Continuing Innovation in CyberSecurity – check out track at TiEInflect 2018

Cloud revolution that began over a decade ago, has transformed business models and working practices around cybersecurity. And yet continuous innovation is imperative when it comes to cybersecurity. Cybercrime damages are expected to rise to $6 trillion annually, by 2021. Hence cybersecurity and cloudsecurity represent a rapidly growing market today with the potential for revenues in excess of $10 billion by 2022.  

Increasing cybersecurity threats have encouraged organizations to leverage technology advances, and fight back with a variety of strategies and tactics. For instance, leveraging big data, enables a security solution provider to see bigger patterns and connect the dots to understand the threats. Similarly, deep learning, an advanced form of artificial intelligence, has made a huge impact on cyber security. When a machine learns what a malicious code looks like, it can identify unknown codes as benign or malicious with extremely high accuracy, and in real time.  Other technology solutions that have been implemented include, running applications in containers (e.g. Docker), instead of virtual machines, advances in virtual customer premise equipment (vCPE), and more flexible, open and cloud-based WAN technologies rather than proprietary or specialized WAN technologies.  

These and other strategies are aimed at identifying management systems, people and devices accessing the networks, verification of authorization levels, advanced threat analytics to flag behavioral changes, and virtualized security to follow and protect the data whereever it goes. Largest entrepreneurship conference, TiEInflect 2018, to take place in Santa Clara Convention Center, in May, will again feature focused Cybersecurity track with exciting keynotes and speakers from leading cloud and cyber security companies. Register for the conference at www.tieinflect.org .

 

Novel Approaches to Drug Development – 2015 Eppic Annual Conference

Drug development panel discussed how the technological advancements in Big Data, Machine Learning and Cloud Computing, when paired with focus on combination therapies that include for instance, anti cancer and immuno oncology agents, or paired with next gen sequencing technologies, and advanced companion diagnostics, with relentless focus on patient outcomes, may open new frontiers in cost effective drug development.

Drug development panel was moderated by Dr. Suneel Gupta, Chief Scientific Officer at Impax Pharmaceuticals.  Gupta has over 25 years experience in pharmaceutical R&D, specifically around drug delivery technologies.  Gupta shared the story of how Impax launched RYTARY, an extended-release oral capsule formulation drug, for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease, and took it in a span of 3.5 years, with $100M, from benchmark to launch.  This is Impax’s first branded drug internally developed and approved for commercialization and it was achieved with “relentless execution”, said Gupta.  Gupta’s advice to the entrepreneurs was to focus on the patient, not technology; to focus on what the product does, not what the product is made of.  He also advised to keep the the focus on the effect and go for big effect size, to get the drug approved faster.

Brandon Allgood, CTO at Numerate began by talking about the challenges of existing computational methods which so far have been strictly dependent on either high resolution crystal structure data or very clean SAR screening data (QSAR).  These models did not work well where computing is most needed, with disparate data, with emerging targets, and in high content, low throughput biology, and for multi target optimizations, said Allgood.  However, with a vast number of technological advancements in cloud computing, big data, and machine learning algorithms, Numerate has overcome major challenges in drug discovery, said Allgood.

Numerate has created a powerful drug design platform that can rapidly deliver novel leads on targets, without the need for a crystal structure and with very limited SAR data.  It can be used with just some ligand data and that is perfect for emerging targets, said Allgood.  Numerate’s machine learning algorithms can integrate and make predictions from small amounts of public data available from patents, literature review etc. and make accurate predictions and give google or netflix type ranking to data design.  It can handle noise and bias and give tolerance windows to address inter lab measurement variance.  Numerate has built 2100 off target models and also has advanced ADME models, said Allgood.  Speaking of some of the challenges in this area, Allgood said, public data is noisy and biased, while private data is private.  He suggested following changes.  1) To spur innovation, big pharma should be encouraged to release data so others can apply machine learning algorithms to more data.  2) There is a need to put in place some standards for machine learning to standardize lab validations.  3) While genomics has received a bulk of funding, there is need to put investment behind research on small molecule drugs; “they still have a future”, said Allgood.

