Name: Brainstorm AI 2023: Revolutionizing Health Care through AI
Uploaded: 2023-12-12
Duration: 19 min 17 s
Description: Andrew Bindman, MD, Executive Vice President, Chief Medical Officer, Kaiser Permanente Lidia Fonseca, Executive Vice President, Chief Digital and Technology Officer, Pfizer Sean McClain, Founder and CEO, Absci Moderator: Michal Lev-Ram, Editor-at-Large, FORTUNE

Andrew Bindman, MD, Executive Vice President, Chief Medical Officer, Kaiser Permanente Lidia Fonseca, Executive Vice President, Chief Digital and Technology Officer, Pfizer Sean McClain, Founder and CEO, Absci Moderator: Michal Lev-Ram, Editor-at-Large, FORTUNE

Brainstorm AI 2023: Revolutionizing Health Care through AI

Conferences

Andrew Bindman, MD, Kaiser Permanente, Lidia Fonseca, Chief Digital and Technology Officer, Pfizer, Sean McClain, Absci, Michal Lev-Ram, Editor-at-Large, FORTUNE

COVID-19 pandemic brought a major digital transformation to the health care industry. Organizations were tasked to bring life saving vaccines and medicines to the market. At breakneck speed, hospitals were inundated with patients and doing their best to collaborate with labs and research teams to provide the best possible patient outcomes. In many cases, artificial intelligence is what helped these organizations get through the most challenging of times. We are thrilled to have three leaders with us today who are revolutionizing health care with the help of A I. Please welcome doctor Andrew Binman, executive vice president and chief medical Officer for Kaiser Permanente who created an A I tool that helps detect and alert medical staff if there's a patient decline, Lydia Fonseca pfizer's first chief Digital and Technology Officer with the help of A I pfizer was able to review clinical data in real time which helped them get the COVID-19 vaccine to market quickly. And Sean mclean founder and CEO of A BCI A drug discovery company that's using generative A I to help cut the drug creation process from five years to less than 24 months. Please welcome them to the stage right there. OK. Um Thanks for being with us. Thank you. Um I wanna start with just getting a, a kind of big picture look from the three of you. Um Obviously your respective organizations have been working, you know, in and, and with A I for, for some time, but over the last year specifically, um what would you say are the biggest shifts and biggest impact and Andy, I'll start with you. Well, I would just say, you know, like everyone else, we've noticed that A I is a big deal. Uh And so, uh you know, we're looking uh and trying to establish the right kinds of structures to be able to bring these kinds of tools into our environment. You know, one of the things that we're very fortunate about at Kaiser Permanente, we for a long time, have developed really robust data systems, curated our data and so forth. So I feel like we're kind of we're at the launching pad ready to take full advantage of the tools related to A I. And that's going to come up in so many parts of our organization, whether it's at the front end of clinical care or some of the work that goes on behind the scenes related to uh coding, diagnoses, billing all all all those activities. So it's a really robust set of uh of interest that we have not to mention all the patients facing things member facing things that we can do to help our members be able to navigate our system more successfully, so tremendous energy, tremendous excitement about the potential of these tools with a hint of caution. Of course. So we want to make sure we're responsibly implementing them to make sure that it's they're safe while we're making sure they're effective Lydia. You know, we believe that health care is being rewired and that rewiring is happening across the entire patient journey from the payments to the care, access to the to the care delivery experience itself. Uh So that's one major shift. I think another major shift. And I think many of us have been using A I for a number of years. We know that A I is not new. I think one of the big shifts is that we're not applying it at scale. I know for us, you mentioned at your opening, right. Part of the reason why we had the COVID response that we had was because we harness technology A I and digital to really accelerate a process that normally takes 8 to 10 years and we were able to do it in 269 days. It was 269 days from when we announced that we would develop a COVID vaccine together with biotech to the day that we receive the emergencies, the FDA S emergency use authorization. So the shift is that we're applying these at scale and then the other major shift as well is I think, I think most of us out there are looking for ways not only to be more productive, to be more innovative, but also to be more efficient. So, and I think that's a, that's an important perspective. So it's not just cost savings. That's one part of it. I think it's even more important if you can accelerate your business. So those are the kind of key shifts. Me. How do we see? Ok. And Sean, maybe you could also before you dive into the question, explain a little bit more about what aide does because I probably didn't give it as much justice as you can. Yeah, absolutely. So we're using generative A I to be able to design antibody based therapies really at a click of a button where you take, let's say an oncology target, you feed that into the model and you can have then the model design antibodies that have the specifications that you want. What is the potential efficacy in the clinic, the develop ability, manufacturability and what we're really seeing and we're seeing in our own pipeline that we're developing. Our first lead asset is a target in IBD. And we're going to have an ID filed with that particular drug in 18 to 24 months and it took us roughly $3 million to get to a drug candidate. Plus, you know, the I and D enabling study cost there. And so you're able to really transform how you get drug into the clinic in a very rapid and cost effective manner. And I think that that's one item we're really excited about and it's not even being able to get it there faster and cheaper, but also being able to kind of unlock new biology, you couldn't have had access to before. And I think one of the things like we're really excited about is the emphasis on the data. I think if you look at Chad GPT, the large language models that are out there, they're trained on the whole