Will Patients be the Real Winners of Healthcare Innovation? Info on #TiEcon Healthcare Tracks

Will Patients be the Real Winners of Healthcare Innovation?

Health track at #TiEcon 2023 is truly exciting as is the innovation happening in health technology and healthcare. As I had summarized in my post https://bit.ly/3Zz1W5y on the themes that emerged during #BiotechShowcase, #JPM2023 and related events in San Francisco in January 2023, “real winners of the innovation happening in healthcare in the decades ahead, likely will be patients”.  Future innovation in the medical industry will be driven by automation and will be propelled with exciting technology advancements. For instance, generative AI is poised to leverage complex, messy torrents of medical data into usable data, giving new insights into patients, providers and payers. 

This new era of patient care will the focus in stellar panels and exciting tracks, at #TiEcon 2023.

Moving data sharing insights to new outcomes – Track 1

Data features prominently in several industries. In healthcare, quality data rendered useful with advancements in artificial intelligence and Generative AI is expected to lead to many actionable changes, helping people make better choices, enhance consumer engagement and provide insights, directly translating into enhanced patient care. 

In this panel, Trannum Guller, Chief Medical Officer at HCA and Shakthi Kumar, Global healthcare and life science leader at AWS will discuss the importance of data in the healthcare ecosystem; sources from where health data is obtained and effective policies and regulations around its use, sharing and security. Qualitative and secure health data can help us extract meaning in ways that are truly beneficial to patients. The panel will discuss how to forge and enhance partnerships among various stakeholders involved, in order to leverage the insights obtained from health data. 

Innovation in patient centered care – Track 2

Each patient visit to the healthcare provider is not only the time when most personal and private data of the patient is exchanged and discussed but more importantly, all health data builds on prior health data. Patient’s health history is of immense importance. Human body is an incredibly complex and amazingly inter-connected system where knowledge or prior history and knowledge of comorbidities helps the physician and the patient to make most logical health decisions.  And with millions of patient visits generating new data daily, and physicians and hospitals extracting new insights and constantly evolving to enhance diagnoses and treatment options, more than ever, data is and will be driving the business of healthcare. 

Who better than a team of esteemed physicians to discuss the impact of emerging technologies including Cognitive AI, Multimodal AI for Medicine, Edge, Blockchain and more on the status of health and healthcare? Can this panel shed some light on whether these technologies will help simplify our complicated healthcare experience, lower healthcare costs and deliver better patient outcomes, in the years to come? 

Marcus Zachry, Chief Clinical Officer at Babylon Health, Brigitte Piniewski, Physician author of “Wealthcare: Demystifying Web2 and the Rise of Personal Data Economies” and Reena Bhargava, Medical Director at Kaiser Permanente will discuss these issues in what promises to be a highly exciting conversation. Entrepreneurs can expect to get many insights on areas of opportunities and glaring gaps as well as learn about challenges and ways to mitigate them.  

Don’t miss the largest #entrereneurship conference @TiEcon 2023 happening in May at Santa Clara, CA. Register at www.tiecon.org .

Changing Healthcare Landscape in the post-Covid world

In the post Covid world, one thing that is certain to change is health care and health technologies that impact the quality of care. There is already an enormous impact of digital technologies with remote monitoring, remote diagnosis, and telehealth platforms, and artificial intelligence powered apps and devices. Related to that is an explosion and access that providers have in the number of data points. 

In the immediate covid world, there is an urgency of some of these new technologies in contact tracing and monitoring the spread of the pandemic. There is also a necessity for protective gear that while protecting providers can make care more personalized and is easy to use. Providers are also trying to balance providing care for other health issues while dealing with continuing covid cases.

So what might be possible attributes that will make new technologies and devices stand out?

For any tools that impact healthcare, accuracy, reliability, and safety are of prime importance. Also delivery of care is rapidly transforming and all devices need to seamlessly integrate into rapidly changing clinical flow. All devices that work with healthcare data must also be extremely secure. 

At Road to #TiEcon2020 @TiEcon @tiesv on June 24th, domain experts will discuss new technologies and how it is all poised to make an impact in the changing arena of healthcare.  Domain experts speaking at this event include, Dr. John Whyte @WebMD, Aashima Gupta @GoogleCloud, Dr. Suraj Kapa @MayoClinic, Ramesh Raskar @MediaLab, Dr. Meera Kanhouwa @Deloitte.

