Patrick Soon-Shiong arrives at the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster clubhouse in Bedminster Township, N.J. on Saturday, Nov. 19, 2016.
Once rumored to be in the running for a top healthcare position with the Trump administration, Patrick Soon-Shiong has officially landed something concrete.
On Tuesday, Politico reported that House Speaker Paul Ryan has named the former surgeon and founder of NantWorks to a 25-member Health Information Technology Advisory Committee (HIT Advisory Committee), created through the passing of the 21st Century Cures Act.
The legislation calls for eights seats be filled by congressional leaders. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R: KY) has already named Steve Ready, CIO of the Louisville, Kentucky-based health system Norton Healthcare. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D: CA) has chosen Steven Lane, an informatics executive with Sutter Health.
Among the new nominees, Soon-Shiong is perhaps the most controversial. At a minimum, he’s unique. He joins the committee with a net worth of around $8.5 billion, a sprawling network of “Nant” subsidiaries, and a sizeable chunk of shares in the Los Angeles Lakers NBA franchise.
Soon-Shiong doesn’t have an administrative or legislative background. Indeed, some have said his companies push the limits of what is deemed acceptable marketing by the FDA, using emotive patient stories and talking about breakthroughs and cures with drugs that remain in early stage clinical trials.
On the other hand, he has worked with the Obama administration and more directly with former Vice President Joe Biden to increase cancer awareness and promote the Cancer Moonshot initiative. He is active, if not universally liked in the scientific community.
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.
According to STAT News, Soon-Shiong was at one point vying for a leadership position in healthcare as Trump’s administration moved in. After several meetings with Trump in the months directly after his inauguration, some were even speculating he was being considered to head the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
His new seat will be less high-profile, but interesting nonetheless.
The proposed outline for the HIT Advisory Committee can be found on page 359 of the 996-page 21st Century Cures bill. In essence, it seeks to improve interoperability and Health IT infrastructure nationwide.
To that end, the new group is charged with developing strategies and a schedule for the “implementation of a health information technology infrastructure, nationally and locally, that advances the electronic access, exchange, and use of health information.”
The Committee will unify and replace the existing HIT Policy Committee and the HIT Standards Committee, with proposed updates to the policy framework and recommendations along the way.
How Soon-Shiong and other members will control their conflicts of interest remains to be seen. Given the scope of his healthcare empire, it’s almost inevitable that issues will arise.
Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post, Getty Images