Dirk Brockstedt, SVP of R&D at Aduro BioTech, began by saying 2013 brought in a new era in cancer immunotherapy with approvals for Yervoy, Provenge, Opdivo, and Keytruda.  The opportunity exists for rethinking about the biology and cancer treatment and look for combination of anti cancer and immuno oncology agents that can move the cure to the right for an increasing proportion of cancers, said Brockstedt.  The key is to target the immune and not the cancer cell in developing innovative therapies.  We need to also develop new clinical endpoints, develop new trial designs with new statistical methods, and consider novel regulatory paths for accelerated approvals of combination therapies.  When only a subset of patients respond well, we need to apply novel technologies and methods for patient identification and stratification, said Brockstedt.

Brockstedt talked about Aduro Biotech’s novel approach for tackling the disease, with listeria bacteria.  Here is my previous blog on Aduro’s approach http://bit.ly/JqDJ3K  and here’s link to recently aired Scott Pelly’s segment on 60 minutes, on the use of polio bacteria for treatment of glioblastoma http://tinyurl.com/pkspcmz . These potential therapies are in early stage and it remains to be seen how successful the genetic engineering will be to render them useful as cancer drugs.

Eric Peters, Group Leader of Companion Diagnostics at Genentech discussed the challenge of expediting drug discovery and development through the use of next gen sequencing technology.  Currently the cost to bring a new drug to patients (including failures) is around $2.6 B.  There is only 12% success rate in drug development.  However, also the knowledge of disease heterogeneity is rapidly evolving.  Now we speak not of lung cancer but lung cancers, said Peters.  There is a need for large scale biomarker and phenotype datasets.  Access to high quality data from multiple sources is the most essential element.  Patients’ access to complete range of testing and comprehensive diagnostics will play a big role in the future, and will become a standard of care in the future, said Peters.

Here are some additional blog links for your convenience
EPPICon 2015 keynote by Vivek Wadhwa – http://bit.ly/1abPwr5
“EPPICon 2015 Digital Health Panel Preview” http://bit.ly/1EQtd5y
“EPPICon 2015 Keynote by Kim Bush on “Tackling Global Health at Gates Foundation” http://bit.ly/18SV1cx
Feel free to browse my blog for past EPPIC conferences and other articles.

Digital Health Panel Preview – EPPICon 2015

EPPIC annual conference is on March, 28 and early bird pricing will end on Monday, March 16.  Here is a sneak peek at one of the panels.  

Technology is impacting health in interesting ways and many exciting innovations in digital health are expected to change how diseases are tracked, reduce inefficiency in healthcare delivery, reduce costs, improve access to healthcare, increase quality, save resources, and make medicine more personalized.  Digital health panel at EPPICon 2015 has diverse and interesting lineup of speakers.

Dr. David Persing, EVP, CMO, and CTO at Cepheid, had made an early resolve to have a positive impact on the world.  Guided by intellectual curiosity, while doing his pre-med, he discovered “the power of diagnostics”.  The company’s mission at Cepheid is to use the power of molecular diagnostics such that it would enable medical providers to identify and treat diseases early, increasing opportunities to improve patients’ survival and quality of life. Their cloud based platform, “The Digital Miasma” for monitoring of emerging infections earlier, is just launched and is in the implementation phase.

Panelist Deborah Profit is Director of Corporate Projects – Global Clinical & Business Operations for Otsuka Pharmaceutical Development and Commercialization.   OPC, is headquartered in Tokyo and is known for popular sports drink Pocari Sweat and energy drink Oronamin C.  OPC also developed Abilify, an approved drug treatment for certain mental illnesses, and as of 2013, annual sales of Abilify were over $8 billion a year, making it the highest grossing drug worldwide.  You would wonder what has that to do with digital health, until you consider the fact that patient non-compliance is one of the biggest challenges in many illnesses but specifically in mental illnesses.  Otsuka has recently made a deal with Proteus Digital Health for tracking medical adherence.  Proteus system includes sensor-enabled pills that embed intelligence into the pills so that their ingestion can be precisely tracked.  Personally, I am totally against drugs for mental illnesses, many of which do not work as expected; placebo effects are not well identified, clinical studies are often sponsored by drug companies and the list of side effects is daunting and being a psychologist, having seen side effects and heard them being discussed by my colleagues, I have developed absolute disgust for drugs for mental disorders.

