Evidence-Based Digital Health in Pharma Summit

Carrie Northcott, PhD is a Senior Director within the Digital Medicine and Translational Imaging (DMTI) group in Early Clinical Development (ECD) at Pfizer, located in Cambridge, MA. She leads a diverse team that is evaluating and validating the use of wearable digital devices to more fully understand and characterize physiological endpoints, such as quantitatively measuring nighttime scratch and sleep. Northcott has a diverse scientific background in pharmacology, toxicology, and physiology which provides unique insight into understanding how these endpoints provide meaningful information to patients, doctors and researchers to better treat and understand diseases. 

Northcott received her PhD in pharmacology and toxicology from Michigan State University and her master’s and bachelor of science degrees in agricultural sciences/agronomy from the University of Illinois. She has published numerous scientific publications in various fields of scientific study and is actively involved in various scientific societies and volunteers within the community.

Andrew L’Huillier is an Associate Director of Global Regulatory Affairs in Precision Medicine and Digital Health at GSK. His interests lie in immunology, stem cell science, and the intersections of these two subjects in human biology and medicine. He is actively exploring ways to better diagnose and treat related diseases. Andrew gained his BS in Biology from Saint Joseph’s University, after which he gained his PhD in Immunology from Rutgers University.

Robert “Joe” Mather is a Vice President and head of Digital Science in Pfizer’s Early Clinical Development Organization. Joe has over twenty-five years of pharmaceutical research and clinical development experience. Before joining early clinical development, he had been a leader in Pfizer and AstraZeneca’s research & development organizations. Joe currently leads the digital science group. His team validates digital health technologies, qualifies novel digital endpoints, and continues to expand Pfizer’s decentralized trial capabilities furthering Pfizer’s goal of becoming a leader in digital medicine.

Lauren Bataille is the Head of Digital Patient Health & Innovation, Cardiovascular, Renal & Metabolism (CVRM), at AstraZeneca. She is a clinical researcher with over a decade of experience working at the intersection of technology and healthcare. Lauren is currently leading digital transformation and trial innovations within pharma, serves as a board member of the Digital Medicine Society (DiMe) and as an advisor to MedTech startups.

Meri Kay Scott is the Associate Vice President of Digital Health Research & Development at Eli Lilly. More than 20 years of global clinical development experience has provided Meri Kay with a breadth of work experiences in drug development, management, leadership, clinical trial development/execution, Clinical Project Management, Global Clinical Operations across therapeutic areas, and external partnerships (CRO, Alliances). Over this course of time, she has gained experience from early drug development to the market with a focus on Phase 2-4 programs in diabetes. She continually strives to have an impact, add value at all levels, and succeed in bringing new medicines to patients.

Adam is an Executive Investment Director and is based in Boston. He focuses on investments in the digital health space. He is a trained scientist with a PhD in neuroscience from University of Geneva, University of Lausanne and EPFL, Switzerland. He has published several articles in international peer reviewed journals and lectured at international conferences on developmental neuroscience and retinal degeneration.

Adam started his career with Boehringer Ingelheim Corporate Market Access Team in 2012 as a Senior Global Payer Strategy Manager in Ingelheim, Germany. He was managing global pricing and market access strategies for the HCV and oncology portfolio and driving the development of innovative market access approaches and payment schemes. He then moved to the UK and Ireland in 2015 to head the Pricing and Contracting Team, working across the whole Boehringer Ingelheim prescription medicines portfolio. Adam returned to Germany in 2018 to lead the Strategic Market Access Initiatives as well as Tech Partnerships within the Global Healthcare Affairs and Patient Engagement Team. Prior to joining Boehringer Ingelheim Adam worked as a life sciences strategy consultant for IQVIA, IBM Watson Health Consulting and Simon-Kucher & Partners in Belgium, France, Germany, Poland and The United States. He also worked as a research assistant at Jules Gonin Eye Hospital in Lausanne, Switzerland and as a Junior Project Leader at AnalyCen in Poland and Sweden.