If you need more information than post your question with your email. Register for the event with the link here:
https://www.tiecon.org/?campaign=Referral&source=DaNa

 

Speedy identification of pathogens: Reduces sepsis, saves lives, cost & lowers antibiotic resistance problem

At a recent Bio2DeviceGroup (www.bio2devicegroup.org) event, Kevin Hacker, CEO of BioAffinity Sciences talked about their new technology that when fully developed will identify pathogens more than 100 times faster than the traditional blood culture and related technologies currently in use.

Sepsis Problem

Every year, in the US, 500 thousand people die due to sepsis related complications. Sepsis is a final common pathway for many infections, particularly when an individual’s immunity is low. Body normally releases chemicals into the bloodstream to fight an infection. When the body’s response to these chemicals is out of balance, it results in Sepsis. That is when body’s immune system launches a massive counter attack that harms body’s own tissues and organs. The triggering changes begin to damage body’s vital organ systems that results in dramatic drop in the blood pressure, ultimately leading to death.

Sepsis and septic shock are more common if the individual is very young or very old, have a compromised immune system, have diabetes or cirrhosis, is already sick and frequently in a hospital intensive care unit, have wounds or injuries or severe burns, have invasive devices inserted into the body, and have previously received antibiotics or corticosteroids. Often people can recover from mild sepsis. However, if the body goes into septic shock, the average mortality rate for septic shock is about 40%. Additionally, an episode of severe sepsis may place a person at higher risk of future infections.

Given that widespread infections can progress to Sepsis and Sepsis shock in a matter of few hours, it is imperative that such infections be treated immediately with antibiotics. When given the right antibiotics, there is often a dramatic improvement and speed of cure.

Problem with speedy identification of pathogens

Given that early treatment of sepsis is associated with vastly improved outcomes, rapid diagnosis is essential. However blood culture work is slow and often takes 1-3 days. The diagnosis of sepsis in critically ill patients, housed in hospitals is also challenging because it can be complicated by the presence of inflammation resulting from other underlying diseases and from prior use of antibiotics, making cultures negative. Most testing is done through mass spectrometry that gives mass to charge ratio of ions. Since culture-dependent diagnosis of infection is slow, sometimes patients are given antibiotics, before the results of the culture are available. Patients are given broad spectrum antibiotics and 40% are not effective. In such instances, antibiotics are withdrawn after one cycle of treatment, when the cause of the illness is found to be something else and this can lead to antibiotic resistance.

Bioaffinity Sciences solution will be able to identify pathogens within 10 minutes, 430 fold faster than blood culture. This is cell affinity based, low cost technology. Pathogens are run through microchannels comprising of a surface- grafted scaffold of reactive polymer onto which affinity molecules (sugars, aptamers, vancomycin, and methicillin) have been bio-conjugated. High capacity of the channels allows low numbers of microbes to be quickly identified. The unknown pathogen’s pattern of binding to the channels is recorded, and this pattern is compared to a library of known pathogens. When a match is made, the identity of the pathogen is reported. In addition to speed, this is also more sensitive in terms of the number of different pathogens detected than blood culture.

Disease burden to the healthcare system in the US due to Sepsis

Sepsis management is a major challenge and results in disproportionately high burden in terms of hospital utilization. The average length of stay for sepsis patients in the US is approximately 75% greater than for other conditions. The cost of sepsis management ranks highest among hospital admissions for all disease states. The cost is estimated to be between $25 billion and $27 billion, and represents 13% of total US hospital costs.

Considering that poor sepsis outcomes are directly tied to the delay in diagnosis and treatment, such a dramatic improvement in speed and accuracy of diagnosis leading to speedy and accurate treatment can not only dramatically improve outcome and quality of patient care but also significantly reduce cost of care for hospitals.

The talk was followed by Q&A.

 

Life Sciences Industry Outlook for 2018: Post BiotechShowcase & JPM

JPM 2018 and concurrent events just ended with what may be one of its biggest draws.  As many as 10,000 people from life science industry and its related sectors are likely to have descended upon the city, during last four days.  In addition to JPM event itself, everything health was under review and up for discussion at various conferences including at EBD Group & Demy Colten’s #BiotechShowcase #DigitalMedicine #BTS18 and #WuXiGlobalForum2018 . Networking and deal making continued late in the nights at various receptions held across the city. Receptions by legal firms like #WilsonSonsini #MoFoLLP #ReedSmithLLP attracted some of the biggest crowds.