Proteus “ingestible sensor” technology however, holds enormous promise for various indications, specifically for treatment and management of chronic conditions.  Otsuka plans to make use of Proteus Digital Health’s feedback system in its clinical R&D, presumably for its oncology products.

The next panelist, Dr. Marsha Rose Gillentine is Director of Biotechnology/ Chemical Group at Sterne Kessler Goldstein Fox, LLP and has intimate knowledge and understanding of patent litigation strategy in small molecules, ploymorphs, chemical synthesis, pharmaceutical formulations, methods of treatment, drug delivery devices, animal models, vaccines, polymers and more.  Her experience encompasses working with clients to implement lifecycle management strategies, specifically at it relates to personalized medicine patent portfolios.

Members of the Paris Medical Faculty (1904) André Chantemesse (1851–1919) Georges Pouchet (1833–1894) Paul Poirier (1853–1907) Georges Dieulafoy (1839–1911) Georges Maurice Debove (1845–1920) Paul Brouardel (1837–1906) Samuel Pozzi (1846–1918) Paul Jules Tillaux (1834–1904) Georges Hayem (1841–1933) Victor Cornil (1837–1908) Paul Berger (1845–1908) Jean Casimir Félix Guyon (1831–1920) Pierre-Emile Launois (1856–1914) Adolphe Pinard (1844–1934) Pierre-Constant Budin (1846–1907) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Jared Heyman is founder and CEO of CrowdMed, a brilliant innovative site that takes connected health to a whole new plane.  Often individuals afflicted with rare or neglected diseases, go from doctor to doctor, from pillar to post, just to accurate diagnosis and then they face whole set of new challenges for treatment.  CrowdMed is seeking to solve most challenging medical cases, worldwide, with speed and accuracy online, by harnessing the collective wisdom of the crowd.

The Digital Health Panel at EPPICon 2015, will be an exciting panel.  Agenda for the entire day looks very interesting and there will be plenty of opportunities for attendees to network and mingle with like-minded professionals.  The conference is on Saturday, March 28th at Santa Clara Convention Center, in Santa Clara, CA.  Early bird pricing has been extended till March, 16.  Please register for the event at the link http://tinyurl.com/o4cj3ow or from www.eppicglobal.org .

Health Information Technology (HIT) – Hype or Promise of a Better Healthcare System?

Salim Kizaraly, Founder & SVP of Business Development at Stella Technology, a healthcare information technology start-up, talked about the promise of  Health Information Technology in solving care coordination, physician collaboration, and system integration challenges to improve healthcare, at a recent http://www.bio2devicegroup.org event.

Kizaraly began by sharing the known fact that the mounting and huge healthcare costs in the US, that do not result in significant improvement in health, are not sustainable.  According to some estimates, almost 18.3% of GDP in the US, goes towards healthcare expenditure.  If the cost of healthcare continues to rise at historical rates, the share of GDP going towards healthcare in the US, is projected to reach 34%, by 2040.  While the costs continue to rise, gains on health improvement do not keep pace.  For instance, life expectancy in the US is only 78.4 years and US ranks 27^th out of 34 industrialized nations.  In this study of industrialized nations, US had highest to near highest infant mortality rates.

Kizaraly discussed the three defining historical events that got the ball rolling on healthcare transformation.  In 2004, President Bush announced that in the next 10 years, by 2014, every American would have an access to electronic health records. We have a long way to go, but certainly we are moving in that direction.  In 2009, HITECH (Health Information Technology for Economic & Clinical Health) Act, enacted as part of the ARRA (American Recovery & Reinvestment) Act, was signed into law, to promote the adoption and meaningful use of HIT and included incentives for faster adoption of EMR (Electronic Medical Records).  In 2010, the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare, with its mandate to expand coverage, cemented the case regarding the need towards transformation.

