Alex Popov, Director, Digital Health Solutions, Novartis
As immersive media such as virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) become more prominent, Alex Popov was tasked with launching an enterprise-wide immersive service within Novartis. The purpose of this service was to give the business units similar capabilities in AR/VR application development and hardware implementation to the already streamlined web and mobile services. The use cases could be for marketing, internal training, manufacturing operations, or anything else the company might need.
The first successful service example was for the ophthalmology franchise, where they created a first-person VR video series that placed HCPs inside the body of patients to help them better understand what it’s like to live with symptoms. Different vignettes were created to showcase normal day-to-day activities the patient goes through and the hurdles they must overcome because of their disease. The company then armed national account representatives with Oculus Quest devices to share the content with HCPs.
In another example, Alex and his team developed an internal training program using the Microsoft HoloLens, which allowed the company to take advantage of remote capabilities and AR to train employees without having to fly people to multiple locations around the world. Ultimately, this saved the company both time and money—and made it easier on the employees.
Due to the success of this new immersive service, it has been scaled to 15 countries with a portfolio of more than 20 applications.
Alex had also served as the U.S. ambassador for Novartis’ global innovation council to explore further ways to help the company innovate and currently serves as the technology lead in the U.S. Innovation Lab group.
