by Stephen Schenk
2nd year Kelley School of Business Student & Member of the Kelley Academy PLUS Life Sciences
Earlier this November, I had the pleasure of attending the fall conference offering from the Kelley Center for the Business of Life Sciences. The conference topic was “The Changing Business of Healthcare” and is the first of three conferences the CBLS will put on this school year. The conference was one of the many free opportunities students in the PLUS Life Sciences Academy have to network with, and hear from, industry leaders across the healthcare spectrum.
WELCOME: Roche Diagnostics hosted the event at their corporate headquarters in Indianapolis and their President and CEO, Jack Phillips, led off proceedings with opening remarks and a great overview of Roche’s business. He really put into perspective important diagnostics can be in identifying various conditions now and in the future as we move toward more individualized healthcare.
KEYNOTE: Jack handed things off to Dr. Dan Brown, Founder and CEO of LifeOmic. Dr. Brown is a 3 time Indiana University Alum and best known for his founding of Interactive Intelligence, a cloud computing company which recently sold to Genesys for $1.4B. Dr. Brown is now focused on his new venture. LifeOmic is a software company that leverages the cloud, machine learning, and mobile devices to power precision healthcare. Dr. Brown’s presentation outlined how science, technology, and the healthcare system are changing to support an exciting move toward precision medicine. On the science front, Dr. Brown gave the crowd some much appreciated science-based strategies to live longer. In technology, Dr. Brown explained how the rise of the digital native could lead to better healthcare. Finally, he shared his vision for where the healthcare system is going and how science and technology disruption can move us toward a proactive healthcare system which is better for patients and populations.
PANEL: Following the stirring keynote, moderator Neal Roach of Taft Stettinius & Hollister led a discussion on transforming the healthcare experience. Each of the below panelists had opening remarks and then the panel opened up to questions from the audience:
- Gurpreet Singh, US Health Services Sector Leader, PwC
- Meg Rush, VP, Digital Strategy & Engagement, Anthem
- Ketan Paranjape, VP of Diagnostics Information Solutions, Roche
- Mike Mann, Senior Population Health Consultant, Intermountain Health
- Colleen Hittle, Founder & CEO, ProVeritas Partners
BREAKOUT SESSIONS: A new component of this fall’s conference was a set of breakout sessions following lunch. This allowed participants a choice of which discussion to join with several panelists. The discussion spanned 3 major conversations topics: awareness, care, and engagement. I chose to join the awareness breakout with panelist Gurpreet Singh and Ryan Terry, VP of Connectivity Solutions at Hill-Rom. The conversation was free flowing but one piece that stuck out was Gurpreet’s stat that a physician typically clicks his/her mouse 4000 times per day in order to fulfill electronic medical record requirements. We discussed how inefficiencies like this make it difficult to truly build price transparency with increasingly informed patients in the age of consumerized healthcare. Following the breakouts, each room reported out to the larger group.
CAMPUS TOUR: One of the things I was most excited about was the tour of Roche’s newly revamped Indianapolis headquarters. Being an Indianapolis native, I was surprised by the scale of Roche’s campus – which I must have driven by 1000 times prior to my first visit this fall without realizing it was all Roche Diagnostics property. Our guide shared how the site was built in the Bauhaus-style architectural as a nod to their Swiss parent company. The tour also included a view of the sales and training mock ups of all the diagnostics offerings.
SEE YOU IN THE SPRING:
The experience at Roche made me even more excited about the next CBLS conference: The Healthcare Industry in Pain Management and Addressing the Opioid Crisis. This is a fascinating, complex, and important topic that I look forward to learning more about in a few months. Stay tuned for a recap of that even come February
Leave a Reply