Barack Obama signing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act at the White House (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Affordable Care Act’s most significant contribution is to creating ACOs or Accountable Care Organizations.  An ACO can be defined “as a set of health care providers, including primary care physicians, specialists, and hospitals that work together collaboratively and accept collective accountability for the cost and quality of care delivered to a population of patients”. There are incentives to keep patients out of the extreme settings of care, including hospitals and nursing homes.  Different models are emerging of how these organizations put this into practice.  Underlying issue is that hospitals have to get better at treating patients.  Hospitals are bracing for lower revenues as they get better at keeping patients out of hospitals.  Different models of care are emerging.  Technology will be a big enabler to change workflow, rethink care, as homes emerge as places of care.  Here is link to my article on Keynote by Dr. Toby Cosgrove, CEO of Cleveland Clinic, at 2014 J P Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco –http://bit.ly/1c3EyBB .  Cosgrove also said, that hospitals will not longer be epicenters of care, and while a few hospitals (e.g Cleveland Clinic) will be super high tech, they will partner and share resources with other care providers, to offset costs.  The disruptions will eventually enable us to “build a healthcare system that is humane, high quality, and sustainable”, said Cosgrove.

Kizraly discussed several national initiatives that are implemented or partially implemented to enhance collaboration among care providers and integration of information.  For instance, if a person experiences an emergency visiting New York, then eHealth Exchange will make it easy to get their health records from the state of their residence. Similarly, Blue Button makes it easy for Americans to get easy, secure, online access to their health records, with a single click.

Stella Technology is a self-funded health information technology services and product development company that focuses on care coordination, patient access, and information exchange projects.  Kizraly shared use cases and information on how Stella is helping providers, with great success, in integrating care.  Through aggregating data from a variety of sources, through identifying gaps in care, and with real-time, proactive analytics, Stella’s technology identifies care opportunities that can be improved and accordingly targets interventions.  In the long term these kinds of strategic technological interventions will enable care providers to curtail expenditure, while improving care. In the interim, we still have a long way to go and there are many opportunities for entrepreneurs to use technological advancements in big data, cloud, machine learning, (IOT) internet of things, and enable US healthcare system to become more efficient, with lower costs and improved outcomes.  Kizraly’s talk was followed by Q&A.

Steve Mollenkopf, CEO, Qualcomm to give Grand Keynote at TiEcon 2014

TiEcon, the largest entrepreneurship conference, will focus this year on four industry focused tracks, Internet of Things, Big Data, Cloud Infrastructure, and Healthcare. (Please register through this link as my guest https://www.123signup.com/register?id=dbnfb&ref=4182698 and enter promo code tievalue to get a $100 discount).

Steve Mollenkopf, President and CEO of Qualcomm, will give grand keynote address, on day 1.  With a background in electrical engineering, Mollenkopf holds patents in “power estimation and measurement, multi-standard transmitter system, and wireless communication transceiver technology.”  He has spent his entire 20+ year career at Qualcomm.  Previously, he led the chip set business at Qualcomm and helped make Qualcomm the world’s largest mobile chipset supplier and global leader in LTE technology.  Mollenkopf also led the company’s largest acquisition of Atheros, purchased at $3.1 billion, a deal that helped expand Qualcomm’s business beyond smartphones and enabled and speeded adoption of Qualcomm’s technologies and platforms in new segments.

Qualcomm logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Qualcomm makes over $25 billion each year, in revenues, powering world’s smartphones and tablets.  Qualcomm may not be a lean and mean startup, but it is a technology driven company.  Mollenkopf is entrepreneurial in nature and a self-proclaimed gadget freak.  Entrepreneurs at TiEcon will be waiting to hear Mollenkopf’s perspectives on opportunities in mobile space.  Will he share any new industry leading innovations in the pipeline, at Qualcomm?

TiEcon 2014 is shaping up to be fantastic entrepreneurship focused conference, with awesome panels and speakers.  Please register through this link as my guest https://www.123signup.com/register?id=dbnfb&ref=4182698 and enter promo code tievalue to get a $100 discount.

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Other Life Science focused events

1) Register for Health Tech Forum annual conference on May 20, at www.healthtechnologyforum.com.  With a theme of “Pathways to Sustainable Health”, the conference will bring together physicians, entrepreneurs, payers, and providers with an aim to empower quality of health.
2) Michelle Chen from DNAtrix, Inc. will talk on “Developing Oncolytic Virus to Treat Glioblastoma” on Tuesday, April, 29, 8:30am.  This is a free event – all are welcome – http://www.bio2devicegroup.org.
3) Dr. Sarvajna Dwivedi, founder of Pearl Therapeutics will talk on Tuesday, May 6 at Cubberley, PA www.eppicglobal.org.  Pearl Therapeutics was acquired by Astra Zeneca last year, for $1.15 B and was a winner of TiEcon’s TiE50 awards, two years in a row.
4) Feel free to send me an email for details on any of these events at wd_darshana at hotmail dot com.  You can also follow my updates on Twitter @DarshanaN.  Also, do check out (in JOBS category on this blog), my job opportunities that include many Quality Engineering jobs in CA and MA and hot Software Embedded Engineer job and more.