Dr. Jin Lee is the Director of Digital Health at Astellas Pharma Inc. She focuses on new product development and commercialization globally. Dr. Lee formerly worked at the innovation centers and venture arms of Humana and Providence St. Joseph Health. She also co-founded and worked in multiple startups in the maternal/ child, education, and restaurant space. Based in Silicon Valley, Dr. Lee advises and invests in multiple digital health startups and accelerator programs. She also serves on multiple nonprofit boards, including the American Heart Association and the Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association. Dr. Lee is a Presidential Leadership Scholar (selected by four American presidential centers) and has been a featured speaker at multiple events such as the TEDxPeacePlaza, Sirius XM radio, SXSW, American Academy of Pediatrics, and Aspen Institute Childrens Forum. She received her Ph.D in Neuropsychology from the University of Oxford and BA in Biology and Neuroscience from the University of Pennsylvania.

Jeff is head of Digital Opportunities for Otsuka America Pharmaceutical Inc. In that role, he chairs the Otsuka Digital Pioneer Initiative which actively invests in digital mental health therapies and supporting technology. Jeff has more than 15 years of healthcare leadership experience and previously held roles at UnitedHealth Group and Children’s of Minnesota. Prior to entering healthcare, he spent time in the retail and technology industries. He is an active angel investor and sits on several boards. He holds an MBA from the University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management and a BA from Concordia College.

Andrew Robertson is the Global Head of Strategy and Transformation for Sanofi-R&D Digital & Data Sciences. Andrew has more than 16 years of collective experience working in life sciences, policy and law, and has authored multiple peer-reviewed articles on topics pertaining to health product development, in vitro diagnostics, health technology law and innovation incentives.

Rebecca graduated from Boston College’s Carroll School of Management with a Bachelor’s of Science in Finance and Business Analytics. During her time at Boston College, she was the Chair of a funding body responsible for allocating over $1M to student organizations and a member of the Undergraduate Government’s Financial Affairs committee.

She began her career at Foundation Medicine where she spent two summers working on Cloud Cost Optimization and Cloud Governance. Rebecca is AWS Cloud Practitioner Certified. During her time at Foundation, Rebecca discovered the power of HealthTech and the benefit it offers patients. She is excited to learn more about the industry and play a role in empowering entrepreneurs to challenge the status quo of healthcare.

At Takeda, Rebecca has worked with the Cloud Business Office and Enterprise Architecture. She has been developing a technology acquisition governance process and also spearheaded the development of an Open-Source Software policy.

Kelly H. Zou, Ph.D., PStat® is Head of Global Medical Analytics and Real World Evidence, Viatris Inc. She is an elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association and an Accredited Professional Statistician. Previously at Pfizer Inc, she was Vice President and Head of Medical Analytics & Insights; Senior Director of Real World Evidence, Group Lead of Methods & Algorithms and Analytic Science Lead; Senior Director of Statistics. She was Associate Professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School, as well as Director of Biostatistics at its affiliated teaching hospitals. She was Associate Director of Rates at Barclays Capital. She received both MA and PhD degrees in Statistics from the University of Rochester. She completed her Postdoctoral Fellowship at Harvard. Her research interests include health policy, real world evidence, signal detection, and artificial intelligence, with over 150 professional articles and 5 books. She was featured as an Outstanding Woman in Data Analytics by Forbes, an Inspirational Women in Statistics & Data Science by Wiley, and an Accomplished Woman in Statistics and Data Science by the American Statistical Association. She was the winner of the Chief Data and Analytics Officers’ Forum’s Future Thinking Award and Reuters Events Pharma USA’s Most Valuable Data & Insights Initiative Team Award.

Bhaskar Dutta is the Head of Digital Health Program Management at Alexion Pharmaceuticals. Bhaskar has over 14 years of experience in leading data science groups by defining the vision, executing strategic plans, and facilitating cross-functional alignments. He has delivered high-impact data science and AI solutions for the pharmaceutical industry, healthcare start-up, academia, and government.

Bhaskar received a Ph.D in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Systems Biology, from the University of Maryland, and has published 24 peer-reviewed articles in high-impact journals, e.g., Nature Communications, Science Signaling, Cancer Cell, Oncogene, Nature Scientific Data, and Cell Systems.