Overall the tone for 2018, seemed highly optimistic.  BiotechShowcase held a media roundup and echoes of optimism were heard from almost all panelists @barbara_ryan12 @TriangleInsight @CarolineYLChen @adamfeuerstein @statnews @SFBIZronleuty @BrittanyMeiling @endpts @juliet_preston @medcitynews @ldtimmerman .

There is a general agreement that the pace of #innovation in biotech greatly accelerated in 2017 and is likely to continue. According to Luke Timmeerman, “sheer velocity of news in healthtech innovation is fascinating”. Transformative therapies across huge and diverse range of diseases are increasingly focusing on cures and going beyond the short term treatment focus. The surge of innovation has been led by focus on oncology although concern was also raised in one of the panels that we still continue to get stymied and realize how friggin smart the disease of cancer is and if we will truly crack the code on cancer in the immediate upcoming years. All signs are however, that next year we may see critical data from some clinical trials in immuno-oncology space that can cause market spikes.

Here are some areas of concern raised in some of the panels. In 2017, a slight dip was observed in the areas of orphan and rare diseases. Also there seemed to be a general consensus that we need smart policies that incentivize new anti microbial drugs and other treatments for infectious diseases. Due to increasing resistance of antibiotics, there is an ongoing and real fear for some of the infectious diseases to turn into pandemics. These are areas that bold entrepreneurs may focus on. Also medical devices continues to remain somewhat underfunded. Discussions around accelerating healthcare costs and drug pricing issues creeped over into many panels. Entrepreneurs with disruptive pricing innovation in product development as well as healthcare can easily have a tremendous leverage. It can’t be overstressed that finding effective pricing solutions holds key to continued and sustainable growth in healthcare sector.

Discussion in one of the panels focused for a few minutes around large investments in life sciences and if that indicated a healthtech bubble that may be due for a crash.  Indeed, some experts observed that pace of 2017 is unlikely to continue and there may well be a slight dip in 2018. But overall the consensus seemed to be, that a steep and deep pipeline of innovation in R&D is likely to prevent a crash, and the venture funding blizzard is likely to continue. Overall, the feeling among investors and healthcare experts was that among the industry, there is a strong focus on science and people are pursuing innovation with discipline that will ensure unprecedented mechanisms and novel medicines. All this activity is taking healthcare to a new level of cures and sustainability and stability from temporary treatment focus. Exciting indeed to be living in this era of amazing healthcare innovation.

 

 

Biotech Showcase 2018 Preview: What it will mean to be living in the era of cures & more VC money

Lunch plenary sessions are always a huge draw at Biotech Showcase and are very exciting. On day one, a panel moderated by Sara Radcliff from CLSA will take a 60,000 feet view and will discuss what the future holds for biotechnology and life science sector. Biotechnology is increasingly going beyond treatment to focusing on cures. Day 2 panel moderated by Alice Valder Curran from Hogan Lovells with Eric Aguiar from Aisling, Philippe Lopes-Fernandes from Merck and Camille Samuels from Venrock will discuss “what it means to be in the era of cures”. The panel will discuss how public and private markets are still catching up with new policies on coverage, pricing, and liability issues, making it even more challenging to decide what product candidates to pursue.  Lunch panel on day 3 moderated by Ellen Corenswet from Covington & Burling LLP and populated by prominent VCs and industry experts will reflect on 2017 surge of venture capital.

Besides all day information packed sessions focused on key diseases that are getting attention http://bit.ly/2pA45B7 , there are interesting panels and sessions on treatment modalities that are the garnering attention of investors and entrepreneurs http://bit.ly/2CjET4G .  And then there will be panels discussing investment in healthcare, what to expect in 2018 from investment perspective and what are likely to be new drivers of innovation in drug development, and new targets, new trends and new combinations in treatment.

Besides three action packed days, the evenings will be packed with countless receptions and networking will continue late into the night. Concurrent 36th annual J P Morgan Healthcare Conference is expecting 400+ public and private companies to deliver presentations to over 8000 attendees. San Francisco will be taken over by everything health for three days, from January 8th through 10th, 2018.  

While JPM conference is by invitation only event, registration is open for Biotech Showcase at conferences@ebdgroup.com or at https://ebdgroup.knect365.com/biotech-showcase/agenda/1

 

Biotech Showcase 2018 Preview: Treatment focus on microbiome, regenerative medicine, gene & immuno therapies

Biotech Showcase taking place concurrently with the J P Morgan event in San Francisco, will host more than 3,500 attendees and 900+ investors. This event considered to be a critical strategic benchmark for business development activities in biotech, medtech, pharma and digital health, is regarded as among the year’s most important investor meeting place and sets the tone for financial health in these sectors, for the coming year.  Speakers and attendees at Biotech Showcase, will participate, network and listen to over 400 company presentations. Over 2,100 companies from 50+ countries will participate.  Besides 7000+ one on one meetings, general sessions will focus on a number of topics that are significantly expected to impact the healthcare arena. Here are some of the treatment modalities that are getting interest from both investors and entrepreneurs.

A panel moderated by Joseph Gulfo, Executive Director at Lewis Center for healthcare innovation and technology with Thomas Hallam, CEO of Leading Biosciences, Arpita Maiti, Senior Director, ES&I at Pfizer, Glenn Nedwin, CEO of Second Genome, will start day one. Microbiome refers to internal ecosystem of bacteria, widely believed to be residing in the gut. By some researchers estimates, over 90% of all diseases can be traced to the gut and health of the microbiome. However, new research on lung, skin, inflammation, immunology, and neuro microbiome is bringing together experts in neuroscience, gastroenterology, microbiology and more to unlock even larger role that microbiota plays in interacting with itself and its human host, in understanding disease and health and better understand possible treatment modalities.

A panel moderated by Janet Lambert, CEO at Alliance for Regenerative Medicine will discuss next gen cell based immunotherapies with panelists Robert Preti from Hitachi, Bob Azelby from Juno Therapeutics, Manuel Litchman from Mustang Bio, James Noble from Adaptimmunie, Pascal Touchon from Novartis and Scott Walchko from Fate Therapeutics.  Immunotherapies use body’s immune system’s natural capacity to detect and destroy abnormal cells. Immmunotherapies have generated great deal of interest, specifically for treatment of cancers because these regimens present fewer side effects and have less potential for creating resistance when treating microbial diseases.

Gene therapies using genes to treat or prevent diseases, indicate promising though yet risky treatment options. What does the future hold for gene therapies, specially beyond rare diseases?  Bill Lundberg from CRISPR and Geoff Nichol from Biomarin will discuss outlook for gene therapies.  

PS: Here is link to my earlier blog on disease areas that will generate interest and renewed attention in some of the panels http://bit.ly/2pA45B7 . Registration is open for Biotech Showcase at conferences@ebdgroup.com or at https://ebdgroup.knect365.com/biotech-showcase/agenda/1

 

 

Biotech Showcase 2018 Preview: Disease focus: infectious diseases, metabolic syndrome, skin & more

Biotech Showcase taking place concurrently with the J P Morgan event in San Francisco in January 2018, is an investor and networking conference.  Many partnerships and collaborations will be forged with over over 7000 one on one meetings, with opportunities for eager innovators to seek out enthusiastic investors.  Besides one on one meetings, general sessions will focus on a number of disease areas that are significantly expected to impact the healthcare arena.  More blogs to follow and will highlight focus on new treatment modalities.

A panel led by Jennifer Goldstein from Silicon Valley Bank will focus on body’s largest organ that is often misunderstood and frequently underrated, the skin. Panelists Alan Dunton from Purdue Pharma, David Giljohann from Exicure, Jennifer Good from Trevi Therapeutics, Shelley Harman from Aegle and Mark Wilson from MatriSys will discuss early signs and symptoms on the skin that often signal infectious and internal diseases.

Antimicrobial resistance or (AMR) is increasingly a prominent public health concern and has been highlighted by both WHO and CDC. Since the discovery of first antibiotic penicillin in 1928, more than 100 compounds have been created but no new class has been found. In panel moderated by Bibhash Mukhopadhyay at New Enterprise Associates, leading anti-microbial drug development experts, Alan Carr of Needham, Julia Gregory from Contrafect, Kenneth Hillan from Achaogen, Gregory Mario from Taxis Pharma, John Rex from F2G, and Chris Stevens from Arsanis will discuss the tailwinds and headwinds in this space that is getting a fresh second look from both experts and investors.