 

 

 

Healthcare Innovation & Entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley, CA

Life Science Industry gearing up for Innovation:  Code-a-thon (Health Technology Forum), TiEcon, EPPIC event

Code-a-thons are fun and also highly productive live events that bring together developers, designers, innovators and entrepreneurs, brimming with new and exciting ideas on applications and tools for any given problem.  Health Technology Forum in San Francisco was formed with a mission to improve healthcare through technology.  In 2013, HTF organized a very successful code-a-thon that focused on serving the needs of the underserved populations. This year again, HTF has organized a code-a-thon to precede (by about a week to 10 days) its annual conference focused around the theme of Pathways to Sustainable Health, on May 20, at Parc 55, Wyndham Hotel, SF.  Additionally, HTF has proposed a series of events to follow the weekend code-a-thon challenge, including a unique second phase to enable the winning team to be placed on-site at one or more safety-net hospitals.  

DC Health Week Code-a-Thon 13109 (Photo credit: tedeytan)

So how do code-a-thons help spur innovation?  These short and focused events often result in the rapid development of breakthrough concepts and working prototype applications.  Code-a-thons highlight a problem in need of a solution.  This spotlighting of the problem, with clarity around its challenges and opportunities, helps the problem to remain the primary focus of innovation, and not the technology.  This is a good mental discipline for enthusiastic bright innovators who tend to fall in love with their own idea, and often fail to pay heed to the needs of the market.  The ideas and technologies that come out of code-a-thons often lead to creation of actual products that can be deployed in the marketplace.  Further, if these innovators would receive coaching from stakeholders within the hospital centers then it is inevitable that the positive impact will be enormous and immediate, in creating new innovative solutions, for sustainable healthcare. Few can argue that our healthcare system needs an overhaul, and something that will greatly impact the transformation in the healthcare system is the impact that Big Data will have.  For instance, Big Data can help empower patients to be in charge of their own health.  From providing access to their medical records, to enabling continuous health monitoring, it will help inform and empower patients to be proactive managers of their own health.  Similarly, mounds of clinical and epidemiological data can lead to greater insights in diagnosis and therapeutics of various diseases.  The requirements of this particular code-a-thon will be centered around developing and designing the prototype of an app that supports the collection and communication of health care data about key diseases and behaviors. Please stay tuned for more information, and sign up for the code-a-thon and for the annual conference at www.healthtechnologyforum.com and follow them on twitter @healthtechforum.  You can follow me on twitter @DarshanaN.

Additionally, mark your calendar for 2 other interesting life science events.
May 16, 17 is #TiEcon 2014, the largest entrepreneurship conference, at Santa Clara Convention Center, CA.  The Healthcare Track on Day 2 will feature panels on exciting topics like “Harnessing Healthcare Data”, “Engaging Patients of the Future”, “Where the VCs are Investing in Healthcare” and more.  Register by May 1, for  www.tiecon.org through the link http://tinyurl.com/kr2hkcw as my guest and enter promo code tievalue to get $100 off.
May, 6 EPPIC event – EPPIC frequently spotlights success stories of local entrepreneurs and on My 6 at Cubberley in Palo Alto, will host Dr. Sarvajna Dwivedi, Founder of Pearl Therapeutics which was acquired last year, by Astra Zeneca for $1.15 B.  Register at www.eppicglobal.org.
http://www.bio2devicegroup.org is a group that meets every Tuesday, in Sunnyvale and hosts speakers on a wide range of healthcare topics.  Pre-registration required for “Second Tuesday of the month meetings” and all other meetings are free and open for walk-ins.  For information on any of these events, feel free to send me an email at wd_darshana at hotmail dot com.

