ViTAL 2019–20 Recap

Written by Elisa Danthinne, Chris Han, Heenal Marfatia, Shashank Madhu & Shibangi Saha

ViTAL is Northeastern’s Healthcare Innovation Core, and this has not felt more powerful than in the wake of COVID-19. In 2019, our community started as a merger between two other Northeastern Student Organizations — the Bouvé Innovators and Northeastern Healthcare Business Club — to take a shape of its own as an entrepreneurial Mosaic group. Our vision has since resolved to educate, inspire, and create at the intersection of healthcare and entrepreneurship. This past academic year, we have been extremely lucky to welcome distinguished speakers to our Boston campus, as well as watch student members directly translate healthcare innovation into their own lives and careers.

A few of the highlights:

• A bench-to-bedside speaker series featuring Liz Asai (CEO & Cofounder of 3Derm), Dr. Tal Zaks (CMO of Moderna Therapeutics), and Dr. Rushika Fernandopulle (CEO & Cofounder of Iora Health)
• Our semesterly Unconventional Healthcare Jobs Panel (x2)
• Our flagship event and 2nd ever Husky Health Innovation Challenge focusing on pharmacological drug development

October 2019

Liz Asai, CEO & Cofounder of 3Derm

To kick off the Fall semester, we hosted Liz Asai, CEO and Cofounder of 3Derm, to discuss her company’s role in the advancement of telemedicine, specifically in the skin imaging and diagnostics industry. Having dropped out of Yale University during her junior year to co-found 3Derm, Liz Asai provided us with a deep insight into the trials and tribulations of being a young healthcare entrepreneur. She also elaborated on the importance of partnerships in the field, as well as the difficult but highly rewarding path of integrating new technology into hospitals, doctor’s offices, and health plans. It is not unheard of for students to drop out of college to pursue entrepreneurial ventures, but it is very rare in the healthcare sector and thus, Dr. Asai is truly an inspiration to all of us at ViTAL.

Takeaways: Telemedicine is key to increasing efficiency and decreasing patient wait times but requires a careful consideration of maintaining patient-provider trust. More generally, driving innovation in a notoriously slow-moving industry takes patience and perseverance.

Unconventional Healthcare Jobs Panel

On October 16th, as students were deep in their co-op searches, we were lucky to present four Northeastern undergraduate students with co-op experiences in a wide range of healthcare realms, including data engineering and informatics, healthcare strategy consulting, venture capital, and global healthcare improvement. Thank you to Navin Mani, Max Petrovsky, Chris Lawson, and Vrusti Patel for sharing their time and insights with fellow students.

Takeaways: Our major in college shouldn’t hold us back from pursuing career interests or from stepping outside of our comfort zones. There are countless roles to be filled in healthcare that are not necessarily conventional, and they can teach unique skills that can compliment the healthcare industry well.

November 2019

Husky Health Innovation Challenge (HHIC)

On Sunday, November 24th, 2019, 5 teams comprising a total of 18 Northeastern undergraduate students gathered in Raytheon Amphitheater to compete in the Husky Health Innovation Challenge (HHIC), Northeastern University’s second-ever undergraduate healthcare case competition. The competing students came from a wide variety of majors, from Biology and Pharmacy to Computer Science and Business Administration. In teams, they were tasked with solving a case centered around a hypothetical pharmaceutical company choosing between two indications to pursue for a drug candidate — a case which mirrors real-world strategic decisions that corporate executives must carefully analyze.

HHIC was born out of the desire to connect Northeastern students with Boston’s vibrant healthcare ecosystem, to raise both student awareness of career opportunities in healthcare and institutional awareness of the talent and drive that Northeastern students possess. Safe to say, neither students nor companies have fallen short. In the two iterations of HHIC that ViTAL has hosted, all competing teams have received rave reviews from judging panels representing both academia and industry. Numerous corporate sponsors such as Bayer and IQVIA have stepped forward and offered generous donations to support the event. Last but certainly not least, support from within Northeastern — faculty providing their inputs on the judging panel, and the Bouvé College of Health Sciences and Health Sciences Entrepreneurs providing funding — has been invaluable in making the HHIC a success.

Next year’s HHIC will be held in March 2021 — more information coming soon!

Takeaways: By hosting HHIC, ViTAL strives to open doors for students of all majors to test their own capabilities by tackling challenges in healthcare, in the hopes that they will be able to apply the creative thinking and problem solving skills they’ve gained to help drive healthcare forward. Once again, ViTAL was not disappointed — the level of professionalism and ingenuity in the participant’s solutions was truly impressive and reaffirmed our vision.