internet. And if you compare the internet compared to the available biological data that exists out there, it really fails in comparison. And you know, we really see the need to generate new technologies that can scale these biological data sets for particular applications and then also the need to to unlock the new, you know data. How do we get patient data, you know, readily available? How do we create consortiums? How do we aggregate all this data and create new data to train these generative A I models? Because we don't have the data like, you know, you know, open A I and chat GBT does you know when compared to the internet. And so I think that's one of the things we're really excited about is just the emphasis on data and how important that is to biology and health care. Um From AAA patient perspective, would you say that anything has shifted over the last year or so. Well, absolutely. I mean, we've been using A I tools for a long time, but they've been mostly the type of A I tools that have been more kind of predictive analytic tools. So, uh for example, at Kaiser Permanente, we've had a very exciting tool and alert monitoring system that basically a I predictive tool that's capturing laboratory data that's coming in assessment made by nurses. What's going on with our hospitalized patients? That's very good at predicting the likelihood of a patient who might decompensate and require ICU care in the next 12 hours and then have an intervention team ready to act on that. So it's not just an alarm going off that no one's paying attention to. But in fact, we've aligned the workflow with the predictive A I tools and this of course, has an enormous impact on patient experience because it's a lot better not to have to go to the IC U, but to have your care, you know, taken care of in a regular hospital ward and be able to go home more quickly. So there are experiences like that already. But I think what we're anticipating is more and more opportunities for uh tools that can help because we have, you know, full capture within Kaiser Permanente of the whole patient with our system tools that can help our members when they log on to our website and so forth to be able to navigate and those tools to be able to anticipate the kinds of needs because of notes that were generated by the physician or others as part of the care team that can help the patient navigate more quickly to, oh, I see you have a pharmacy need and we're going to take care of that or you were supposed to be referred to the cardiologist. Let me help you set that up. So you can imagine this kind of assistance going on that will directly interface with the member in a way that will make it feel very personal in terms of how, how the member will interact with our health plan. Um Lydia from your perspective. So look, um we believe that digital and A I have the power to drive early diagnosis to enhance adherence to treatment and to really enhance uh health outcomes. So, you know, for example, some of the things that we've been doing, we partnered with fitbit, you know, to proactively identify uh patients that could have atrial fibrillation, we monitor their, their heart rhythm and if we spot any irregular heart rhythm, they get a signal and those that get a signal are then encouraged to go and have a conversation with their health care provider. We have 7 million people around the globe that have signed up, you know, for this capability. Another example, together with Walgreens, we launched AMBA and AM A is an A I APP for Metastatic breast cancer patients that have been prescribed I brands. And what Amber does is that it really provides them with tips, personalized education, medication reminders, and it even will send an alert to that patient. Should they need outreach from their pharmacist? So, you know, pretty powerful stuff, right? And then another thing that we are pretty, that's pretty important to us because we, I think the pandemic uncovered that people need help to be able to understand and access health information. And so one of the other tools that we've developed is an A I capability called clear and clear, makes health information more personalized and easy to access. So consumers can take greater control of their health. So clear, simplifies health information to help advocates communicate with patients in an easy and understandable way. So, you know, to us, as we think about the patient and how we can impact consumers and patients. Absolutely, we believe that digital data and A I um are helping us discover and develop new breakthroughs that, you know, the faster than ever and that's gonna benefit all patients. And the last thing Michel that I'd like to say is that, you know, we're very excited about our, we have a, a proposed acquisition of F and F is a biotech that focuses on cancer therapy. And you know, we are very excited to bring their innovative antibody drug conjugates to more patients with cancer faster. Our big hope is that we're able to do for cancer. What we were able to do for COVID and that's really, you know, what drives us and we think about the impact that that will have on patients is, is what drives us every day. Um I wanna go to all of you for questions, please raise your hand. We'll bring a microphone over and we've got a few if we can get a, a mic over. Um but, but just real quick um Sean, I know you're not necessarily a a, you know, consumer patient uh facing brand but, but, but from where you sit, you talked about the, the speeding up that you're able to do. Um at what point does that kind of start having real impact for, for patients? Yeah, absolutely. So we used to be a pure play platform company where we would use our technology to develop assets for our partners, you know, such as Merck and Astrazeneca. But we've recently started developing out our own pipeline and that pipeline we started building out this, this year in conjunction with Andreas Busch, who came on to our team, the head of R and D at Shire and Behr previously with his help along with, you know, our generative A I tools, we'll be able to put an antibody in the in the clinic in roughly 1818 months and it has best in class properties associated with that or I should say potentially we'll see ultimately what happens in the clinic. But I think that these are big changes, being able to get a drug into the clinic in 18 months instead of 5.5 years with potential best in class attributes to it. I think