 

Impact of Emerging Healthcare Changes on Medical Device Industry

Hospital (Photo credit: José Goulão)

Reenita Das, Partner, Healthcare and Life Sciences at Frost and Sullivan, talked about worldwide transformation that is happening in healthcare, and its impact on medical device industry, at www.bio2devicegroup.org event.

What is taking place right now is a massive global remix, with merging of disciplines, cross pollination of ideas, technology, and applications.  With the shifting of the boundaries, a new world is emerging, said Das.  The business model is shifting from one size fits all, provider centric, procedure based, capitated model to personalized, patient centric, bundled, value based approach to healthcare.  Unlike previously fragmented approach, hospitals and payors will increasingly look at more decentralized, community based, integrated approach to treating diseases where the focus will be on preventing diseases, not on treatment of diseases, said Das.  This is a new reality where hospital will not be the first, but the last option, in disease management.

Currently, 80% of dollars are going into treating 20% of the population, over the age of 65.  There is a shift under way to move cost of dollars from end stage to “at risk” patients and that will be a bitter pill to digest for companies that are reaping profits from treatment of chronic diseases.  As the focus grows on moving away from treatment, after the disease progression, to moving towards earlier prediction with an aim to improve the quality of life, the medical device industry will be impacted with shift in dollars.  In order to improve the quality of life, it is important to have earlier screening with better prediction of susceptibility to certain diseases, so as to begin preventive treatment earlier.  Dollars will move away from medical devices that focus on treatment to those that focus on monitoring, diagnosis, and prediction.  In 2012, 60% of healthcare dollars were spent on treatment of diseases and only 19% went into diagnosis.  Das said, in 2025, only 35% of the dollars are expected to go towards treatment, while 27% will go towards diagnosis, 22% towards prediction, and 16% in monitoring of disease progression.  Das’s advice, “don’t compete in the treatment space, it is becoming smaller.”                   

As Asia emerges as a major focus for healthcare spending, there will also be a greater focus on holistic way of treating diseases.  Between 2010 and 2020, healthcare expenses in the US will be $3922 billion.  But spending more money does not translate into better healthcare and there will be increasing pressure to spend less.  Simultaneously, there will be growth in healthcare spending in Asia, with $1446 billion of healthcare expenses in China, $331 billion in India, $31 billion in Vietnam and so on.  Asian hospital brands will become global brands, in the next ten years and emerging markets will also become very competitive, with increasing interest in “reverse innovation”, where cutting edge cost effective innovations in developing countries, will be then brought to US and other Western markets.  Between 2010 and 2020, Asia is likely to grow 150%, said Das.

Developing countries are emerging as meccas for cost effective healthcare.  Additionally, they are making better and more widespread care available to indigenous populations.  China, for instance, has eliminated the definition of poverty, as it has eliminated poverty.  By 2020, China expects 100% healthcare coverage for all Chinese people.  BRIC represents 2.9% or 40% of world’s population.  These and other emerging group of nations will likely influence innovation, choice, and spending on healthcare.

Business process change will emerge as one of the biggest challenges in healthcare.  What was once a payment is now a cost, what was once a cost is now a potential savings.  Data will emerge as the holy grail, as everything becomes data driven.  There will be focus on data integration and democratization of data.  There will be an emphasis on risk sharing and focus on mobility and security of information.  Patient engagement is a challenge that will have to be addressed, to close the integration gap.  Currently, majority of the patient portals provide secure access to medical records, and ability to schedule appointments, refill prescriptions, and so on.  However, there has been little success in achieving behavior modification, individualized outreach, efficient platforms to enable search and access of relevant information, efficient platforms for social media interactions, efficient platforms for mHealth applications and so on.  So lot of work needs to be done.

How will the changes impact how medical technologies are evaluated and purchased?  With increasing cost pressures, there will be a shift in payments based on quality plus cost and focus on value over volume and procedure based reimbursement.  This will bring new challenges with respect to new pricing models, cost of adoption, impact on workflow, integration of information, and slower adoption of new technologies.  Decisions will be increasingly made by committees of finance people, in addition to the clinicians.  As purchase decisions move away from clinicians to hospital administrators and products increasingly become commoditized, US will shift from being exporter to importer of medical technologies.  The new realities will make it imperative that companies fail fast.

