From left: Naomi Fried (moderator), Michael Doherty of Roche, Joseph Kim of Eli Lilly and Dennis Hancock of Pfizer
This week marked our fifth MedCity CONVERGE conference and that’s reflected in our coverage. A panel discussion in which pharmaceutical companies talked about some of the digital health technologies they are evaluating in support of making clinical trial recruitment easier and studies more affordable. A fireside chat about Merck’s interest in blockchain applications and IBM Watson Health’s Anil Jain keynote on artificial intelligence in healthcare also turned some heads.
1. Pharma’s digital health ambitions: Where are the opportunities and what’s hindering progress?
Joseph Kim, senior adviser for clinical innovation at Eli Lilly, said he was intrigued by the prospect of using digital health to improve clinical trial recruitment, noting the disappointing figure that only 5 percent of people eligible for clinical trials enroll. “If you think about clinical research as a service, to do it faster you need to deliver more services to more patients… The rise of the e-patient is critical to speeding up drug development.”
2. Merck is exploring applications for the blockchain within healthcare
In healthcare, something like the blockchain could be used in setting up vaccine registries or transactional histories for patients. During clinical trials, the blockchain could be used to share blood test information; for, say, five different trials, only one blood test would then be needed.
3. Device startup with a digital health twist raises $32M in series C round
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Endotronix makes a wireless implantable pulmonary artery pressure sensor for heart failure patients who can be monitored remotely. Changes in cardiac pressure is a metric widely considered the most accurate sign for worsening heart failure, but until recently was only available in a clinical setting. St. Jude Medical’s CardioMEMs system is the first FDA-approved implantable wireless pulmonary artery pressure sensor available on the market.
4. YMCA, athenahealth team to prevent Type 2 diabetes
The idea is that, instead of referring their patients to a specialist, physicians will “refer” their pre-diabetic patients to the YMCA’s one-year program which helps people make small and sustainable lifestyle changes which can lower their risk developing diabetes.
5. IBM Watson Health is 21st Century aide to docs
“At the heart of it, a cognitive system is a system that can understand,” Jain said. “It can also see,” he added. “It can also reason, which means it can generate various hypotheses,” then test those hypotheses at rates humans could never achieve.
The system is comprised of three layers: Data, analytics and behavior change. “I think they are foundational,” Jain told MedCity News after his keynote.
Photo: Meghan Uno/Breaking Media