Current epidemic of metabolic syndrome will be the focus in a panel moderated by Philip Kenner from ClearView with panelists Deborah Dunsire from DTuit, Tomas Landh from Novo Nordisk, Harith Rajagopalan from Fractyl Labs, and Wendye Robbins from Blade Therapeutics. Having any one of the risk factors like high blood pressure, high blood sugar, obesity, high cholesterol, or high triglycerides can greatly increase health risk.  However having a cluster of these conditions together indicate metabolic syndrome and vastly increase health risk. Metabolic syndrome is on the rise, reaching epidemic proportions according to some health experts.

While JPM conference is by invitation only event, registration is open for Biotech Showcase at conferences@ebdgroup.com or at https://ebdgroup.knect365.com/biotech-showcase/agenda/1

Tale of two Americas influencing #Election2016 & Open Letter to Hillary Campaign

Here’s something to think about… the country is soooo divided that Americans are living two distinctively different realities; it is almost like they are living in two different nations.

America 1

Imagine that you live in the Appalachian mountains off of Virginia or Ohio.  Jobs in mining and manufacturing that were once plentiful are gone and no one has offered you re-training to operate in a different reality that has been emerging.  Opioids & alcohol are easily available to dull your pain (in fact, in parts of Ohio, first time more people are dying from opioid addiction than natural causes).  You see yourself as having no future; the best is behind you. You are enormously proud of your heritage, hard work ethic, and your religious values.

Church used to be your anchor but now church attendance has fallen; you have no anchor. You just want someone new at helm in this country, to shake things up – you don’t care how or who it is as long as the person talks to you in a language you understand and holds someone; an outsider responsible for your plight. Your current reality is so painful that you believe you once lived in a phenomenal nation, and you are losing it to outsiders who steal your jobs. Perhaps you don’t see many immigrants where you live, but you hear statistics of jobs being offshored, terrorists rarely target your geographical areas and you don’t often see women in hijabs but you hear about terror attacks when they happen and it scares the s*&^ out of you. Lowering or raising federal minimum wage has no impact here because there is no economy, no jobs. If someone tells you they will build a wall to keep immigrants out then it resonates with you.  If someone promises to bring back outdated mining jobs back, you are filled with hope.

America 2

Now imagine  you are living in a place like Silicon Valley in California, a place on the cutting edge of innovation.  There is a different social and economic reality.  You work with Muslim engineer, Chinese American scientist, Mexican American patent attorney, Iranian American realtor and your child’s teacher is lesbian.  These people are not aliens but your next door neighbors and share similar interests and values, as you.  Price for 2 BR condo in newly built (and fraught with problems), millennium towers in San Francisco costs around $2M and when economy tanked in 2009 (right after George Bush left office), California was hit harder than Ohio and Indiana.  The number of people filing for bankruptcy protection in the first quarter of 2010 ranked California at number one for bankruptcy protection. Right after Florida and Nevada, California also had one of the highest foreclosure rates with 1 in every 192 houses being foreclosed.

I can personally vouch to the impact of extremely high unemployment, while living in a state where everything is more expensive.  Both my businesses died.  I offered recruitment and soft skills training, but no one was hiring and no one had budget for soft skills training.  In 2009, I made less than $10,000.  I sold my house and while my business continued to remain in a nearly dead mode, in 2010 and 2011, I pounded the pavement for hourly jobs at Starbucks etc. for which I was always considered overqualified.  But California is back in business and so am I; better than ever before.

How did California do it?  I think California did it by leveraging the global trends and with a unique blend of cutthroat captialistic competition and compassionate socialism.  Corporations may not be people but both companies and people in CA exhibit this blend of competition and compassion.  I have some more thoughts on this and if I am not distracted by other things, I may study this more and write another blog.  But for this post, I want to focus on what is required of a political leader to bring the two Americas together. 

Open letter to Clinton Campaign

Henceforth, Ms. Clinton must maintain a laser sharp focus on issues that matter in the swing states.  All focus should be solely on large percentage of undecided voters who swing back and forth between Trump and Hillary.  Stop talking about how racist Trump is or that he is adhering to Alt-Right.   More people learn how racist he is, more votes it is getting him. Trump’s entire candidacy is based on inciting hate and division and taking his message to the masses is only enabling him.  Besides, he has so much air time, everything he does and says is covered.

