What does digital transformation mean for drug companies? Milind Kamkolkar, Chief Data Officer at Sanofi, speaks with CXOTalk co-hosts Richie Etwaru and Michael Krigsman about innovation and changes in the pharmaceutical industry.
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Sanofi is a company focused on empowering lives through human health. As CDO, Kamkolkar focuses on driving and transforming Sanofi from data generation to an insights generating organization where data is a monetizable asset class on par with product and shareholder value. Kamkolkar is also a featured speaker and thought leader in Digital Health, AI & Big Data; Honorary Lecturer for physician entrepreneurship at BartsX; Faculty at Exponential Medicine; and Special Advisor to the UN Global Sustainability program.
Etwaru is Chief Digital Officer at QuintilesIMS, helping bridge the innovation and efficiency gap for healthcare stakeholders and life sciences customers using analytics and technology. He’s a former CDO at IMS Health, a frequent keynote speaker at leading tech-related events and forums, a serial entrepreneur, an author, a former Clinton Global Initiative delegate, and currently serves as a board member for multiple not-for-profit organizations.
From the transcript:
Michael Krigsman:
(05:00) What are we actually speaking about and how does this relate to the broader changes that are going on regarding healthcare and ultimately, the impact on healthcare for people? For patients?
Richie Etwaru:
(05:24) Well, I think most of us understand siloes pretty well, right? These are vertical departments within large companies that tend to perform a specific function. And then they perform that function well, but if you look at multiple of those siloes together as a broad organization, you’ll see inconsistencies and gaps to be solved for. I think, with the pharmaceutical industry, there was a time when it was okay to have siloes. Not that you wanted them, but if you had them, it was not the biggest deal in the world, and we’re seeing what I like to call the “three waves” of change enter the environment of the pharmaceutical industry that’s creating the financial reality and quite frankly, the competitive reality, to start to think about what the business model looks like and take the siloes out. These three waves, I think, most people would recognize.
(06:15) Now, the first wave is what came from the supply side. So, I think of this as the patent cliff, right? I think we’ve heard enough about the patent cliff that the supply of discovery of drugs in the pipeline has changed quite a bit. And, the good thing about the patent cliff is that it was sort of contained within the pharmaceutical industry, right? Yes, there was some implication too of the stakeholders, but it didn’t radically change the landscape because each pharma company was suffering from the same strain from a supply side.
(06:47) The second wave is what I like to call the wave coming from the demand side. This is the influence and the pressures of reimbursement being changed, payment terms being changed. I think what we see in the United States with Obamacare and the model of delivery has created a tremendous amount of strain that created a whole new wave of pressures for the pharmaceutical industry. So, I think that’s the second wave.
(07:18) Where we are today is what I like to call the “third wave” of change that’s coming through the pharma industry. And, this is the digital health and technology paradigms that are entering at the same time. Now, the patent cliff is not completely solved for. That's still moving over, right? The changes in the […] are not completely solved for. That's still here. And, we have this new wave that's being driven by this new stuff that Milind is talking about, which is more data, digital health, some of the new technology paradigms. What's interesting about this third wave is that it is not self-contained in the pharma industry or healthcare.
Milind Kamkolkar:
(14:46) Yeah. I mean, if I could just add one last thing, Michael, to that point, I think where the time, perhaps has that risk-averse nature in the pharmaceutical industry is that perhaps I’m like… banking in other such industries… The reality is that if you get this wrong, people die, right? And that’s the real crux of it. So, I can fully appreciate and respect the fact that sometimes, you do want to be a little bit cautious because, of course, who wants to create a medicine or some kind of patient service that really is not yielding a positive outcome?
(15:19) So for one, I'm quite grateful for the fact that we are basing more medication and pricing, and reimbursements, etc. really on health outcomes. But I think, in many ways, it's not just the actual medicine that has to take into play, it's also the customer experience at point of treatment that needs to be part of that equation as well.
