Thomas Laur
Back in February, when SAP CEO Bill McDermott told financial analysts that he wanted the enterprise management company to try to tackle healthcare, he promised to appoint a senior executive to oversee the effort. That happened this month, when the German company named Thomas Laur the first president of SAP Connected Health, a new business within the multinational corporation.
Laur, a native Parisian who now lives in the Boston area, had spent the last nearly six years as CEO of Sutherland Healthcare Solutions, an analytics firm that, like SAP, offers services across the healthcare continuum, including in life sciences and precision medicine.
About 18 months ago, he observed a shift. “It’s really a market pull and not just a market push from the vendor side,” Laur said in a podcast interview with MedCity News. In other words, clients were finally ready to invest.
As this change was underway, Laur said he became impressed with SAP’s new HANA S/4 database’s suitability for processing healthcare data, including genomic information. “It’s very realistic and pragmatic,” he said. SAP, which is headquartered in Walldorf, Germany, and has its U.S. operations base in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, knew that it had to bring in partners because it couldn’t solve healthcare alone.
Laur also liked the level of commitment to healthcare showed by senior leadership, right up to CEO Bill McDermott. McDermott lost an eye a year ago in a freak accident at his home. Even as a Fortune 100 CEO, he had a terrible experience with his healthcare.
“Not only do you get tortured in the medical system, but when you go to renew your insurance policy, they want you to fill out forms with a list of every doctor you’ve seen and every prescription drug you’ve taken. And if you don’t remember it and don’t get it right, they’ll challenge your claim when you file one someday,” McDermott said earlier this year.
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.
SAP has 6,000 healthcare provider clients worldwide, plus many more in pharma and life sciences, according to Laur, many going back decades, but McDermott’s incident changed things.
“Bill McDermott’s accident was really the point of acceleration,” Laur said. “His determination is contagious.”
Listen to the full interview below, or click here to download (running time 17:59).
0:40 Why he decided to join SAP
3:15 McDermott’s healthcare story and SAP’s history in healthcare
6:15 SAP’s motives in healthcare
7:00 Chasing interoperability
8:00 Participation in the Cancer Moonshot
9:35 Why SAP is different from traditional health IT companies
10:45 “Learning curve” in healthcare
11:45 Competition from companies like Salesforce
13:50 SAP’s open network
15:15 Where the biggest market opportunities are
16:30 The company’s future in healthcare
Photo: SAP