While American women would largely care for issues like equal pay for equal work, do not focus on sexism in Trump campaign.  In California, I saw ads targeting women, with mention of Trump’s abominable remarks denigrating women.  But California is tuned in already,  In the swing states, there are likely to be more women in committed relationships and more than right to choose and equal pay, they care more for jobs for their husbands.  Still for many, it is a man’s serious and primary responsibility to earn a living.

Do not mention immigration.  Trump has made entire immigration dialog in the country about sound bites (big wall, beautiful wall, Mexico will pay for it, deporting etc.) and more confident and more racist his sound bites, more they are striking a chord.  He effectively created an environment of fear where soundbite solutions are very appealing.  I don’t believe Ms. Clinton can give any effective soundbites on immigration.  That is simply not her style and people are not in the mood to listen to logic on this issue.

Do not mention environmental issues.  While this has been President Obama’s crowning achievement, it does not figure in top 10 priorities when you put it on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.  Americans are generally more present oriented but are certainly focusing squarely on short term and immediate benefits during this election season.  The more Trump talks about how things will change on November 8, less concerned people are about benefits to future generations.  

Also, do not focus in the debate on Trump’s lack of foreign policy experience.  Americans often care little about foreign relations.  President GHW Bush made great strides in foreign relations and he got little credit for it.  Besides Trump scored a victory looking Presidential in Mexico.  More than that, no one cares.

Think of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs that goes from fulfillment of basic needs and only after they are satisfied, it progresses to focus on social needs.  When people’s basic needs of healthy food, clean water, and safety are not satisfied, focusing on social issues like women’s rights, race relations, immigration, pay equality, and equal rights for LGBTQ, are a luxury they can’t afford.  While Trump may be trigger happy to get access to the nuke button, for America 1, it does not feel like a looming disaster; instead, it enhances their feeling of safety.

Here are the issues that Clinton campaign should singularly focus on.  

Focus on JOBS

Forget all incredible and horrific things said and done by Trump that make him unfit to be the President. Stay singularly focused on jobs and the economy and his lack of concrete plan to create jobs.  In his post convention interview with George Stephanopoulos, Trump was questioned about jobs.  See clip below at 11 minutes, where Trump when asked why he brings in people from overseas to work at Mara Lago resort in Florida, he tried to duck the question by taking talking about other companies offshoring jobs and Stephanopoulos keeps bringing the discussion back to his issuing almost 500 offshore visas since 2010 and Trump deflects it again saying everyone does it because they can’t find American workers.  Hummm, they can’t be re-trained for low level jobs then how is he going to pressure Samsung and Apple to bring skilled jobs outsourced to Indian and Chinese engineers at fraction of the cost, back to America?  Use this clip with Clinton’s concrete plan to continue to create job growth in America.  This is not a sensational piece of news that elite media (largely favored by America 2) will play over and over but you must capitalize on.

http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/video/donald-trump-41028199

Respect & concrete benefits to America’s Veterans

America owes to our veterans.  But that sincerity must be expressed with something more tangible than “America loves you and is deeply grateful to you for your service”.  If one vet feels strongly enough to give away his purple heart to Trump then that is one too many vets disillusioned, and whom we must re-engage with.  Our vets must have certain level of job security, access to constant retraining, access to healthcare, including easy access to mental healthcare.  There must be early intervention before PTSD takes an enormous toll on their lives and the lives of their loved ones.  Talk about how Obamacare has enabled easier access to healthcare for so many people.

Access to mental healthcare and PTSD treatment

Trauma has become a significant part of modern life.  It is not only our vets who need access to treatment for PTSD, but also foster care children who are often shuttled around from family to family, from one location to another.  Children who witness domestic violence, often suffer from PTSD, while their needs may be completely ignored at home and outside.