January 2020

Dr. Tal Zaks, CMO of Moderna Therapeutics

For our January Kickoff event, we were very happy to welcome Dr. Tal Zaks, the current Chief Medical Officer of Moderna Therapeutics. Guided by a mindset of “whenever I get comfortable, I get uncomfortable,” Dr. Zaks’ path through healthcare has been anything but linear — starting with medicine in Israel, to academia and biomedical research in Israel and the US, back to medicine in the US, and finally landing in industry at several pharmaceutical companies including Sanofi. Moderna Therapeutics drew him in, however, because of its innovative and powerful approach that modifies mRNA to develop novel therapies. Dr. Zaks also mentioned the work Moderna had already initiated for COVID-19 vaccine agents.

Takeaways: Following a nonlinear path and continually learning — Dr. Zaks was in school until his late 30s — has kept things interesting. It’s never too late to switch from one branch of healthcare to another.

Non-traditional Co-ops in Healthcare Panel

Thanks to the generous time of our fellow Northeastern students (Shriya Srinivas, Chris Lawson, Heenal Marfatia, Ajay Rao, and Lianna Schuele), we hosted a diverse panel of five students representing different areas of healthcare: graphic design, venture capital, clinical research, drug development, and healthcare management.

Takeaways: Impact on all levels — from the management and process improvement perspective, to graphic design, and even data analytics — can be deeply satisfying and contribute meaningfully to improving healthcare.

February 2020

Dr. Rushika Fernandopulle, CEO and Cofounder of Iora Health

In a fireside chat, Dr. Rushika Fernandopulle described his path from observing the healthcare industry from “the inside” to striving to make a disruptive change. Iora Health was born from the idea that primary care should not rely only on rushed visits from the doctor, but benefits greatly from a team that places sustained emphasis on patient-centered preventative care. Dr. Fernandopulle detailed a few of Iora Health’s key attributes, including decreased hospital admissions for its elderly patients and costs for its partnering health insurance plans. Despite the barriers it faces against large healthcare corporations which dominate some parts of the country, Iora has been able to expand its services into more than 10 states and, most recently, acquire Series F funding.

Takeaways: As a matter of strategy, Iora started putting locations in places with less overbearing medical centers, and has expanded from there. Dr. Fernandopulle himself shared that pursuing Iora meant turning against the status quo by making big changes instead of small, incremental ones. From his perspective as a practicing primary care physician, however, Iora’s model simply works better for patients.

March 2020

As COVID-19 closures hit in March, ViTAL took a step back as members adapted to a different pace of life. So relevant to our identity as Northeastern’s healthcare innovation core, this pandemic more and more clearly emphasized the central role of healthcare innovation in medical equipment procurement, vaccine development, contact tracing, and social distancing. Moderna’s continual progress in vaccine development also rose to the forefront this March, offering hope and inspiration after just having hosted CMO Dr. Zaks just a few months earlier.

April 2020

It was, as many have repeated, an unexpected way to say goodbye — yet we are so proud of our most recent ViTAL graduates, Shibangi Saha, outgoing Executive Director, and Shashank Madhu, outgoing Director of Innovation. Shibangi and Shashank have contributed innumerable hours to get ViTAL off the ground since early 2019, and will transition to analyst roles with ViTAL’s new Ventures team. Before graduating, Shibangi and Shashank led the ViTAL e-board to welcome 8 new members and expand ViTAL’s vision and reach. Both ViTAL grads plan to eventually apply to medical school after either pursuing a masters or working in industry for a few years.

For anyone looking to get into healthcare innovation:

Be curious! Oftentimes, we think we have it all figured out. I want to be a doctor and that’s it, we run to cross off volunteering, research, MCAT, getting a high GPA, etc. On the other hand, I’m not a health science major, I can’t make an impact in healthcare. Curiosity is what reinvents this wheel, and that’s what ViTAL is for — sparking and kindling this curiosity. By being curious, we become more receptive and aware of the available opportunity around us and how we can get involved. In following this fervor, you may just stumble across your next big thing!

— Shibangi Saha, outgoing Executive Director of ViTAL, continuing MS in Bioinformatics @ Northeastern

Always, always, ALWAYS, keep an open mind! Innovation is such a broad term, and therefore it is equally important that you can keep an eye out for anything. Even the smallest things at first glance might not seem like much, but they can change your life. Ask questions, listen more than you speak, and never be afraid to try something out that you might have no experience with. You never know when you will find your life’s passion!

— Shashank Madhu, outgoing Director of Innovation of ViTAL, working in Pharma R&D @ Johnson & Johnson

Chris Han will be leading the next e-board as Executive Director for the next academic year; meet the incoming e-board here!

As we reflect on the past academic year, we wanted to say thank you to all those who keep ViTAL afloat. To Northeastern and other clubs we have been fortunate to collaborate with, for helping us find our niche at the intersection of healthcare and entrepreneurship. To our sponsors and speakers, for their generous dispositions to share their wisdom with Northeastern students. To our advisors, Dr. Kevin Scanlon, Laurie Bishop, and Philippe Sommer, for their continued support of our vision and for forwarding our ambitious ideas. And finally, to our fellow e-board and general members for wholeheartedly engaging in our speaker series, case competitions, and everything in between.

We can’t wait for what’s in store this next year.