Steve Davenport, Senior Director, U.S. Commercial Data Management & Strategy, Takeda Pharmaceuticals
Takeda, a 242-year-old pharma manufacturer, understands that unlocking the potential of data and digital is the key to delivering breakthroughs for patients. As the lead for Commercial Data Strategy for Takeda’s U.S. Business Unit, Steve Davenport is often the one responsible for turning that data into breakthroughs across several therapeutic areas, including neuroscience, gastrointestinal, rare disease, and plasma-derived therapies.
In 2023, Steve led once such initiative that both delivered direct patient benefits while at the same time created a scalable framework that has begun to rollout similar capabilities in other markets. Steve’s data science team—in close partnership with marketing, sales, and other brand teams—worked to develop a groundbreaking algorithm to identify Hunter’s syndrome patients much earlier in their diagnostic journey. Hunter’s syndrome is a rare genetic disorder that causes abnormalities in many organs and can lead to death during teenage years. Often by the time a patient is diagnosed, the disease has significantly progressed leading to limited treatment options. Therefore, any ability to identify a patient with Hunter’s syndrome as early as possible can lead to a longer lifespan and a higher quality of life.
Utilizing the new algorithm in concert with a compliant and cross-functional team approach, a young patient was identified and referred to genetic testing. Both he and his brother tested positive for Hunter’s, demonstrating a staggering improvement in pre-diagnostic identification. Following this breakthrough, Steve and his team are partnering with data science to expand this type of capability to areas such as primary immune deficiency and hereditary angioedema as well as others on the Takeda roadmap.