Alisan is principal UX researcher & design thinking catalyst at Novo Nordisk A/S in Denmark. His work focuses on using design to improve the quality of care (QoC) for people living with chronic diseases. Since 2007, Alisan has partnered with Fortune 100 companies, universities, non-profits and start-ups where he led strategic innovation programs, service design initiatives, and NPD (new product development) projects.

Meera Atkins is the Vice President, Medical Management, of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota. She is an experienced CMO and Senior Physician Leader/change agent with a history of working in the digital insurance and benefits industry. She has expertise in medical operations, digital, product, population health and trend management in all lines of business. Meera is passionate about improving member and provider engagement and outcomes (health and financial) with innovation and redesign of traditional programs coupled with integration and development of digital and product solutions.

Bill Rush is a Senior Director, Value and Access, Digital Healthcare Solutions, at Sanofi, where he is responsible for developing and implementing launch strategy and execution plans to support the Digital Healthcare. Bill received a MBA in Finance from Loyola University Maryland, and has worked in the healthcare industry for over 12 years. 

Joanna Kemp is a Senior Director and Digital Health Commercialization Lead, Hematology and Cell Therapy, at Bristol Myers Squibb. Joanna has spent most of her career in oncology in various roles at institutions including NYP Weill Cornell, Yale University, and Boston Medical Center. She also served as Nursing Director and Administrative Director of Cancer Clinical Trials at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center from 2016-2020, managing strategic direction and oversight of 70+ cross functional staff and a portfolio of 250+ clinical trials.

Ofer Waks is a Director of Digital Strategy and Innovation at Pfizer, where he leads cross-functional, scalable innovation programs, as well as digital product scoping, development, and management. He also leads external digital health company assessments, strategic partnership generation, and use case development from ideation and scoping to refinement and implementation. Ofer received a Bachelor of Pharmacy from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, before going on to gain an MBA in Healthcare Management from The Wharton School.

Cris joined Sanofi Ventures as Partner in 2020 to lead venture capital investments and strategy in Digital Health & Data Science Innovation, globally. He holds a 20 year track record of building and launching emerging technologies, startups and innovation platforms with some of the largest organizations in the world. 

Prior to Sanofi, Cris was a founding team member of Johnson & Johnson Innovation and Global Head of Digital Innovation since 2013. He held chief digital and data responsibilities, driving strategy and external tech collaborations throughout J&J’s Innovation Centers, JLABS incubators and JJDC corporate ventures across the Pharmaceutical, Consumer and Medical Device businesses. Previously, Cris led emerging technology programs within Research Informatics at Novartis for 6 years. 

With entrepreneurial DNA, Cris is most notably known for his role in the innovation economy since Co-Founding Ultra Light Startups, the oldest and largest startup-investor pitch accelerator in Boston and New York City with additional chapters in Silicon Valley and London. ULS accelerated 700+ bootstrapping startups with 26% having gone on to raise angel/venture funding, leading to multiple acquisitions by companies such as Apple, Trip Advisor and Singapore Telecom.

Cris holds a Master of Science in Computer Information Systems from Boston University and a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration Ecommerce from Suffolk University. He is a recipient of multiple healthcare innovation awards, including 40 under 40 Innovator by the Boston Business Journal, and Top 40 Healthcare Transformer by MM&M Magazine. Cris currently serves on the boards of Empatica. Nucleai, Medisafe, Click Therapeutics, Omada Health, and Aetion. He is also on the advisory boards of the American Telemedicine Association, SXSW Health, Voice by Amazon Alexa and the Boston University School of Public Health Innovation Council.

Lucio Iannone is the Vice President of Venture Investments at Leaps by Bayer, where he identifies, develops, drives and manages the portfolio of biotech ventures through to proof of concept (POC) including defining and shaping the setup of the ventures, developing the rationale and business case for investing in the selected technologies. Lucio received a Ph.D in Medicine from Imperial College London.

Kaitlyn O’Connor is a Partner at Nixon Gwilt Law. Kaitlyn combines her knowledge of business law and healthcare to provide real-world solutions for clients navigating this uniquely complex intersection.

