The Digitally Sick Podcast

In this pod the Digitally Sick team of Alex Butler and Faisal Ahmed meet the Health.Reconsidered team from Clubhouse, the social audio network We talk specifically about how the pandemic has accelerated innovation and the uptake and application of digital health technologies with Daniel Kraft, MD. David Hunt introduces us to Health.Reconsidered, pharma’s first global Clubhouse community which aims to advance the debate, addressing the inequalities and celebrating the innovation in healthcare. In just a few months it has attracted 2,000 active participants meeting daily, expanded recently to include an exciting global webinar driven on the promise of inclusivity for the pharma industry. We meet the team and chat about what has been learnt so far.

Today the pod have Alex Butler, Faisal Ahmed and Kai Gait on board to talk about digital strategy and specifically how digital planning can support the commercial objectives of the business. Firstly we ask the obvious question, should digital have a separate strategy at all, surely it should be running through every aspect if the business? The pod go on to discuss what good digital strategy and planning looks like and conversely, what bad looks like as well. The pod also ask, have things flipped round to such an extent that digital experts and strategic planners should be driving the overall commercial strategy, rather than adding digital expertise into the bigger picture?

Today the pod have Alex Butler, Faisal Ahmed and Kai Gait on board to talk about digital strategy and specifically how digital planning can support the commercial objectives of the business. Firstly we ask the obvious question, should digital have a separate strategy at all, surely it should be running through every aspect if the business? The pod go on to discuss what good digital strategy and planning looks like and conversely, what bad looks like as well. The pod also ask, have things flipped round to such an extent that digital experts and strategic planners should be driving the overall commercial strategy, rather than adding digital expertise into the bigger picture?

This time the pod are once again joined by David Hunt. We discuss mistakes or things that went wrong in the past that we can learn from in driving digital transformation and supporting innovation in pharma. We all have things that didn’t go as well as they could have done or for different reasons just simply failed. Alex, Faisal and David look back at their less auspicious past experience and look for the positives they can take forward into the post Covid world

This week the team catch up with Dave Hunt and discuss celebrating the amazing work Pharma do

Happy New Year from the Digitally Sick Pod. The pod is joined by guest David Hunt who is Chief Digital Officer for Havas Health & You based on California. David has recently moved to work in the U. S after leading Havas Lynx, previously Creative Lynx, his journey starting with making the tea all the way to CEO. Alex Butler, co- founder of Foundry3 and Faisal Ahmed, Director of innovation at VMLY&Rx London talk to David about driving innovation and digital transformation in the healthcare industry, pharma’s digital progress over the last ten years, the impact of Covid-19 and the prospects for the future.

The pod speak with Peter Llewellyn who is a community facilitator, promoter and activist in global medical communications and Director of NetworkPharma which is focussed on consolidating and strengthening the MedComms Networking community. Alex and Faisal discuss MedComms past present and future in the context of innovation. Peter gives his insight into how MedComms has communicated and engaged with key audiences historically, the impact that the recent Covid-19 pandemic has had on the industry both positively and negatively and what this could mean for the future of MedComms.

The pod discuss the impact that the global pandemic will have on the pharma and broader healthcare landscape post COVID-19. The discussion included how healthcare professionals and healthcare systems have adapted during the period of crisis and how technology has been applied to maintain patient care. They also discuss if these development during this period of global crisis will be maintained and what the future implications are? Will these learnings be applied in a post COVID world or will we quickly regress toward the mean? .

The pod speak with guest Paul Simms about the Eyeforpharma virtual events that recently took place. We talk about what went well and what went not so well and focus in on the heart of virtual events, the philosophy of the value exchange. We ask the question were are many of the presentations at conferences such as Eyeforpharma of any actual value? What does this mean for the future of online events for pharma?

The pod talk about the reality of running high value virtual events. We look at the principles of digital communication and how they can be applied. Topics included not focussing on the technology as the key challenge, resisting the temptation to replicate the offline experience, developing deep understanding of the intended audience and practicing the philosophy of a mutual value exchange.

The digitally sick team are joined by Eugene Borukhovich, Chairman and Founding Board Member at YourCoach Health and previously Head of G4A and Digital Health at Bayer. Alex Butler and Faisal Ahmed speak to Eugene about how pharma can build partnerships with digital health entrepreneurs and why pharma should look beyond huge tech companies in their partnerships and collaborations. We talk about bringing a more entrepreneurial spirit to large corporations and the opportunities and also challenges that this brings. We also touch on the current Covid-19 situation and ask if things will just revert to normal when it is over, or if we are seeing changes in both philosophy and regulation that will not be reversed?

The Digitally Sick pod of Alex Butler and Faisal Ahmed are back with guest Hannah Mann to talk about the application of Artificial Intelligence to research and insight development in healthcare. We talk about Hannah’s experience applying technology to analyse a large online conversation about vaccines, gaining insight and understanding at a scale and at a speed not possible with more traditional techniques. We also discuss how to apply technology to insight development in a way that doesn’t lose the both the strategic insight and experience needed to interpret conversations and also the humanity and patient centricity that should be central to greater understanding of people we are trying to help.