Where are IT solutions are failing to reach the holy grail, in the realm of data?  There is lot of data being generated and there are also predictive analytics.  However, data integration is lagging behind.  Currently, data is provided in separate solutions.  Additionally, the predictive analytics are not translating into action.  So although the technology has arrived and applications are available, solutions are not there.  There will also likely be fewer employer contracted health plans as more employers like Sears and Olive Garden choose to offer cash for plans or money to pay for healthcare.  This trend goes along with the fact that one size does not fit all and there has to be personalization of healthcare coverage.

There is also more cross industry convergence between healthcare and other industries like automotive, information technology, energy and so on.  The top five technology trends are 1) Interoperability that can bring new technologies capable of integrating medical devices into a connected platform to enhance functionality and minimize errors; 2) Multifunctional; 3) Capable of Big Data integration to enhance functionality for diagnostic and treatment devices; 4) Low-Cost; and 5) Nanotechnology that provides benefits biocompatibility, and functionally at an unparalleled scale and is better able to influence diseases at a cellular level.  Das predicted, there will be growth in the areas of structural heart, robot assisted technologies, infection control, home health care, and neurological devices.

Finally, just as you accumulate miles for travel, customers will accumulate miles for better health.  As healthcare become increasing data driven and there is increased use of analytics to define care pathways, there will be incentives for patient engagement, greater use of remote health monitoring and mobile apps, and new care models will emerge based on collaboration, information exchange, awareness, and achieving health outcomes, particularly in case of chronic diseases.

Das’s comprehensive informative presentations generated many questions and was followed by Q&A.

TiEcon 2013 Overview – Focus on Big Data, Mobile, SDN & Entrepreneurship

TiEcon 2013, the biggest conference of its kind, with a mission to nurture entrepreneurship, has an impressive lineup of excellent speakers and panels, in the hottest industry segments of Big Data, Mobile, Software Defined Infrastructure, and in Entrepreneurship.

Big Data track will feature speakers that include, Dr. D J Patil http://bit.ly/YYyOxd, data scientist at Greylock Partners, and Rayid Ghani, http://bit.ly/16Ys2iI , Mr. Obama’s Chief Scientist who converted vast amount of data collected through large commercial databases, boutique lists, voter files, and social media sites, into a source of valuable data that galvanized the election campaign and the rest is history.

Mobile track will hold panels on “mobile ecosystems” to “where they are VCs investing”, in this fast growing market.  The track will feature top notch speakers like Anand Chandrasekhar http://bit.ly/10zEJks, Senior VP and CMO at Qualcomm.

With data centers of the future defined by Software Defined Infrastructure, efficiency is bound to get a boost, as resources get divided.  This track will feature speakers like Dr. Guru Parulkar http://bit.ly/10MyHYw, Executive Director at ONRC and Consulting Professor at Stanford University, with discussions around how OpenFlow might enable networks to evolve by giving power to the remote controller, to modify the behavior of network devices.

Entrepreneurship track has some of the biggest names of inspiring self made entrepreneurs, including famous Ronnie Screwvala http://bit.ly/160LYQB, Syntel’s Bharat Desai http://bit.ly/13HmSrQ, Chris Anderson, CEO of 3D Robotics http://bit.ly/ZxDn3f, and Manoj Bhargava  http://bit.ly/17KV6dc, CEO of 5-Hour Energy, possibly the wealthiest Indian entrepreneur, in USA.

Vinod Khosla (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Entrepreneurship is not just a buzzword at TiEcon.  Here future successful entrepreneurs will be showcasing their companies, will get access to mentors like Vinod Khosla and Kanwal Rekhi, and get countless opportunities to network.  The participants will likely include professionals from some of TiE’s 500+ startups and 150+ angel investors.  Come and get energized, in an environment where failures are merely stepping stones to success.

Last few days to register for tiecon, before it is fully sold out – http://www.tiecon.org.

