If anything was clear from the the panel discussion on the Internet of Things at BIO 2015, digital disruptors from outside of healthcare have contributed to a shift in the power and influence of patients and their caregivers as well as providers. Digital health has the potential to make healthcare delivery more efficient but it will be an occasionally uncomfortable transformation with plenty of push back.
One panelist was Donald Jones —the CEO and co-founder of Trial Fusion, a company that integrates digital technologies with medical product development and clinical validation, and Chief Digital Officer of the Scripps Translational Science Institute. He used a few examples to make the point.
Jones referenced a clinical trial begun earlier this year that challenges conventional wisdom of how these trials are carried out. Patients may be the ones with digital health sensors to monitor their health but the focus of the attention is on cardiologists. H described a trial designed to evaluate the ability of cardiologists to use devices to improve their treatment of patients. Jones noted that it was out to break some of the rules of healthcare. Jones added that one goal was to address the question: “How do you get physicians to adopt therapies that are based on technologies for which they have not received training?”
In another example that illustrated the power shift driven by digital health, Jones cited the the Nightscout open source project. (MobiHealthNews highlighted the initiative earlier this year as did The Wall Street Journal.)
It came about in a push by parents of children with Type 1 diabetes to develop a remote monitoring app for smart watches using data from their kids’ continuous glucose monitors. The FDA attempted to get Dexcom to apply pressure to its customers to drop the project. The people behind Nightscout threatened to challenge the FDA on Capitol Hill and tell lawmakers how the regulator was preventing them from keeping their kids safe. The FDA backed down and that’s why we didn’t read about this story in the press, Jones said.
Allen Lalonde, a senior executive of IBM Canada Research and Development Center, noted the work of Carol McGregor, a University of Ontario data informatics professor who used a financial trading app as the precursor for an app to detect infections before clinicians do, particularly sepsis.
Jack Hidary, a member of Google X Labs Advisory Board and chairman of Samba Energy was easily identified by his fluorescent orange sneakers. He pointed out that technologies that were once laughed off, such as self-driving cars are becoming mainstream. A similar shift is happening in digital health.
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.
