is? For instance, it's the only way really to capture the volume and sources of adverse events, right? We always look at adverse events and drug discovery thanks to that observation. Technology can do wonders, but it isn't nirvana. I it does great things, but I think it's always important to remember in health care there needs to be a human touch because health care at its core is about people.
 
00;06;33;28 - 00;07;02;27
Technology is already making waves in clinical trials and there's so much more to come. We're on the early stages witnessing that impact. Things like electronic patient reported outcomes and various sensors are beginning to gather data from patients during trials and during real world use. And this technology facilitates the capture of adverse events actively and passively, leading to just a wealth of data and deeper understanding of therapeutic effects.
 
00;07;03;19 - 00;07;31;23
This could uncover unexpected drug interactions or shed light and personalize or genomic attributes. Sometimes, though, adverse events are not obvious. And that's that's really another role that technology can play because of its ability to capture so much data, it may find unexpected things to match what's going on in the market. Actually, Oracle just merged its health care and Life sciences organization late last year.
 
00;07;31;23 - 00;07;55;24
Why do you think those two things are coming together? I know you talk about bringing things together and that's just like one example of it. Yeah, I think that's a really great example. I like to think of health as being all encompassing. The life sciences exist to support health. The same could be said for payors, providers, physicians, health systems, pharmacies, patients, Cros, even employers.
 
00;07;56;09 - 00;08;24;11
Each has their role to play. The vast majority of companies across the health sector have a mission or model that says something like Patients are the reason we're in business. Well, I'm not questioning it. In fact, I'm pretty confident people are involved, they're sincere. But if serving patients is your mission, I'd ask, when was the last time you took a look at your organization to see if it is optimally designed to address the needs of patients in this information age?
 
00;08;24;28 - 00;08;54;23
We know that siloed organizations underperform multiple disciplines and experiences are not considered. Information isn't shared in much. The way I spoke about HHS is being a reflection of the health sector by having a research component, by having a regulatory compo