How Big Data helped Mr. Obama Win the Election – Rayid Ghani in Fireside Chat at TiEcon 2013 – Preview

“Share your story”, said Mr. Obama’s website, encouraging visitors to share why they wanted to be involved in his election campaign.  The mastermind behind this project codenamed the Dreamcatcher, was Mr. Obama’s “chief scientist”, Rayid Ghani.  He aimed to convert vast amount of data collected through large commercial databases, boutique lists, voter files, social media sites, and an unprecedented quantity of voter interviews it regularly conducted using paid phone banks and volunteer canvassers, into a source of valuable data to galvanize the campaign, with the use of analytics, algorithms, and machine learning.  The sophisticated algorithms were also used to predict views on particular issues like pro choice and pro life.  Armed with this information, the campaign was more focused in its message and its target and the result was vastly increased efficiency in fund-raising and in volunteer and voter mobilization.

Prior to joining Mr. Obama’s campaign, Ghani was a Senior Research Scientist and Director of Analytics Research at Accenture Labs.  At Accenture, Ghani mined tons of data collected on corporate consumer servers, to find statistical patterns that could forecast the future.  In one instance, he deployed algorithms that replaced health insurers’ random audits, to anticipate which of 50,000 daily claims were most likely to require individual attention.  In another instance, Ghani helped set the terms of price insurance marked to eBay sellers, by developing a model to estimate the end-price for auctions, based on each sale item’s unique characteristics.

Ghani’s interests span a whole gamut from general machine learning and data mining to privacy preserving data mining, text mining, semi-supervised learning, active learning, information retrieval, NLP, and knowledge management.  Most recently, his work has focused on developing and using machine learning and data mining algorithms to solve large-scale practical challenges in business, government organizations, and in politics, like helping Mr. Obama win the re-election.

Come and hear Mr. Ghani discuss the huge potential inherent in Big Data Analytics, in a Fireside Chat at TiEcon 2013 http://www.tiecon.org .

PS – I have a job opening for Machine Learning Professional and details can be found in JOBS category on my blog at http://www.darshanavnadkarni.wordpress.com .

Information about other TiEcon keynotes can be found at following links http://bit.ly/YYyOxd on Data Wizard D. J. Patil,  http://bit.ly/13HmSrQ on Bharat Desai Chairman of Syntel.  Register for TiEcon 2013 at http://www.tiecon.org .

Dr. D J Patil – Data Scientist at TiEcon 2013 – Preview

Dr. D J Patil says he failed the first challenging math class in 8^th grade.  But that was before he realized the practical application of math, something that may be amiss in high school math class.  He has since figured out the usefulness of math and transformed himself into nothing short of a math and data whiz.  He says, “Math for me, is one of the most powerful set of tools to understand the physical world and make sense of why things happen.”

 

Upon completion of his Ph.D., Dr. Patil created a faculty position for himself, and worked on characterizing the complexity of weather and demonstrating that it wasn’t as chaotic as everyone had imagined it to be.  Then he became interested in computational social science and worked with the U.S. government as a Science and Technology Policy Fellow.  Among other projects, he also worked on bioweapons proliferation in Central Asia and helped create the Iraqi Virtual Science Library.  Challenging himself further, he decided to work in the industry, and one of first areas he tackled, was on applying data for building new ways of detecting fraud.  He helped build the whole front end security models for eBay and PayPal.  In 2008, he joined LinkedIn and says, “that’s the place where data science finally got formalized”. He began looking for ways to take data and turn it into user-facing products.  LinkedIn’s many data-driven products now include, “People you may know,” “Jobs you may be interested in,” “Groups you might like” and so on.   If you use data correctly, it’s such an amazing multiplier for the user experience,” says Dr. Patil.

Currently, Dr. Patil is a Data Scientist in Residence at Greylock Partners, and is thinking about “the next fun thing to do” and on ways of scaling organizations.  He is also serving as an adviser and mentor to portfolio companies, on how to think about data.   Dr. Patil is known for co-coining the term Data Scientist.  In 2011 he was ranked in Forbes Data Scientist list as #2 behind Larry Page.  In 2012 he along with other notable “Gen Fluxers” were featured on the cover of Fast Company.

Dr. Patil will be speaking at TiEcon 2013.  You can register for the conference at www.tiecon.org .

PS: I am looking to fill exciting job openings for someone with experience in Real Time Biological Digital Signal Processing and in Machine Learning and for Hardware/ Firmware Engineer with Sensor Implementation Experience for mobile health company in SF, CA.  Details for these and other jobs can be found in the JOBS category on my blog, www.darshanavnadkarni.wordpress.com .