Integrate, innovate and collaborate: Google’s lessons for pharma

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This year’s eyeforpharma Barcelona – an event that has evolved into a staple fixture in the pharma conference calendar – consisted of its most digitally-focused line-up of speakers yet as the industry continues its gradual integration with the world of ‘digital health’.

Perhaps most indicative of the shift this year was the presence of two Alphabet representatives – national industry director of healthcare at Google, Ryan Olohan, and chief technical officer at Verily Life Sciences, Brian Otis.

Both emphasised the need for a future built with the help of digital solutions, some of which will be driven by Alphabet and its subsidiaries. Within the broad mission statement, Olohan and Otis highlighted several specific areas of interest.

Plenty of options, few adopters

“We have all these technologies but the numbers of disease are going up,” exclaimed Olohan during the first few minutes of his talk. He was referencing the broad range of digital options already available to the healthcare world as well as its biggest obstacle: access.

He referenced several platforms which yet have remained untouched by health companies which could go towards solving the issue. Pulling up a screenshot of a YouTube video published by a teenager in regards to a daily routine for clearing acne that had millions of views, Olohan emphasised the lack of pharmaceutical engagement in the area.

The platform is one example of how to ‘connect the dots’ in healthcare, implied Olohan, and one that clearly has a lot of potential for health stakeholders to take advantage of to provide a better care experience.

His biggest solution to the problem, however, was not YouTube. Echoing a familiar sentiment from many from the past year or so, Olohan stressed that the technology with the biggest potential to revolutionise health is artificial intelligence.

“Out of all the remarkable technologies we have, machine learning will be top of the list.” According to Olohan, the ability for digital solutions to incorporate an intelligent software that adapts to users will be core to driving a truly holistic healthcare solution. And with companies like IBM and Google itself sealing several different AI-based deals, it’s more a question of ‘when’ than ‘if’ AI finds its way into healthcare.

More measurement modalities are needed

Talking during the final slot of this year’s event, Brian Otis was tasked with guiding the audience through Verily’s multiple initiatives to help utilise health data to better global health and wellness.

Interestingly, Otis’ opening remarks called for a greater number of digital options to help drive digital adoption: “We haven't even scratched the surface of the amount of health data out there, let alone how to analyse it.”

According to Otis, there are multiple data sources still untouched by health institutions that have the potential to further personalise the care people receive globally. The problem is that most of this data is created and vanishes almost instantaneously.

Verily has tasked itself with creating measurement tools for such data collection in its own diabetes projects of both Onduo and its long-awaited continuous glucose measuring contact lens.

Highlighting the latter project, Otis described the current scenario facing many diabetes patients as a ‘control system problem’ – one that results in around 60-70% of said patients being non-compliant. The result of their non-compliance? Healthcare costs that exponentially rise up to twenty times their original cost as the disease progresses.

Although Otis’ sentiment was widely agreed upon by the many Twitterers present, the question remains of just how long the public must wait for Verily and Alcon’s proposed solution to hit the market.

Keeping the patient in mind

In line with one of the over-arching themes of this year’s eyeforpharma Barcelona, both men hit upon the need to create future health solutions with the patient in mind at all times.

Throughout his Wednesday morning session, Olohan listed several lessons for pharma: move faster, think bigger, win the “micro-moments” (i.e. become the first port-of-call), and test and learn faster. Perhaps his most direct message was to “help first, sell drugs later”.

The point was indicative of the new opportunities for a more “patient-centric” approach given to pharma with digital health platforms. Highlighting Google’s own capabilities, Olohan showed the audience how people already rely on technology for simple health enquiries. He backed up his claim with the statistic that 84% of US citizens make a health-based Google search immediately after a doctor’s appointment. The willingness to seek answers through existing tech platforms is thus already there.

The point was later reiterated in Otis’ talk where he proclaimed that tech is not enough - it needs to be combined with what the patient needs to make an effective solution.

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Marco Ricci


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