it's really exciting. Now, these technologies, you know, still have a ways to go to ultimately proving it out in the clinic and we have to be, you know, data driven with any new technology that's out there. But I think what we've seen so far is, is really promising and exciting. And I think it is going to ultimately start to increase that success in the clinic. And ultimately shorten the time it takes to get these new cutting edge therapies to patients. Um Take a question back there, please introduce yourself. Hi, my name is Adam Kaufman. We have a venture fund in Ohio, the up to fund great topic uh for the pfizer or maybe for the Kaiser executive. Uh How do you think about innovation because I have so many founders who want to sell into huge institutions like the both of you. And I know how guarded appropriately healthcare innovation is. So, is it more in-house technology pursuits or how do you even think about scouring the marketplace for new technology, Andy? Do you want to take that? Maybe you can tell? Sure. Uh great, great question. And in fact, uh you know, something that I think, um uh I'm, I'm part of a AAA group at the National Academy of Medicine that has brought together uh leaders from several health systems, brought together ethicists, biotech people and so forth to discuss essentially what you're bringing up. What I brought up from the health system perspective is, you know, what is good hygiene with regard to when some vendor comes up, that I can know that, that, that the essence of this tool a has been developed on data that is diverse so that it's going to in fact result in answers that are accurate, not just for a segment, the population, but for a broad swath of the population that we take care of that. And that it's going to be a safe tool in the sense that it's not going to create risk in terms of privacy and releasing information in ways that our patients and members are not comfortable with. So I think we need to have some common ground rules that can help health systems like Kaiser Permanente be able to rapidly evaluate different kinds of products from vendors and so forth so that we can more quickly adopt them. Because as you say, if we're doing it one at a time, very slow process, if we're not working together on this, there's likelihood of it'll be fragmented in terms of how the different marketplaces will deal with this and the risks that will be introduced. So I think it's in our shared interest to develop some clear ground rules about what good practices are with regard to evaluating these tools and we are trying to develop in house some capacity to do that because we are aware that a lot of the tools are developed on a very narrow segment of the population. I think we probably all have seen some of the data that suggests that almost all the health, their tools are developed from California, Massachusetts and New York. And we don't really, you know, there's a lot of people in between there, it turns out. And so we need to make sure that the tools are in fact working on other parts of the population. So we're looking into our own ability to be able to test out tools to see how well they work in our population in terms of their predictive capabilities and so forth. Look at the end of the day, it's not about how shiny and cool the tool is. It's about does the tool make health care more effective, more efficient, more equitable, more timely, more patient, safe, centered and safer? That's what we look at across the board in all aspects of this. And we want help by working together of thinking about what are good, safe practices with regard to vendors, to be able to do that, that will help everyone speed up this process if I can, if I can give you the Pfizer perspective. So first of all, we believe that health care is a team sport and as much as we have a lot of talent in health and we do, we're never gonna be able to keep up with the latest and bleeding edge innovation. So we've taken a, we've taken a dual, a dual prong approach one, we're always developing our talent and, and we have great talent and we invest in them. In fact, I run learning and development at pfizer as well. So we definitely invest in our talent, the other thing that we've done and, you know, we put in place what we call the Breakthrough Change Accelerator. And it's basically think of it as a sandbox. And what we do is we bring our data to the sandbox and then we throw out a challenge and we invite partners and potential partners to come and answer our challenge. And we again, we provide the environment, we provide the data and just to give you an example, um the COVID for the clinical trial, we threw out a challenge because we needed to be able to process clinical trial data much faster than any of us had seen before. So we threw out that challenge in our breakthrough change Accelerator. And there was a company that I hadn't heard about before, came in, you know, proved to us in our breakthrough change Accelerator sandbox that they had a solution. So not only were we able to do a lot faster. Like six weeks, we ran the, you know, we ran the challenge for six weeks we need and then we could tell within the six weeks who had the goods. Within eight weeks, we had signed a contract with them and we actually applied that capability and that capability we applied into our COVID program and it processed and analyzed the clinical trial data from the COVID trial 50% faster than any other method that we have seen before. So we, we continue to do that. We throw our challenges and, and then that invites, you know, partners and then we prove it out and then the contracting in exchange, we have to make sure that we, that contracting is easy. And you know, we don't put people through a lot of hoops because this is about speed. It's about innovation. You know, Adam Zips over at Amazon web services. He likes to say that speed is a choice and we believe as well that speed is a choice. So anything that we can do to simplify it, if the practical approach that we take. Well, speaking of speed, this conversation flew by and I'm so sorry because I know there were other amazing questions out there. But I hope the three of you can stick around and uh you know, chat with people during the, the upcoming break and later. Um and I just wanna thank the three of you for coming out here Andy by the way, rode his bike to the conference. So how hot is that at this time? But thank you so much.