Under the skin of innovation

LEO’s Innovation Lab is working at arm’s length from the main company to encourage original thinking and develop cutting edge tech for dermatology. We caught up with chief medical officer John Zibert at eyeforpharma Barcelona 2019 to learn more about the philosophy behind the Lab and how he sees the future of digital in pharma.

How do you personally define innovation?
One of the key features as we see it is that innovation is not just something you build on top of existing solutions. It’s not about just using the buzzword ‘disruption’. It’s more about thinking differently and trying to identify problems and solutions that fit those problems.

Being innovative is also building something that patients or doctors are actually using on a regular basis. Many of the medical apps out there aren’t being used by patients or prescribed by doctors, because they’re not solving a problem. They’re just adding value to a product. That’s incremental innovation. If you really want to do something that is helping patients, you need to think in a radically different way and you need to be able to invest in high-risk projects.

• Read the full article in pharmaphorum's Deep Dive digital magazine here