Oncora Medical and the Changing Landscape of Cancer Care: a Conversation with Founder and CEO, David Lindsay (Podcast #52)
Penn HealthX recently welcomed David Lindsay to the podcast. David Lindsay is an MD/PhD student at Penn and is the founder and CEO of Oncora Medical, a company developing predictive analytics tools to enhance cancer care. HealthX Co-President Ryan O’Keefe interviewed him for a podcast about his path to becoming a CEO, lessons learned from his experiences leading Oncora, and what lies ahead for him and the company.
David’s path to becoming a founder
David studied neurobiology and math at UConn and emphasizes the importance of learning coding and proficiency with statistics in his career. In college, he was inspired to pursue an MD/PhD by a physician mentor, who characterized it as a balance of caring for patients with the highest standard of care, while advancing that standard through research. At Penn, the MBA Medical Device class shed light on key processes involved in the development of a medical device company, and started him down the path of translational research and entrepreneurship.
Oncora’s vision and founding
During David’s first year of medical school, his mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. While juggling responsibilities caring for his mother and studying medicine, he perceived a lack of standardized data around the treatments that patients get while caring for his mom. The problem of clinician access to data was exacerbated by the technology ecosystem across the hospital, which historically has been composed of a fragmented series of databases specific to different services and specialties, all locked behind firewalls. David was inspired by his mentor Dr. Steve Hahn to solve this problem.
Oncora is building a software and data platform that organizes cancer patient data on treatments and outcomes. They leverage that data to improve physician decision making through machine learning. David’s focus is figuring out how to most effectively use the data that hospitals are already generating and collecting on EHR platforms. His big picture vision is a world where every cancer patient gets a custom treatment plan formed through new clinical trial data, observational evidence, and machine learning tied together under the expertise of the physician.
Some key challenges from the early days of Oncora
David and his team initially considered a direct-to-patient platform but ultimately opted to deliver the data through a trusted source: the physician, who can explain the decision-making process and data from Oncora alongside their clinical expertise.
Their next challenge was navigating data sharing with hospital systems and getting access to the data to build their platform. To build Oncora, they needed cross-institutional data sharing because no single hospital has enough data on a diverse enough set of patients and cancers to rely on a single institution.
Hospitals tend to view patient data as their own IP and are reluctant to share data, even with the patients themselves. CMS recently issued a ruling enforcing data sharing practices. Looking forward, some barriers to data sharing may be removed. In light of privacy concerns, Oncora will only use a patient’s data if it has 1) been fully de-identified and 2) is used for the purpose of advancing care for patients. They don’t use any data for any other commercial purposes, and it was a priority to invest early on to build a highly secure platform.
On the importance of partnerships with medical centers
David was advised by his mentors to not develop the product in isolation and to not guess at what physicians want. Partnerships with medical centers were also key: Oncora first had a research partnership with Penn to get their foot in the door. They later inked a partnership with MD Anderson in 2016 with the help of his mentor, Dr. Steve Hahn. MD Anderson became a user of the product, a partner to evaluate the product, and contributed intellectual property that was crucial to taking an early idea to prime-time and securing more funding.
What has David learned about himself and his leadership style?
His strategy to leadership is to take his instincts to the problem and surround himself with mentors and emulate their leadership styles. In particular, he’s learned the importance of trusting his team and empowering his team to trust in themselves. One lesson that David has picked up and adopted from Dr. Hahn is to take pride in the accomplishments of his team and to help support and facilitate the success of his team.
He characterizes the job of the CEO to remove barriers and make it easier for his team to do their best work and to help make sure everybody’s goals are aligned with the company’s vision.
What lies ahead for Oncora?
Oncora has recently partnered with and received an investment from Varian, the market leader in oncology software and devices involved in the delivery of radiation therapy, as well as software for radiation planning and tracking patient encounters. They are now working together to build a machine learning product to help radiation oncologists design the best possible radiation treatment plan.
They have also recently partnered with Tmunity to help guide their scientific and clinical activities using real-world data to accelerate clinical trials and in some cases supplement randomized control trials with synthetic or hybrid approaches.
What lies ahead for David?
David describes his own path as “scattered and meandering” but his driving goal has remained consistent, which has always been to use data and engineering to improve medicine. For him right now, pursuing this goal through Oncora is the best place for him to be. David also wants to complete his clinical training, as his experience as a physician will allow him to do a better job evaluating opportunities for new technology and bringing them to the clinic. While he’s not sure if he plans to do residency and fellowship, but for the time being, he plans to finish medical school and to continue to work as an entrepreneur in the field of oncology.
David shares his final piece of advice to any MD or PhD student thinking about starting a company: the barriers to starting a company are lower than any other time. The capital requirements are lower now with both cloud web hosting and software as a service (SaS) offerings to help with things like accounting. His advice is that if you have an idea and you are in some way uniquely positioned to tackle it, you should go for it.
