This article was originally published in 2015. We are looking to feature health innovators who have since applied these ideas and won (or at least, started to). If that's you, please reach out!  - Malia, Editor in Chief @ The POV

Note from the Author

Since 2015, a lot has happened in the healthcare and life sciences industry, most notable of which is the incredible speed with which we have adapted healthcare delivery and research in a world struggling to contain the COVID-19 virus. New diagnostic testing, vaccines, therapeutics, and healthcare protocols have been instituted and are continuing to evolve. But many of the challenges and ideas presented from 2015 are still true to this day, 7 years later. We are reposting now to highlight these ever-present challenges.

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The MIT Sloan School of Management held its 11th annual Bioinnovations Conference at the Boston Marriott Cambridge Hotel on September 20th, 2015 featuring influential speakers from the healthcare, life sciences, research, and regulatory sectors. This year’s theme was D“Value in Healthcare” and brought an impressive turnout of over 350 attendees.

“Our goal for the conference was to bring together industry leaders across business, science and medicine to discuss some of the most pressing issues in healthcare,” said conference organizer Anita Kalathil. “MIT and Sloan are passionate about how to improve healthcare, whether at the molecular or systems level, and we know that any solutions are going to have to be cross functional. Our goal was to make the MIT Sloan Bioinnovations conference the connecting point for these different groups.”There were many great takeaways from this conference, but here are 10 of the most noteworthy:

1. Delivering True Value in Healthcare

Neel Shah, founder and executive of Costs of Care, was the conference’s opening speaker. “There’s a misperception that considering cost is not aligned with patient interests,” he said. Cost consideration is becoming ever more important in healthcare, as policymakers demand greater accountability and patients demand greater transparency in pricing.

2. Refocusing the Future of Research & Developement

Mark Fishman, President of Novartis Institutes of Biomedical Research, shared in his opening keynote that aging, cancer, brain disease and genetic therapies hold the greatest promise for future research. He also shared his unique approach for R&D, which is to focus less on cost-benefit and more on areas with the greatest patient needs and solid scientific knowledge.

3. Putting Big Data to Good Use

There was a lively discussion during the Big Data, Policy, and Personalized Medicine panel, highlighting the need for better ways of collecting, analyzing and interpreting the huge amounts of data that are being generated from various sources, including medical records, diagnostics, genomics, and sensory data from patient devices. The panel members represented a number of impressive companies (TwoXAR, Privacy Analytics and Genospace) that are attempting to do just that.

4. Researching Therapies (and Prevention)

In his keynote address, Gary Kelloff, Special Advisor to the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute of Health, shared that the present approach in cancer research involves discovering and developing targeted therapies to biomarkers of cancer. While acknowledging the importance this research, Dr. Kelloff also urged participants to invest in researching the prevention of disease.

5. Improving Health IT

In his keynote, John Halamka, CIO at Beth Israel Deaconess, discussed the ongoing challenges in health information technology that need to be addressed: lack of interoperability, providing transparency while also ensuring privacy, harnessing HIT and Big Data to improve quality of care, and facing the ongoing threat of accelerating security incidents.

6. Considering a Team Approach

During a panel about medical device development, Ramesh Raskar, Associate Professor at MIT Media Lab & Head of Camera Culture Research Group, shared that he felt the sciences needed to move away from independent research (which can be slow to produce innovations) and toward a culture that allows individuals to work more collaboratively in teams (which can be faster). He also shared a memorable quote: “The innovator may or may not be an entrepreneur,” which again highlighted the advantage of a diverse team approach.

7. Incorporating Patient-Centered Design

Kristian Olson, Medical Director at the Consortium for Affordable Medical Technology, recommended that “patients be in the room” when designing medical innovations. And Elizabeth Johansen, Director of Product Design and Implementation at Diagnostics for All, shared her techniques for creating user-friendly devices. Particularly helpful was her advice to observe how patients interact with their devices in their own surroundings.

8. Overhauling Healthcare Delivery

According to Mikki Nasch, co-founder of The Activity Exchange, “Your zip code is still a better predictor of your health than your genetic code.” Social and environmental factors are huge determinants of health, and the delivery of healthcare in old models doesn’t address this issue. Healthcare needs urgently to transition away from traditional paradigms and into newer models of care, such as ACOs, that better address these social factors.

9. Finding Collaboration Between Payors and Pharma

There was a lively debate during one of the panels about specialty drug pricing. Panel members suggested that payers and pharma need to come together at a systems level to help advance development of treatments and cures. Dr. Winton from Biogen Idec Market Access suggested new payer-pharma models and shared risk plans.

10. Driving Innovation with Patients at the Wheel

The final keynote of the day was given by Jamie Heywood, Co-Founder and Chairman of PatientsLikeMe, an online platform that allows patients to share information about their medical conditions and treatments and connect with others with similar conditions. Not only does this novel website help patients, but the open platform also allows healthcare and industry professionals to better understand patients’ experiences and conditions and may help to accelerate the development of new treatments. Conference attendee Dimple Mirchandani was impressed with Heywood’s emphasis on continuous learning to better understand diseases and their treatments, and by his inspiring vision for caregivers and patients to use “data for good.”

This article was originally posted on MedTech Boston.

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