Concrete plan to deal with opioids and other drugs

 As mentioned above, in parts of Ohio, first time more people are dying from opioid addiction than natural causes.  Obama administration and FDA has been deeply concerned about escalating use of opioids and other drugs but how frequently do we hear from Hillary campaign about the plan that is in process?  For instance, the Obama administration is making it easier for doctors and law enforcement to use anti-addiction drugs.  FDA is putting in place steps so that companies seeking approval of any new opioids, must include abuse-deterrent properties and appropriate labeling. But more importantly, there are concrete steps in place to deal with current trends of opioid abuse, including additional training to prescribers on pain management and safe prescribing, encouragement for abuse deterrent formulations, make naloxone more easily available to treat opioid overdose, and encouraging new class of pain medicines without the same risks as opioids.  Ms. Clinton must relentlessly address opioid abuse and significant strides being made under Obama administration to counter that.  

Finally, I humbly suggest that Hillary campaign and the media stop playing over and over and over Trump soundbites that show his racial, gender and other biases – contrary to people being turned off by such bigotry, in the climate of fear he has created and the foundation of hate he has laid, his bigotry gives people a feeling of safety and hope. Considered dialog detailing the history of events and people as done by Rachel Maddow and others and late night shows (Colbert, Noah, Bee, Oliver and others) that point out ridiculous aspects of Trump messages with humor, are however excellent.

Disruptive Innovation on Boundaries of Disciplines – TiEcon tracks & Discount Code

Are you still playing inside the boundaries of disciplines?  Play on the boundaries, instead.  There are huge opportunities for entrepreneurship and innovation on the boundaries of disciplines.  All industries are impacted and transformed by the increasing interconnectedness with technological advances in IoT, Big Data, Cloud Computing, Machine Learning and more.  This transformation is most apparent in  heavily regulated and somewhat slower to change industries like, “Oil and Gas” and “Healthcare”.  Any industry that worked in a silo before is likely to leap forward into the new age.   These areas are likely to experience most disruptive innovation and are  brimming with opportunities for entrepreneurs thinking outside the discipline boundaries.

Oil & Gas industry is on the verge of major transformation.  Entrepreneurs with industry specific innovations to enhance operational efficiency and minimize negative environmental impact, will score big.  Most recent environmental concerns have been around the impact of fracking or hydraulic fracturing, a process by which water and sand mixture is pumped deep below the earth’s surface, into earth’s dense shale rock formations.  Fracking produces many long narrow fractures in the rock formation and helps convert organic matter embedded within the rock to synthetic oil and gas.  It has vastly improved oil production.  It is estimated that what can be produced by a vertical well in 30 to 35 years, can be done in a horizontal well, in as short a span as 6 months.  However, recent studies indicate that fracking has led to an increase in seismic activity.  Thus far the activity was minimal but it has now been growing in both strength and number, with increase in fracking.  Many Oil and Gas companies have established innovation centers in Silicon Valley to assess and garner technological help to expedite learning about environmental impact and explore if technology might help intervene to minimize negative impact, in addition to enhancing operational efficiency. 

Healhcare has also emerged as the most attractive area, pulling in major investment dollars.  Internet of things, for instance, will help bring in focus, the prospect of connected health.  As increasingly incentives are tied to preventative medicine, providers will look for opportunities for seamless, integrated care.   Cloud and big data will enhance the possibility to learn from collective knowledge, access wisdom of the crowd, and enhance quality of health with lesser investment of resources.  Big pharmaceutical companies and biotech will look to utilizing technology in bringing therapies to market, with minimal wastage of resources and dollars.  Opportunities exist to transform the process of drug development http://bit.ly/1xzpdFx& http://bit.ly/14pkhRO , to digital health advances enabling early identification and treatment of diseases http://bit.ly/11MlM9e , to even better monitoring of medical adherence.  While reimbursement is increasingly emerging as a major challenge, insurance providers will look for disruptive, and long term, cost saving innovations.

TiEcon 2015, largest entrepreneurship conference, taking place at Santa Clara Convention Center on May 15 and 16, will feature these new tracks on healthcare http://bit.ly/1OOCV9Z and oil and gas http://bit.ly/1HqQkoc, in addition to featuring companies and speakers making waves in Data Economy, Internet of Things, and Cloud Security tracks.

Register for TiEcon and come and play on the boundaries of disciplines; jump from track to track, network with multi-track participants, angels, VCs, and learn and get inspired.  TiEcon will take place at Santa Clara Convention Center, Santa Clara, CA on May 15 and 16.  Register through this link  https://www.123signup.com/register?id=ygszb&ref=4182698 to get a $100 discount on the two-day conference at the non-member rate.  When prompted, enter the promo code VOL500 at checkout.

