At the heart of Reuters Events: Pharma USA 2023, held from March 28 to 29 in Philadelphia, were discussions around how the industry can better ensure patients are truly at the center of everything pharma does. The event kicked off with a fireside chat between Alexander Hardy, CEO of Genentech, and Chuck Henderson, CEO of the American Diabetes Association, in which Hardy noted he wants his legacy to involve making significant progress in improving health equity. Hardy believes that includes making workforces more representative of the patients they serve (such as through Genentech programs like Kindergarten to Careers and Futurelab+); improving representation in clinical trials; and ensuring treatments are more affordable (he called the Inflation Reduction Act’s Medicare Part D reform “fantastic” and wants to see it go even further).
In another session, Julie Kim, President of Takeda’s U.S. Business Unit and U.S. Country Head, spoke of the rapid pace of technology progression in healthcare and the need to proceed with both caution and curiosity. As she noted, data typically likes to put things in simple boxes which creates biases that must be rooted out. That is also why caution must be applied to using generative AI, which relies too heavily on existing datasets. While technology has it benefits, she spoke of the need to listen to communities to better understand their needs. For example, she mentioned a church’s “Haircut and Ham” event, which encouraged men to get a free screening for prostate cancer by also offering a free haircut as well as a free ham.
Elsewhere during the event, Gilead’s Chief Commercial Officer Johanna Mercier said we need more education around HIV to further improve treatment rates. Nuray Yurt, PhD, Head, Digital, Data & Analytics Activation for Human Health at Merck, said companies need to stop worrying about data quality and start finding better ways to utilize data to make meaningful changes. And Craig McGettigan, who at the time was AVP, Head of Omnichannel Enablement at Sanofi, spoke of the “content tsunami” needed to make omnichannel truly successful. But that is only a small sample of the ideas exchanged over the two days.
The event will return to Philadelphia next year from March 26 to 28, learn more at: https://events.reutersevents.com/pharma/pharma-usa.
(Photos below courtesy of Reuters Events)
