Humble Takeaways From Open Innovation In Healthcare Pop-Up: New York

Women And Underserved Entrepreneurs

On October 1st, humble ventures and Ogilvy, in partnership with SAP.iO Foundry and HITLAB, hosted an event focused primarily on women and underserved entrepreneurs who are working hard to bring innovation to healthcare today. The Open Innovation In Healthcare Pop-Up: New York kicked off with Deepak Krishnamurthy, Chief of Strategy at SAP, welcoming an attentive audience of over 120 people coming as far away as Thailand for the half-day event.

Located in the beautiful SAP.iO Foundry Hudson Yards office, panelists representing all levels of the health ecosystem discussed topics such as population health, innovation, pharma and venture capital with an overarching theme of women and underserved entrepreneurs. Ritesh Patel, Chief Digital Officer for Health at Ogilvy Consulting, did a fantastic job emceeing the event as well as moderating several of the panels. Some of the illustrious panelists included:

• Maria Del Mar Cortes, Co-Director, Abilities Research Center
• Nigel Smith, Director, AARP Innovation
• Shelly Lazarus, Chairman Emeritus, Ogilvy
• Robin Roberts, Co-Founder, Novartis Biome
• Neil Gomes, EVP Technology, Innovation & Customer Experience, Thomas Jefferson
• Christine Guo, VP, Wells Fargo Strategic Capital

This could not have been successful without all of our partners, panelists and audience members. Below are humble takeaways tied to themes that arose from the recent installment in the Open Innovation In Healthcare Pop-Up series:

Addressing The Need For Diversity In Genomics

• How are we using genomics as an engine for good? We don’t understand how this will all play out.
• My particular interest is how do you use the vast genomic data that’s available now and prevent disease where possible.
• You ignore this market at your peril.
• We are looking at solutions that will have a fundamental impact and drive the status quo.
• Changes require data and screening people with different implications.
• True benefits require research.
• Aging is not a disease.
• Technology needs to be affordable.
• We’ve been bringing startups together, get to know each other, and significant synergies happen. -Each use case is different.
• It’s an exciting time. Every environment is different; every person is different; every use case is different.
• It takes a lot to change. At one point, NIH and others will need to make it mandatory to incorporate diversity in their studies.
• Together we are more powerful.
• Embrace diversity! Whether it’s on the age axis, the geographic axis. There’s a lot of opportunities if we look around us.
• It’s essential to think about running together instead of running alone.
• Find new voices.

Funding Women’s Health Is Just Getting Started

• We are at the very beginning of investing in women’s health.
• It’s 2019, wake up!
• The way that VCs and entrepreneurs look at women’s health stands in contrast to how the industry looks at innovation.
• There’s a massive urge to solve problems today
• You’re a mother for life, and we need solutions for life.
• There are a lot of people who also don’t see the opportunity in women’s health because they haven’t personally experienced it.
• Even if you’re trying to make a use case for your business, the data in women’s health isn’t there yet.
• Black women are dying 3-to-1 compared to white women. People are dying! We need capital and more research to address the bias.
• I’ve found that it’s a losing battle trying to explain our solution with the VC on the other side of the table who doesn’t know or understand the problem.
• I’ve been in science my whole life. This is the first time I felt like the woman in the room. I have a male co-founder, and he’s never been asked the same questions as me.
• How do we hear people’s stories, and how do they define health and healthcare in their own words?
• $1B into women’s health is peanuts, not even a peanut; it’s the flake off of a peanut.

Women Deserve 50% Of The Opportunities

• It’s not just bringing them along to meetings; it’s giving them a speaking role.
• This company believes in diversity.
• I would like you to bring along two or three of your more diverse partners to the next meeting. These are forcing mechanisms to make things happen.
• Think in terms of outcomes.
• Speak up.

Create A Movement Bigger Than Pharma Leadership

• You may find many people with the label as digital in pharma, but it’s hard to get the concept of innovation understood organization-wide.
• We’re trying to work with innovative startups while we are trying to be innovative ourselves.
• Startups need to understand the stack of our organization.
• It should be on us to provide the infrastructure that’s necessary so startups can prosper, and the solution can benefit our patients.
• The solution doesn’t make a difference unless it scales.
• We want to make sure there’s a problem to be solved before striking up an engagement.
• Pharma’s all have the same challenges in the field.
• The push to scale needs to permeate throughout the organization before we can bring a solution to the market.
• Startups can reach us through incubator partners, venture arms, and we also have scouts.
• We tracked startups and put them in a database that’s searchable for the whole company in case they are in search of a solution to a particular need.
• The way we do business needs to change if we have to sit around and wait for a startup to receive funding before we work with them.
• The thing about clinical development from the perspective of a startup is that it’s a black box.
• Figuring out the root cause of our needs and finding a way to ask us would expedite the process.
• Your best approach might be to go deep rather than wide with a solution.

Startups And Collaboration With Health Systems

• We want to turn innovation into products that will help patients.
• Looking for partners to nurture innovation.
• It’s about creating a narrative for each technology and then selling it to your leadership.
• It’s essential to bridge the goals and the needs of every group. It can take a while.
• It’s outcomes and data points that will make the most sense to stakeholders.
• Has to be a culture shift internally to work with external partners.
• We have a group called Strategic Ventures within Thomas Jefferson to be collaborative and work with startups. We want folks to come in, so we run hackathons, Shark Tanks, and impromptu events designed for students. We want designers and developers in the medical school.
• Co-development, as well as implementation, are different flavors of adoption with startups within the health system.
• Don’t just come up with a solution, but a business model behind it. We always tie NPV to something before ROI. Who is going to take it on within our hospital?

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