Kaitlyn’s areas of practice include digital health, medical cannabis law and policy, telehealth, teledentistry, fraud and abuse, and HIPAA privacy/security. She provides legal, regulatory, and business guidance to healthcare providers across the spectrum of care, as well as early-stage companies and vendors serving the healthcare industry. Kaitlyn specializes in remote patient monitoring (RPM) and leads NGL’s RPM practice alongside Managing Partner Carrie Nixon. Kaitlyn particularly enjoys working with innovative RPM vendors to implement practical business solutions and accelerate growth in this rapidly expanding industry.

After graduating magna cum laude from Syracuse University, Kaitlyn attended William & Mary Law School, where she served as a member of the Business Law Review. She is a member of the Virginia Bar Association, the Connected Health Initiative (CHI), and the Virginia Cannabis Industry Association (VCIA) and serves as a Mentor for Jumpstart Foundry, an investment group focused on healthcare technology.

Shameer Khadar is an Executive Director at Sanofi, where he works to accelerate drug / target discovery, development and repositioning. He has more than a decade of experience in drug discovery, bioinformatics, big data, and biomedical data science. Shameer is currently leveraging petabytes of enterprise-scale data to develop and deliver solutions that help in human disease biology, clinical genomics, and precision medicine. Using data science, machine learning, deep learning, computational genomics, biomedical informatics, and translational bioinformatics approaches, Shameer provides value that would help healthcare, life sciences and pharma domains that improve outcome, revenue, real-world evidence, and R&D. 

James Williams is the Head of External Innovation and Alliances within Biogen Digital Health, dedicated to pioneering personalized and digital medicine in neuroscience. Previous roles in Biogen include leading large scale digital health research programs such as MS PATHS (Multiple Sclerosis Partners Advancing Technology and Health Solutions). Earlier in his Biogen career, James was the lead epidemiologist for multiple drug development programs including Tecfidera® and Spinraza®.

Prior to joining Biogen, James worked within the Division of Epidemiology at the Food and Drug Administration focusing on pre- and post-market drug safety issues and real-world evidence across multiple indications.

James received his PhD in Psychiatric Epidemiology, his MHS in Mental Health, and his BA in Neuroscience from the John Hopkins University. He also was an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Amir is a Digital Health Freelance Advisor and a Global Thought Leader at the forefront of clinical research and data intelligence. Amir is inspired by the power of AI-driven technology to enable the detection and treatment of various diseases and improve patient care. Amir is the Head of Strategic R&D, Digital Health Innovation & Corporate Strategy at Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma America, where he works closely with the company leadership to help drive a multi-year global enterprise strategy for incorporating tech innovation, digital biomarkers, AI-based analytics approaches, and digital health solutions across key therapeutic areas, including ALS, Spinal Cord Injury, Parkinson’s Disease, and Erythropoietic Protoporphyria (EPP).

Starting his career as a brain scientist at Harvard, Amir has over two decades of clinical experience in the biotech and healthcare industries. He currently sits on the Advisory Board of leading MedTech companies and holds several strategic consulting roles with both Pharma and HealthTech startups. Formerly, Amir was the Head of Digital Innovation at Pfizer, leading the development of digital solutions for neurodegenerative and rare diseases. Prior to pharma, Amir was a PI on numerous clinical trials as a Neurology Faculty and Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. Amir has 300+ abstracts, manuscripts, peer-reviewed publications, and conference presentations worldwide. 

Jordan Silberman, MD, PhD has a passion for evidence-based innovation in digital health. He serves as Director of Clinical Analytics and Research, Digital Care Solutions, Carelon Digital Platforms, Elevance Health (Formerly Anthem, Inc.). Jordan co-founded Anthem’s Digital Health Evidence Committee and leads a Digital Medicine Society workgroup on clinical evidence standards in digital health. At Anthem, Jordan leads scientific and statistical strategy for digital health initiatives including the Asthma Digital Study (tinyurl.com/5cfnkwxy), a randomized controlled trial. A behavioral scientist and experienced data analyst, Jordan has more than a decade of experience in digital health. He applies rigorous health economics and outcomes research (HEOR) and real-world evidence (RWE) approaches to evaluate digital health interventions. Jordan earned an MD (honors in research), a PhD (psychology), and a certificate in statistics from the University of Rochester, as well as a master’s degree in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania.