PM: I’m Pooja Majumdar, I am a director at Silicon Valley Bank in the Healthcare Life Sciences Startup Banking Team. And Silicon Valley Bank is alive. Just wanted to start the session with that. We are back and backed by a solid, stable, 125-year-old bank called First Citizens, and Silicon Valley Bank is a division of First Citizens, and we still remain committed to the innovation economy, after the tumultuous 90 days that we’ve had. So, super excited to be here supporting innovators, investors, and the ecosystem. And I’ll let Eugenio introduce himself.

EZ: I’m Eugenio Zuccarelli. I’m a data science manager at CVS Health. It’s a pleasure to be here. And I’ve been working in AI and data science for quite a long time. So at the intersection of healthcare as a sector and AI and data science, and how can we use some of these technologies to provide benefits to the people and also to the providers?

JH: Hello, everybody. My name is John Hahn. I’m from FFF Enterprises, and I’m the Chief Information Officer. So I have two roles at FFF. One is a corporate IT function where I’m a senior IT leader providing IT services and responsible for IT strategy for FFF and all the subsidiary businesses. A second role is we have an internal innovation hub called Forum Innovations. So me and a team of people are working very closely with our business stakeholders to develop new innovative digital health solutions. Very happy to be here today. Thank you.

PM: Excellent. I love the opening session by John and Bill, and they laid the groundwork for where the health tech market is headed. Just a quick tidbit, just because I’m a local and I’m proud of New York, in Q1 of 2023, New York led the entire market here in the nation in terms of deals and dollars in the health tech space, which is incredible. So just wanted to set the stage that investments are happening, deals are being done, and health tech received close to $5 billion in investments just in Q1 of 2023 out of a total of $6.8 billion of investment dollars poured in the healthcare life sciences sector. So that should give you an indication of the appetite there is to see innovation in the health tech space. So, I’ll start with Eugenio. Eugenio, you’re a data science expert, you’re with CVS Health, one of the foremost healthcare companies in the country, the largest pharmacy retailer. But beyond that, CVS is also at the forefront of using and leveraging AI, data science in not just improving their operations, but truly moving the needle on the healthcare side. So can you dig a little deeper and share your thoughts and what are you doing at CVS Health in your role?

EZ: Yeah, definitely. And let me say, obviously, that I’m a bit biased, but I would say that the single technology that’s providing the most value and the most potential is Rennell AI. And it’s true, obviously, for a big corporation like CVS Health, but it’s true in general. And we’ve been, for a long time, heard that healthcare is ripe for disruption, but it feels like it’s the right time where we can already see AI and data science really having a positive impact on people, on providers. And I’d say this is true for most applications, the AI applications right now, but the most promising tend to be at the intersection of what’s usually called predictive analytics. And so it’s all about trying to shift the concept of medicine and healthcare from a concept of curing to a concept of preventing. And obviously, if we have a tool like AI and data science, why not use it? Why not leverage all of the information we have available, all of this big data, to try and understand through the patterns within this data, whether we can understand some of the future trends. And this is also the idea behind most of these AI applications, is how can we look into these huge amounts of data, look at all of the diagnosis codes, procedure codes, CD10 codes, and so on. And together with demographics and all of the other information available, how can we understand historically what’s happened over time and how can we use this information to prevent basically similar things to happen in the future? And so I would say that one of the areas where I see the most potential now, it’s exactly this area of trying to figure out diagnosis a bit better, trying to support doctors, obviously not substituting them or replacing them, but rather to enhance their ability to do a diagnosis. And AI is a great tool to do this on a shorter timeframe, so preventing rather than curing after things happen. And at the same time also, in terms of providing ideally some help on the more administrative side. I see a lot of potential in things like ChatGPT at some point in providing not just help in diagnosing, which tends to be a bit of a tricky topic, especially if it’s in the hands of patients themselves, but especially something like administrative tasks, EHR management and data entry, I see a lot of potential in AI too. So, definitely a lot there to be hopeful for.

PM: That’s excellent. So my background is very atypical as compared to the panel here. They both are leaders in technology. I have a pretty academic background. Going to you, John, you serve as the Chief Information Officer of FFF Enterprises, which is one of the foremost suppliers of vaccine and blood products, plasma products. And it’s a privately held company with $3 billion in revenue. So people would think that you’re just a vendor, a supplier, but that’s not the case. You are a healthcare innovation company. So how are you and your team driving the change and truly leveraging technology, not just from a growth perspective for your org, but using innovation to move the needle in terms of healthcare

JH: Yeah, well, thank you very much for that question. And as John Hammit and Bill Taranto have stated, this is really quite an exciting time in digital health. Since the pandemic, the pace feels like it has really accelerated and a lot of innovations are happening across the board in the industry. We at FFF have also been busy expanding our core business in pharmaceutical wholesale distribution and specialty home infusion, which have been our two core businesses generating majority of our revenue today to expand into a digital health arena to move to patient-centered care. So I’m going to share a few examples with you this morning to just give you an idea, and I look forward to interacting with you and talking with you throughout the week more about each one of these. So first, we’ve been working on a program called InCircle, and we have two markets that we’re targeting right now. One is a payer market. The second is a manufacturer market, pharmaceutical manufacturer. So on the payer side, our tool is currently being utilized as a decision support tool by the payers to make a claims adjudication decision, such a decision support system, to be able to approve claims for those patients that actually have been actually diagnosed for the therapy that’s being prescribed, and for those patients who will also respond well to the treatment. So this is an incredible system that without such a system, people are making decisions that are sometimes erroneous, and patients either get denied of claims or even the other ones that get approved, perhaps they’re the best candidates for the treatment. On the manufacturer side, we have the same tool using similar algorithms that the manufacturers are using during clinical trial, and there’s a crucial step in a clinical trial when you are signing up the participants in the study. And this tool actually then using very advanced algorithm to pre-screen and enroll those study subject candidates who truly meet the study criteria. And it is today being used by a manufacturer doing a global clinical trial study. So it’s quite exciting. Another example that I want to share with you is a brand new system that is currently in development called ClearTrust. And ClearTrust is utilizing smart contracts and a rules engine to actually improve drug access and provide value evidence — evidence value-based outcome. So it’s also quite exciting. And we have two speakers lined up to speak more about InCircle and ClearTrust at the conference. So Dr. Todd Levine, who has been a member of the InCircle team from the beginning will be following us, I believe, at 9.45 a.m. this morning. Scott Kornhauser, who’s one of the founders of ClearTrust will be speaking tomorrow, I believe at 11.45. Last one that I want to mention real quick is we also have a very innovative and exciting technology-based solution called RightNow Inventory, which is an IoT cabinet technology. And using that, we’re actually in the process of tracking naloxone, which is opioid overdose reversal agent. And we’re really passionate about this project because I don’t know how many of you know this, but on an annual basis, over 100,000 people die from opioid overdose. So making these drugs available and giving them access with minimum barriers using our technology has a potential of saving many, many lives. So, we’re quite excited. So those are a few examples of where we’re applying digital health technologies and expanding ourselves beyond our core businesses.

PM: Thank you, John. Thank you so much for doing such meaningful work. Eugenio, a question for you, just building off of what you said. I know you’re doing some amazing work at NHS in England, and can you share a little bit more about the insights you’ve gathered and the momentum you’ve built in that project?

EZ: Yeah, definitely. And with the NHS, the National Health Assistance in the UK was a great opportunity to see some of real-life scenarios coming from a tech background, coming from a data science background, some of the real-life scenarios and how sometimes it’s really challenging to come from a data science background without having real-life experience and all of the challenges of doctors, of providers, hospitals, and so on. And a lot of work there was along the lines of what we’re saying, trying to analyze huge amounts of records, millions of people across the UK, and trying to understand across all of the diagnosis, procedures, submissions, and so on, how can we obviously understand at the population health level some of these characteristics, and to drive also policies and try to help the nation, but also at the individual level if we cancreate models. So, artificial intelligence models, machine learning models, that can be able to ideally predict what are adverse outcomes. So, the idea is that if we can understand whether a person is going to be admitted to a hospital, if it’s going to be staying in the hospital for ten days rather than two days, we can obviously have a direct impact on the person, in terms of quality of life, even more so if the adverse outcome is something like mortality, of course, but even have an impact on the whole health care system. And this is something extremely relevant for the US, too, because every health care system across the world has huge issues in terms of funding, in terms of infrastructure, keeping up with an aging population. So, the idea there was how can we create these models and then provide these insights to the hospitals for obviously purposes of having better impact on the people. We want to make them healthier, we want to get them home sooner rather than later, but at the same time, we can also provide this information to the hospitals and to the doctors, so that we can better plan everything about hospital management. They can better manage the number of beds they have available, better manage how to allocate all the resources, and obviously, drive down costs. So, obviously, a lot of learning experiences, especially on the objectives and some of the pain points of the health professionals, but a great learning, especially on what’s now called value-based care. So, if we can provide value, if we can provide value to people, better health, and so on, everything is aligned, all the priorities are aligned. They’re not in conflict with each other. If we provide better health outcomes to the people, we can also have better financials. Both for the patients, obviously, if they’re healthier, they do not go to the hospital. They’re going to have financial incentives themselves. They’re not going to have to spend all the money in terms of hospitalizations and the utilization, but at the same time, also, the healthcareindustry, the healthcare sector, the whole infrastructure can benefit by having less utilization and allocate resources only to the cases that are most important and severe. So, definitely, a lot of learning lessons there.

PM: That’s amazing. A lot of great work there, Eugenio. I know we are getting close to our 15 minutes, but when I have an amazing panel, I always like to ask them, what are your bold predictions for the coming months or for 2023? John, maybe we can start with you.

JH: Well, I think this might be coming across as really a bold prediction in healthcare, but I do see signs of generative AI adoption increasing over the next 12 months. There’s one Gartner survey that I saw that shows that all applications by 2024, 50% of them will actually have some form of generative AI conversational or AI type capabilities built into it. And that is an increase of 5% only a few years ago in 2020. So it went from 5% to forecast is over 50% by 2024.

PM: Excellent. Eugenio?

EZ: Well, I’ll also say generative AI, but slightly different terms of the applications. I think that a lot of the potentials are in the diagnosing business, doing better diagnosis, providing tools for doctors and patients themselves sometimes to better understand what’s going on. But I feel that there are a lot of complications there, a lot of challenges, ethical challenges as well. I definitely think though that generative AI will help a lot on the administrative side. So the epidemic of doctors burning out because of the amount of time they have to spend on administrative tasks, data entry, dealing with EHR systems. I feel something like generative AI could help a lot in better getting these summaries from the doctors, putting them into structural information in the systems. And also maybe one day integrate with some voice assistant technology so the doctor can just talk out loud and say what they are actually seeing in the visit with a patient. And then having the generative AI system type everything up and deal with all the administrative tasks, so lowering the burden there.

PM: Thank you so much. I feel that AI is going to be the Time Person of the Year. I won’t be surprised if that happens in December. But thank you so much, John, Eugenio, for sharing your insights. It was great to speak with you.