Frontiers Health at 10: Future health, cost, and collaboration
From Berlin, to Milan, Barcelona, Helsinki, Rome, Lausanne, Salerno, Shanghai, San Francisco, Malta… And back again to Berlin – Frontiers Health is all about global innovation, the future of health unfolding by grace of science across the world. This, its 10th anniversary year, promised to bring the best and the latest from the health innovators themselves.
Jessica DaMassa, Executive Producer & Host of WTF Health, acted as compare once more, and introduced Chairman of Frontiers Health, Roberto Ascione, to the stage – CEO and Founder of Healthware Group, and President of Health Innovation at EVERSANA, as well as one of the fiercest advocates for health innovation around the world, DaMassa rightly noted. A powerful force indeed.
Transformation happens at the frontiers
Reflecting on a decade’s journey with Frontiers Health, alongside that journey AI and digital technology were already beginning to play out in other industries, for example financial services, but in healthcare not so much. Nonetheless, said Ascione, it was clear that by applying, implementing such technological innovation to health, then scale and accessibility, and unmet needs so far, could be ameliorated. This would require engaging, collaborating with peers. And so, Frontiers Health was born.
Starting as a tiny conference, then community, then organically evolving into a movement – today, policy makers, hospital systems, and even payors have since joined to make this a thriving health innovation system. It quite simply is at the frontier of the new and the next – whether in the midst of AI or TechBio, or other transformation trends.
And such transformation happens at the frontiers, where the known meets the unknown; where boundaries are crossed to discover what’s next. Pioneers, visionaries, creators, explorers – Frontiers Health welcomes all health innovators, bringing them together to imagine a better future for everyone: where cutting edge tech delivers life-saving therapies, where treatments reach those who need them most, and where equity and accessibility are no longer buzzwords, but steadfast imperatives.
A great idea is nothing without execution
Next to take the stage was EVERSANA’s new CEO Mark Thierer, who noted the very real importance of the conference. Thierer himself is an innovator through and through. Together with his son, Jonathon, he founded the payor-facing business, Waltz Health, helping payors lower their costs, thereby bringing better affordability and access to patients. In this respect, he said, there was a marriage waiting to happen with EVERSANA, given its strong advocacy of the concept of direct-to-patient, bringing drugs and therapeutic solutions closer to them.
But Thierer began his career at IBM, focused on healthcare. A key learning from that time, he shared, was that innovators make all the difference in this industry. Nonetheless, it’s not just about coming up with new ideas – it’s about executing them. And that takes “monster-hard work.”
EVERSANA is uniquely positioned to lead the shift to a direct-to-patient future for industry. As Thierer told Ascione, after all, EVERSANA brought LillyDirect to the market place. They are the end-to-end provider of that; the innovator and first mover on direct-to-patient, now porting this to global pharma companies across the world. It is, however, one thing to get a patient, one at a time, to come onto a medication; it is quite another to onboard 50,000 employees as a plan sponsor. And that is the intention of DTP2. The next step at the frontier of future health.
Lessons, leaps, and the road ahead in healthcare innovation
Jeff Dachis, Chairman, CEO, and Founder of One Health Biosensing Inc, and Bayer AG’s Board Member and Head of Pharmaceuticals, Stefan Oelrich, shared their insights from across the divide between pharma and digital health entrepreneurship – an unlikely friendship of “two grumpy old men,” they joked.
Yet, in all seriousness, what made such a business relationship work? A shared vision of turning the healthcare system on its head. Oelrich had previously been at Sanofi, with its focus on diabetes. Indeed, diabetes accounts for 15-20% of the entire healthcare spending in the world – a value that is ripe to be unleashed. So it was that Oelrich had been sparked by the idea of combining a diagnostic with a “cool, digital solution,” whilst he brought to the partnership the medicines.
That shared vision requires a firm level of trust, though, caveated Dachis; particularly in coming from different ends of the ecosystem – Dachis pushing consumer-grade design, focused on speed and data, while Oelrich was immersed in pharma’s mode of operating. Olerich admitted he used to call Dachis the “Steve Jobs of digital health.” After all, they were beautifully designed and intuitive products.
Of course, there is always much talk to this effect at conferences, which Olerich highlighted. He asked the audience to look themselves in the mirror and really think of what has truly been achieved in digital health. Many things have been pioneered, certainly but they often don’t turn out as expected. He used Verily as one example of failing to unleash true potential.
Silos within pharma and healthcare are tight, and they are defended. And often solutions that cut across are viewed with wariness. For Dachis, the bet was that he could digitise healthcare through delivery, but industry hasn’t yet caught up to that. To be addressed, then, our structural, cultural, and strategic challenges. Then, of course, there are the differences, again, between big pharma and small biotechs in these respects.
Dachis noted that it’s almost impossible to change the existing infrastructure of the way healthcare is delivered today on a holistic basis. “All of us want to revolutionise healthcare – it’s almost impossible.” Instead, what he’s learned is that the way to revolutionise healthcare is one step at a time, in each silo.
For Oelrich, if he had to redesign the whole thing, 2026 won’t be the right moment. In the US, current efforts to lower drug prices are but the tip of the iceberg. There is too much waste in the system, and certainly digital solutions can help eliminate waste. The promise of big change is not going away, but it needs unlocking. He and Dachis tried, but they were too early.
The buzzword AI couldn’t be ignored. Dachis asked how Bayer is currently using it: “Is AI going to impact payors, care delivery, providers, drug discovery and development?” Olerich said, “Yes to all!” But AI is a productivity tool first and foremost today, functionalisation rather than optimisation of the continuum. AI is everywhere; everyone uses it on a daily basis. What will come will be translated into true cost advantages. Dachis added that the cost benefits of AI will permit continued reinvestment and provide extra capital for other areas. Nonetheless, care has to be taken, as we none of us really know what’s hidden behind the AI door. The other day, said Olerich, there was a discussion on the AI race – not who applies it first, but who learns the fastest.
Be ready for the unlock, advised Olerich. Go across – don’t just be successful in the vertical. Innovative drugs are the only way, digital solutions too, he insisted, as these will curb healthcare costs.
And for Dachis? The fee for service system in healthcare, the lack of accountable care, outcomes oriented care – digital has the ability to solve the problem. “Accountable, affordable, accessible care: that is the role for digital going forwards,” he concluded.