The pod of Alex Butler and Faisal Ahmed is joined by guest Len Starnes to talk about how doctors are using professional social networks to fight the coronavirus, COVID-19. Len has undertaken research into networks from across the world including China, USA, UK and Europe and has defined a number of ways that doctors are using these networks. This usage includes crowdsourcing information and ideas, providing data to governments on doctors response and needs, developing partnerships such as with WHO and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and including other members of the community such as nurses, pharmacists and patients.

Today Alex and Faisal are joined in the pod by Paul Simms, Chairman at eyeforpharma, to discuss how we can keep the world connected in a time of crisis and isolation. Before the global pandemic there was already concern that the culture of mass travel to world congress and meetings was unsustainable on many levels. It was also discussed that in a world of global collaboration and continual and open publication of scientific advances it could struggle for relevance. However the networking and connectivity that comes from people coming together to share ideas is crucial in medicine, healthcare and pharma. Paul has recently had to contend with taking two large pharmaceutical conferences online at short notice. We find out what he has learnt and possibly what pharma could learn from this experience.

Digitally Sick are in isolation and therefore are going to be ramping up the number of podcasts as sharing and communicating is more important than ever. Today we have a quick chat about how the terrible global catastrophe of the Coronavirus could impact the digital transformation of pharma. Although we need to be thinking about our frontline healthcare professionals and everyone else helping to support us in this time, we thought it was worth talking about possible implications. We discuss the continued reliance on face to face meetings, congress, advisory boards and also the focus on company representatives in sales and scientific liaison. Should we be further ahead in digitally transforming our business in 2020 and could this be a tipping point? A pivot point to a new velocity? Alex Butler and Faisal Ahmed discuss

This week the pod discuss Data Driven Marketing In Pharma with Alex Butler and Faisal Ahmed joined by guest James Gardner, BTS Director, Digital Services & User Experience at AbbVie. The discussion asks if and how pharma can truly embrace data driven marketing and customer centricity. Does data driven marketing replace the ‘big idea’ in development of a marketing strategy? What does the imperative to listen rather than to ‘survey’ mean to pharma organisations? Is the capacity to pull multiple sources together to make something usable and relevant the true key to success? We also look at some of the key challenges to utilising data such as data privacy and regulation and the principles of data quality which were defined as availability, usability, reliability and relevance-what do they mean and how do we apply this in pharma?

Asia is a vast continent taking up one third of the entire earths land mass and contains 60% of the world’s population and it is growing fast. Its incredible combination of different cultures, different economies and incredible geographic variation combine to produce a melting pot of innovation. There is a very strong argument that Asia is the also the most exciting continent for digital innovation. The challenge of vast geographies and extremes of socio- economic variation mean digital health will be essential for tackling the rise of non-communicable diseases and supporting disease prevention, helping connect people in rural locations to health services supporting universal health coverage and supporting health care professionals improve the provision of care in economically difficult circumstances. We discuss how Sanofi are driving digital health innovation in Asia, both as a partner and as a company looking to develop innovative digital health solutions to improve patient care and support improved outcomes for people across the continent.

We discuss digital transformation and ask the question, is digital transformation another consultancy opportunity more based on empty theory and ‘transformational philosophy’ rather than practical application? Secondly we asked if pharma was making the right investments in digital healthcare? There are constant announcements and eulogising of dollar investment numbers but a lot less evidence based solutions actually improving outcomes for patients and supporting the improved provision of care. Finally we asked, in the rush to demonstrate our patient centricity credentials have we forgotten about the healthcare professional? The patient should be central to everything we do, however the value offered to HCP’s has changed little over the last decade, even with the vast acceleration of digital technology. Could we be solving problems for HCP’s in a much better way than we currently are? When we finished we realised that actually, getting the basics right ran through all three questions. Three questions and one answer – get back to basics!

Across industries digital transformation is described as a radical rethinking of how organizations use technology, people and processes to fundamentally change and improve what they do. These changes are typically focussed on the development of new business models and revenue streams, driven predominantly by radical changes in customer expectations. Healthcare is one of the area’s most in need of a radical digital transformation as technology has completely revolutionised how we discover new drugs, diagnose disease, measure & support chronic diseasea and its progression and how healthcare professionals expect to improve patient care and communicate with pharmaceutical companies. Paul Simms, Chairman of Eyeforpharma, joins the pod to discuss how pharma has approached the digital transformation of the industry and how it could possibly be accelerated and improved.

In the pod today is host Alex Butler, Co-Founder of Foundry3, Faisal Ahmed, all round digital expert, and Kai Gait, Senior Global Digital Strategy Director at GSK. We are also joined by special guest Dominick Shaw, Professor of Respiratory Medicine and Honorary Consultant within the Faculty of Medicine & Health Sciences at the University of Nottingham. Digital health is now believed by many to be the hottest topic in healthcare, and it is no different for the medical and pharmaceutical communities. However, how is all this hype, development and investment (the market set to exceed $379 billion by 2024) actually translate in the real world? Professor Shaw is not only at the forefront of research into severe asthma, he actively treats patients and has a special interest in the use of technology to improve outcomes in respiratory disease. We discuss his thoughts on the practical application of technology to improve care, the uptake and desire for patients to use digital health tools, the need to focus on clinical outcomes alongside behavioural change and the value to the user. We also look at the issues that hinder good digital health technology and how pharma can collaborate better with the medical and patient community to design better solutions.