PS –  I am looking to fill a number of full time and contract engineering opportunities in mechanical, quality, software, electrical, firmware engineering in CA & TX.  Details are posted in JOBS category at www.darshanavnadkarni.wordpress.com .   Some of my full time opportunities are very exciting with a huge potential upside and truly disruptive technology.  Resumes can be sent to wd_darshana at hotmail dot com

Healthcare Track Preview at TiEcon 2015

Healthcare industry is poised to go through impressive transformation, in the coming decade.  What some experts have dubbed a 3D transformation, changes in life sciences are happening through massive changes in Diagnostics, Digital Devices, and Data.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Consider this.  TiEcon, the largest entrepreneurship conference, focused for several years on computing, storage, hardware, software, firmware, semi conductors, gaming and mobile technologies.  HealthTech was not the focus at TiEcon.  But HeathTech has recently emerged as one of the hottest areas to invest. Besides offering a special healthcare focused track, on day 2, May 16th, healthtech is integrally woven in most of the other tracks, at TiEcon 2015.  Technology has impacted all areas of our lives such that no entrepreneur could look at any industry as a silo.  To register go to https://www.123signup.com/register?id=ygszb&ref=4182698 to get a $100 discount on the two-day conference at the non-member rate.  When prompted, enter the promo code VOL500 at checkout:

In fact, most of the disruptive innovation is happening on the boundaries of disciplines.  This is most pertinent in life science, hospitals and healthcare, healthtech, biotech, pharma, drug development, medtech, digital health, mobile health, wearables space.  Every new intersection point between health and an emerging technology, brings its own terminology.  Collectively, the aim is to positively transform the quality of lives of healthy and sick people.  So how is life science focus woven across several tracks at TiEcon?

John Kapoor, a serial entrepreneur, who is number 577 on Forbes Billionaire List, is going to give a grand keynote address on day 2, Saturday.  Kapoor, whose net worth is estimated at $3.5B, has founded and guided two pharmaceutical companies, Insys Therapeutics and Akorn Pharmaceuticals and led them to exceptional success.  Pharmaceutical industry is slowly but surely changing to innovate faster, cheaper, more cost efficient process of drug development.  Here is link to my recent blog on novel approaches to drug development http://bit.ly/1xzpdFx .

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Here is another interesting keynote to watch out for.  After helping coin the term, “Data Scientist”, while still in the academia, D. J. Patil did some initial work on deciphering the complexity of the weather patterns and impact of bioweapons proliferation in Central Asia.  Here is link to my blog on Patil in 2013 http://bit.ly/YYyOxd .  After stints in eBay, PayPal and LinkedIn, Patil was appointed by President Obama, as Chief Data Scientist at the White House. Among other responsibilities, Patil will work on the Administration’s Precision Medicine Initiative, focusing on utilizing advances in data to enable clinicians select most effective treatments.  Here IBM’s Watson, an artificial intelligence system with access to millions and millions of pages of structured and unstructured data, to help in efficient diagnosis and suggest possible avenues for treatment, deserves special mention.  Here is my link to Dave Farucci’s keynote at TiEcon, several years ago http://bit.ly/JOZmwH .

Besides the keynotes and healthcare representation on panels in other tracks, Day 2 focused Healthcare track panels will address such varied topics as role of “Medical Devices in a Changing Landscape” and “Trials and Tribulations of Adopting Technology in Hospitals”.  Eminent speakers include, MD and CEO at Good Samaritan Hospital, Paul Beaupre;  Anupam Pathak, Founder & CEO of Lift Labs, acquired by Google X, Brett Knappe, Senior Director of Strategy at Medtronic; Satnam Alag, VP, Software, Illumina; and Darius Naigamwalla, President at Campbell Alliance.  Representation from technology rich companies such as IBM, GE, Google X, and Tibco, in discussions on healthcare, along with medtech and big pharma companies like Medtronic, J&J, 23&me, Illumina and Genentech AND representation from healthcare providers like Good Sam, will make for very rich dialogue.  Register for TiEcon at https://www.123signup.com/register?id=ygszb&ref=4182698 to get a $100 discount on the two-day conference at the non-member rate.  When prompted, enter the promo code VOL500 at checkout: