Innovation Management 2020 – Metrics and Success Factors

Join me for my guest lecture on “Innovation Management – Metrics and Success Factors” as part of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship track in the MBA International Business Management and Leadership curriculum at the Hochschule Kempten, University of Applied Sciences, in Germany on June 01, 2019.

Join me for my upcoming guest lecture on “Innovation Management – Metrics and Success Factors” as part of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship track in the MBA International Business Management and Leadership curriculum at the Hochschule Kempten, University of Applied Sciences, in Germany on July 26, 2020.

In this track, we also discuss the teaching case study ‘Boehringer Ingelheim: Leading Innovation’ (available at Harvard Business Review) featuring Stephan Klaschka’s corporate career as an innovator and intrapreneur at Boehringer Ingelheim.
This case study was written by the Ivey Business School, University of Western Ontario, Canada, and is used for education by universities and colleges across Europe, America, and Asia.

Innovation Management – Metrics and Success Factors

Join Executive Round Table event: “The innovation and technology convergence in Life Science and Healthcare industry”

With improved technology, especially, Artificial Intelligence, what physicians will be needed in the future?
Join the Executive Round Table event on Nov. 22, 2016 featuring “The innovation and technology convergence in Life Science and Healthcare industry”

Life Science Quest and the Sino-American Pharmaceutical Professionals Association, Connecticut (SAPA-CT) work together bringing a series of high-level professional and business development events to Life Science and Health Care industry in the TriState Metropolitan area, providing high level business networking, round tables discussions and business seminars.

Click to register for the Executive Round Table on 22-Nov-2016 topic
“The innovation and technology convergence in Life Science and Healthcare industry” (participation is free of charge)
Click for more details (Program, Agenda, Speakers)

This joint event of Life Science Quest and SAPA-CT in the Life Science & Healthcare series is to be held 22 November 2016 6:00 PM at Mount Saint Mary College (330 Powell Avenue, Newburgh, NY. Aquinas Hall room 163).

Eyeforpharma on Open Innovation – How to become a ‘Partner of Choice’?

The Art of Innovation: How to Become a “Partner of Choice” is an insightful interview with seasoned innovation professionals discussing what it takes to build a Partner-of Choice-relationship with Open Innovation in the pharmaceutical industry.

No need for doctors in the future?

Technological advances like Star Trek’s “Tricorder” affect healthcare faster and deeper than we seem to be aware of. It poses the legitimate (and serious) question whether we will need physicians anymore in the future!

This post is inspired by recent events, when I was approached to moderate a controversial discussion with an expert panel at an international health innovation event in Europe. The topic featured: “Disruptive Innovation in Medicine: Will physicians soon be obsolete?”

Science Fiction – for real?

50 years ago the original TV series “Star Trek” introduced a most fascinating and visionary healthcare device, the ‘Tricorder.’ Remember how Doctor McCoy (and his successors in more recent Start Trek versions) perform comprehensive medical examinations by simply moving the device over the patient’s body to diagnose their condition?

This technology is now becoming reality, user test are scheduled to start in September 2016. – The question is, how will it influence the medical profession? Will we need physicians in the future and if so, will their work be different for what they do today?

Stuck in today’s medical factory model

Let’s take a quick step back to look at why the Tricorder changes the paradigm of the past centuries as well as our current healthcare system, where the physician plays a key role to diagnose and treat our illnesses.

The internet led to a decline of our reliance on the medical experts around us (at least for the bulk of non-emergency care). Patients and caregivers discovered the abundance of online content to gain broader and deeper insights into health topics, to find up-to-date research information or to explore new treatment options. Global online communities of patients and caregivers form around numerous illnesses to share and exchange information and individual experiences across disciplines and borders.

Nowadays patients often enter a doctor’s office armed with research results and specific therapy options as well as a keen awareness of their own economic power pushing the physician towards delivering on the patient’s specific requests. From a patient’s perspective, in many cases, the physician degraded from a consulting health professional to a dispenser for prescriptions.

The physician on the other hand is limited by what diagnosis and treatment options the payers allow, i.e. are willing to pay for, and remains trapped spending much time to navigate a bureaucracy established by the various insurers and payers. Not being able to focus on practicing medicine but distracted by administration is frustrating also for physicians, who have stepped up to improve the patients’ health to the best of their abilities.

Frustration with today’s health factory model (image: whatsnext.nuance.com)

It does not surprise that a typical medical practice -from a patient’s perspective- looks like a factory: the patients get lined-up while the doctor hops from one to another in an efficient flow spending minimum time on each individual.

Overall, we already know our healthcare system being not overly efficient and way too expensive. From a patient’s perspective, it’s focus feels far off their individual health and care.

Beyond the limits of human capability

Even the best trained physician remains a human being with biases and limitation just as everyone else. We can also not realistically expect a physician to keep up with the 5,000 latest research articles on heart disease alone, to digest and interpret them as well as translating them swiftly into their medical practice.

At the same time, computers with artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning algorithms are already becoming capable of providing better and more treatment options with fewer errors with quick access to the internet’s vast sources of medical data and the most recent healthcare information for all kinds of user groups.

The picture is not much different for the “self-informed patient.” It is in the nature of the (online) beast that some information sources are more credible than others, which induces significant risk for layman consumers of this information. Incomplete, cherry-picked and at times questionable, outright wrong or inapplicable medical information in untrained hands can do more ill than good for the patient.

It’s a race that humans cannot win anymore, neither patients nor doctors.

The next step: Fiction becoming reality

The Tricorder can be seen as a way as the next evolution of automation – scary as it might sound initially, freeing up the physician and medical staff for other tasks may not be a bad thing.

It is a big step towards ‘automating healthcare’ by building an affordable and mobile diagnostic device that can reliably detect the presence or absence of an array of common illnesses better than an individual physician. This is what the ongoing Qualcomm ‘Tricorder’ X-Prize challenge is about.

What the final design will look like, we will see. Here is a glimpse by two of the seven finalist teams.

Images: Scanadu (left), Dexter/Final Frontier (right)

It awards $10,000,000 for a mobile device that cover vital signs, consumer experience, and diagnostics across a set of 12 distinct diseases as well as their absence. In fact, the winning device needs to cover indications from a variety of medical fields (see below table, source: X-Prize) with its results beating ten board-certified physicians.

The winner(s) are to be announced in just a few months out. To my surprise, this groundbreaking innovation challenge goes widely unnoticed – at least in Europe, from my recent observation.

A new side of healthcare

The Tricorder will only be the first version of a new class of healthcare technology. The first Tricorders may become available at the entrance to hospitals, medical practices, workplaces or in public health kiosks already in place at Walgreen, CVS and there alike over the coming years. They may pop up everywhere you hang out and have a few minutes to spare. Perhaps, you will have to undergo a quick screen of your health status to ensure the absence of contagious diseases before entering areas with many or vulnerable people such as nurseries, retirement homes or entertainment events.

Imagine how fast the second and third version will aim high with added features, miniaturization, better portability, user convenience, lowering cost, and so on. Order your own Tricorder via Amazon or pick it up at BestBuy or the Apple store. Some of its functionality may become available part of your next ever-smarter smartphone, smartwatch or other wearable device.

As a bottom-line, you will no longer need to see your doctor for a diagnosis. You may even collect relevant vital signs or perform a laboratory test on your own device anytime and anywhere.

Medical doctors – a dying profession?

With technology delivering affordable quality results, the key question remains: what happens to the physicians and their staff if key responsibilities such as a reliable diagnosis and selecting the most promising treatment may no longer be in their job description?

It seems obvious that most of what doctors and their administrative helpers do today may not be needed in the future. We already see trends emerging that drive radiologists, for example, out of their diagnostics business:

Cancer Research UK crowd-sourced identifying cancer by asking citizens to participate and commissioning a Genes in Space game for mobile devices designed to actually map patterns that help scientists spot DNA faults.

In recent competitions artificial intelligence (AI) systems get “strikingly close” to humans in detecting breast cancer, for example.

Where did the medical doctors go?

Technology will take over triage, diagnosis and decision-making regarding treatment options. Much of the administrative staff becomes obsolete. Fewer doctors will be needed. Their focus shifts to delivering the much-needed empathetic human care – and this may not be a bad thing, since this critical field of care seemed to have lost its place in the medical practices today.

It will open a new competition with nurses who already occupy much of this care space today and at a more affordable cost. Where exactly the line will be drawn time will tell.

My question to you

– How do you envision the future of medical professionals to change?
Please share your thoughts!

Driving Innovation in Healthcare: New Executive Intrapreneuring Workshop

Experience the new two-day intrapreneurial journey to transform you organization with exponential results!

Don’t miss EBCG’s intense and hands-on Intrapreneuring Workshop “Building an innovation framework to design, launch and execute business projects” in the Driving Innovation in Healthcare series in the “Golden City” of Prague, Czech Republic, on April 6-7, 2016.

Sign up before December 23, 2015, to save during the special promotion period.

Save 50% at the 6th Intrapreneurship Conference in NYC, Oct. 21-23, 2015!

Contact me for a 50%-off discount code for the 1-day Wednesday program (Oct. 21) at the upcoming Intrapreneurship Conference in New York City, Oct. 21-23, 2015!

Join me for my workshop on How to build a strong foundation for a sustainable Intrapreneuring program at 1:35pm to 3:30pm on Thursday, October 22, 2015:

As an intrapreneur you struggle with many visible and hidden innovation barriers in a large organization.
How do you get started to change the organization bottom up?
What does a sustainable innovation ecosystem look like and how can you set one up?
This workshop helps you to identify and overcome obstacles, to find allies and sponsors, and to measure and communicate success to upper management convincingly.
Learn from real-world case studies, practical hands-on experience and apply powerful tools!

Read Intrapreneuring Case Study “Leading Innovation” by Ivey Business School!

The prestigious Ivey Business School of the Western University in Ontario, Canada, published an insightful new teaching case study on intrapreneuring and corporate innovation titled “Boehringer Ingelheim: Leading Innovation” in which the case writers, Professor J. Robert Mitchell, Ph.D., and Ramasastry Chandrasekhar, follow the footsteps of the newly appointed innovation director.

Meant to raise questions and serving as a learning opportunity for graduate students in academic program around the globe, this case study lifts the corporate curtain a bit to show how innovation through intrapreneuring really happens and decision points along the way.

Outline (by Ivey Publishing)

The newly appointed director of Innovation Management & Strategy at Boehringer Ingelheim, a German-based multinational pharmaceutical company, is finding his way forward in his firm’s new, first-of-its-kind role, which is central to the company’s growth rejuvenation strategy. His job has a threefold mandate: to build internal networks, to establish internal structures and to leverage internal ideas. His biggest challenge, however, may be transforming the organization’s DNA. The blockbuster business model that has characterized the company for decades is no longer appropriate. Instead, the firm needs to develop healthcare products available to end users over the counter. This shift in strategy requires innovative changes in distribution, delivery and customer focus. To accomplish this goal, he needs to institutionalize innovation so that it becomes sustainable. But in doing so, he must also identify the metrics for assessing progress. The case provides an opportunity for students to step into the shoes of an innovation leader, to develop an innovation roadmap for the organization in the face of uncertainty and to understand how to engage in innovation leadership at various levels of a global enterprise.

Learning Objective

This case has two key objectives. First, this case provides students an opportunity to grapple with the difficult decisions associated with innovation in an uncertain environment. Second, this case highlights that anyone has the ability to cultivate an entrepreneurial mindset and to lead innovation. The case divides the attributes of an innovation leader into five components: observing, questioning, experimenting, networking and associating. It shows the real-life experiences of a manager doing seemingly routine activities, who evolved into a leader who transformed the DNA of a global enterprise. The case also provides a template of the tasks, responsibilities and value-added changes as an individual moves progressively within an enterprise from an operations manager to a senior manager to an innovation leader. This case can be used either toward the beginning or toward the end of any course that addresses innovation and creative thinking in a large organization. At the beginning of a course, it illustrates the challenges of acting in the face of uncertainty in a large organization. At the end of a course, the case provides an opportunity for students to apply what they have learned about innovation, entrepreneurial thinking and innovation leadership.

Is Disruptive Innovation a Myth?

When we talk about disruptive innovation, we can easily agree that going from the days of dim candle light and sooty oil lamps to electric light was one of these breakthrough innovations, right? Its icon, the lightbulb serves as our symbol for a great idea today.

Lightbulb idea (www.istockphoto.com) — (source: http://www.istockphoto.com)

Who invented the lightbulb?

When you ask around “who invented the lightbulb?” the answer “Thomas Edison” first comes to mind – and the answer is wrong! Truth is that we can give credit closer to 20(!) inventors of the lightbulb! – How so?

Thomas Edison patented the first practical and commercially viable incandescent lightbulb in 1878 and a revised design in 1879. In addition, he offered the first efficient electricity supply system for households and businesses, which laid the foundation and cleared the path for mass-producing light bulbs in 1880. His design was an evolution from previous, inferior designs and enabled by improved technology.

Edison's Lightbulb (source: www.unmuseum.org) — Edison’s Lightbulb (source: http://www.unmuseum.org)

Sitting in the dark without Edison?

No worries, we would not stay sitting in the dark. It appears safe to say that even if Thomas Edison was never born, the practical incandescent lightbulb would have been developed around the same time – by someone else.

Looking back in history, Humphrey Davy invented electric light in 1802; more than 75 years before Edison. His “arc light” was unsuitable for mainstream application though it found specialty uses even today. Many more designs for incandescent light and lightbulbs were developed by several inventors, but neither were they practical nor suitable beyond demonstration stage. Prominently, Joseph W. Swan built a working prototype of a “light bulb” in 1850 – well before Edison.

Entrepreneurial Competition

Edison had access to improved technology such as a better vacuum pump for his breakthrough design. This technology was not available to previous inventors. Edison also developed an efficient and economical way to distribute electricity when earlier designs drained batteries quickly. (A nice example, by the way, on how a product can go a long way when bundled with a complementing service.)

On the flip-side, Edison knew of his limitation too. He made carbonized Japanese bamboo glow as filament between two electrodes knowing that carbonized Tungsten was the superior material. However, the technology was not available at the time to produce a thin Tungsten thread. We had to wait for William D. Coolidge to produce the Tungsten filament for General Electric in 1910, which is still the preferred material to illuminate our modern incandescent lightbulbs today.

This situation is typical and comparable to many big ideas that entrepreneurs work on today. There is much competition among entrepreneurs, so every good idea usually has a handful of teams working on it independently and head-to-head at the same time. Thus, it is highly likely that, if not Edison, another inventor would have come up with the lightbulb design we are so familiar with today.

R&D as a Legacy

Perhaps, the even more impactful and lasting heritage of Thomas Edison are not his inventions, useful as they are. His products such as the lightbulb, phonograph, quadruplex telegraph, mimeograph, etc., have been replaced over time by more advanced technology.

Nonetheless, Edison has changed the way we discover concertedly today. Until his time, inventors matched the stereotypical image of a lonely genius experimenting and inventing in their lair burning the midnight oil over some ambitious idea. Edison established the first research and development (R&D) organization in his famous Menlo Park lab, where a large number of researchers worked together in an orchestrated way to find solutions to specific problems coordinated strategically and systematically concerted. Edison has industrialized research!

Until today every research-driven company or organization worldwide follows in Edison’s footsteps! What an impressive legacy!

Summary

Disruptive innovations tend to have their origin in incremental steps and competition among inventors. First working individually and now increasingly in teams or even distributed R&D organizations across country borders.
A key success factor here is building trust and incentives within the team in order for all individual contributors to share information and findings freely.

The broader, cross-functional approach to research helps to identify ideas and technologies from other disciplines that can serve as stepping stones. Edison used a better vacuum pump, which made his design possible. Later, the capability to manufacture a thin Tungsten wire allowed General Electric to take the lightbulb the next level.
As the saying goes, “innovation happens at the intersections of disciplines.” The development of the lightbulb serves as a nice example proving it to hold true once again. Thus, innovation benefits by drawing from advances in other disciplines.

So, is disruptive innovation a myth?

Back to our original question, the story of the lightbulb is a great example for a breakthrough innovation with vast ramifications that disrupted and shaped the we live and work around the globe.

It can, however, not be seen as just one big and isolated scientific step but rather a series of many little steps in combination insights from other disciplines including manufacturing, economics and marketing leading to broad adoption that changed the world.

Lightbulb evolution (source: www.thewirelessbanana.com) — Lightbulb evolution
(source: http://www.thewirelessbanana.com)

Only when it all comes together you have a disruptive innovation like Edison’s famous design. And it was still not the end. The journey continued to evolve with a Tungsten wire and later fluorescence, halogen and LED lights.

In this light, every disruption seems as yet another incremental step, doesn’t it?

Join me at eyeforpharma’s Value Beyond the Pill Summit, Philadelphia, December 3, 2014

Join me for eyeforpharma’s Value Beyond the Pill Summit 2014 and come to my talk on “Build an intrapreneurial ecosystem to ensure your innovative services deliver the value required by patients” at 2:10PM on December 3, 2014.

Why attend other than hearing me speak? 🙂

The topics are around delivering patient value and reimburse your services by innovating your business model. A new way of healthcare is here; services are now an essential part of patient care and will help the pharma industry to make a bigger impact as a healthcare provider. Learn how to put successful services in place to gain better access, reduce costs and help your end-user, the patient. Find out what the most innovative and forward-thinking companies are doing to differentiate their brand in the most competitive times pharma have ever faced.

The Value Beyond the Pill Summit is held at the Wyndham Philadelphia Historic District Hotel, 400 Arch Street, Philadelphia, PA 19106, USA, on December 3-4, 2014.

See the full speaker line up and agenda in the event brochure.

Meet me at Yale’s “Patients and Big Data in Healthcare: Deriving Value and Accelerating Innovation” Nov.11, 2014

Patients and Big Data in Healthcare: Deriving Value and Accelerating Innovation
Nov 11 @ 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm

REGISTER: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/patients-and-big-data-in-healthcare-deriving-value-and-accelerating-innovation-tickets-12475417309

CURE and Yale, in collaboration with Boehringer Ingelheim, presents “Patients and Big Data in Healthcare: Deriving Value and Accelerating Innovation.” In an increasingly digital age, healthcare stakeholders can access significant amounts of data and knowledge using various platforms. Critically, this “big data,” represents a vast quantity of complex and diverse information. While payers, providers, healthcare experts and the pharmaceutical industry have the capability to analyze this data to gain insight, this information can be overwhelming to patients. This BioHaven event, moderated by Richard Foster, has convened a panel of experts to explore the topic of “big data,” the role of the patient in data analytics, the role of payers and what actionable data represents. Further discussion will explore the state of the art, including discussing national hospital systems using big data and local ones in CT and at Yale. Finally, the discussion will conclude with discussion about effectively incorporating big data into operations and where the field is headed.

Special kudos to my valued colleague Faye Lindsay, who was instrumental in pulling this event together!

Some of the topics the moderator and panelists will consider:

Defining and Exploring the topic

Tell us what “big data” means to you and why it is important. Give us one example which illustrates the best use of big data to date.
What is the role of the patient in data analytics? Does it benefit them? Do they naturally do it? How error prone are the data they provide directly?
What is the role of the payer in all of this. Can they get the data they need to better set rates? Will “big data” help or hurt the payers?
What is actionable data? What are the three major areas where we are making progress?

State of the Art

Where is the best state of the art in using data to improve outcomes in the US? How do we know that is true?
What hospital systems or MCOs are most advanced?
How are we doing in CT compared to other states? How do we know?
What is the state of the art in healthcare info tech/big data in the US. Where? Why? What do we need to do to catch up?

Unanticipated Consequences

Will all this measurement result in intense, and from time time, unproductive rivalries between docs, or hospital systems?
How can the providers use “big data” and not put at risk the effectiveness of current medical care delivery processes which have takes years to define and perfect?

Specific Subtopics

Big Data and the bottom 5%
We know we spend $1.35 T on 5% of the population. Do we know who they are and how we can best treat them. How much can we expect to reduce the cost, or improve the quality of the health care delivered to these patients?
Big Data and Quality
Integrating Big Data into Operations, effectively

What is coming?

Who is controlling the pace of advance in Big Data these days – Academia (who), the Payers (who?), the providers (who?) the Feds (who and who in HHS/CMS?) What about the role of the National Cancer Hospitals. Or other specialized (by disease/condition) providers (e.g. DaVita)

Moderator:

Richard N. Foster, PhD, Emeritus Director, McKinsey and Co; Lecturer, Yale School of Management.

Dr. Foster is an emeritus director of McKinsey & Company, Inc. where he was a Director and Senior Partner. While at McKinsey he founded several practices including the healthcare practice and the private equity practices, the technology practice and innovation practice. From 1995 to 1998 he led McKinsey’s worldwide knowledge development.

At Yale, Dr. Foster teaches “Managing In Times of Rapid Change” and serves as the Executive in Residence at the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute. Dr. Foster’s research interests are in the relationships between capital formation, innovation, and regulation. Dr. Foster has written two best-selling books: Innovation: The Attacker’s Advantage (1986) and Creative Destruction (2001), both of which were cited as among the “ten best books of the year” when they were published by the Harvard Business Review.

Dr. Foster’s work has appeared in Business Week, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times as well as several dozen articles in research and popular journals. Dr. Foster was recognized as one of their ten “Masters of Innovation” in the past century. He was the external leader of the Concil on Foreign Relations Study Group on Technological Innovation and Economic Performance which led to the publication of Technological Innovation Economic Performance (2001, Princeton University Press).

Panelists:

Harlan Krumholz, MD, Harold H. Hines Jr. Professor of Medicine (Cardiology) and Professor of Investigative Medicine and of Public Health (Health Policy); Co-Director, Clinical Scholars Program; Director, Yale-New Haven Hospital Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation.

Dr. Krumholz’s research focuses on improving patient outcomes, health system performance and population health. His work with health care companies has led to new models of transparency and data sharing. His work with the U.S. government has led to the development of a portfolio of national, publicly reported measures of hospital performance. These measures also became part of several provisions of the health reform bill. He is currently working with leaders in China on government-funded efforts to establish a national research and performance improvement network.

Dr. Krumholz is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine, the Association of American Physicians, and the American Society for Clinical Investigation. He is a Distinguished Scientist of the American Heart Association. He serves on the Board of Trustees of the American College of Cardiology, the Board of Directors of the American Board of Internal Medicine and the Board of Governors of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute.

Rishi Bhalerao, MBA, Director of PatientsLikeMe, a free patient network and real-time health research platform.

At PatientsLikeMe Rishi manages major relationships with industry partners. Prior to joining PatientsLikeMe, Rishi spent several years as a management consultant with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), and more recently, as an innovation consultant, at a firm started by Prof. Clay Christensen of the Harvard Business School. He earned an MBA from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan and also holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in Engineering.

You Xi

Director of Business Analytics at Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals (BI)and leads a team of analysts conducting analysis across all BI’s portfolio and communicating findings and strategic insights to internal stakeholders (Marketing, Sales, Managed Markets, Sr. Management etc.).

The key deliverables include using various data sources to measure performance, build promotional mix optimization modeling, behavior segmentation, portfolio optimization, etc. Prior to BI, You was a consultant at ZS Associates and then held various management roles in the pharmaceutical industry including Takeda Pharmaceuticals and Novartis.

Michael Matteo

Mike Matteo is chief growth officer at Optum, where he is responsible for creating and enabling growth across the company. Matteo focuses on the needs and opportunities of Optum’s customers and how the company can deliver creative, innovative solutions that meet their objectives. Prior to bringing his passion for modernizing the health care system to Optum in 2012, Matteo served for four years as chief executive officer of UnitedHealthcare National Accounts, where he expanded the company’s industry-leading position in the large-employer marketplace. Prior to becoming CEO, Matteo led business development efforts for UnitedHealthcare National Accounts, where previously he worked in product development and was instrumental in designing and launching the company’s first consumer-driven product innovations. He joined UnitedHealth Group in 1997 as a strategic account executive, helping many of the company’s largest employer clients meet their health care objectives.

Before joining UnitedHealth Group, Matteo was with Physicians Health Services, where he served the needs of major clients as an underwriting director and senior account executive. He began his career serving in multiple roles with Traveler’s Insurance Companies. Matteo graduated magna cum laude with honors from the College of the Holy Cross, and participated in the Columbia University Executive Management Program. He is on the boards of the MetroHartford Alliance, Hartford YMCA, and Connecticut Science Center, and served as chairperson of the Greater Hartford Arts Council Capital Campaign.

Meet me at the 9th Annual Health Care Delivery and Management Case Challenge at Columbia University, Nov. 8, 2014

Join the 9th Annual Health Care Delivery and Management Case Challenge at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health on Sat. Nov. 8, 2014!
I will be acting as juror once again – always a fun a insightful event with the following goals:

Create opportunity for students to apply classroom learning to a real-world healthcare case, using strategic decision making to solve health service delivery problems
Allow students from the three Alliance schools, Business, Medicine, and Public Health, to collaborate in a cross-functional way
Utilize faculty from the three Alliance Schools to advise teams.

For more information/rules and to register your team for the competition, please contact Prof. Paul Thurman, Executive Director of the Alliance, at Paul.Thurman@Columbia.edu

Meet me at the NYC TechConnect Riverside Chat on Sep. 2, 2014

“External Innovation in the Pharmaceutical Industry“Featuring Katherine Bowdish, Ph.D.

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Presentation
6:00-6:30 PM

Cocktails & Networking
6:30-7:30 PM

New Location
New York Blood Center
First Floor Auditorium
310 E. 67th Street
New York, NY 10065
map

Registration

Organizer: Harlem Biospace | Host: New York Blood Center
Founding Sponsor: Partnership Fund for NYC

Meet me at HxRefactored 2014 in NYC on May 13-14, 2014

HxRefactored 2014 in NYC on May 13-14 at the New York Marriott at the Brooklyn Bridge.

HxRefactored is a revolutionary design and technology conference that will gather over 500 designers, developers and leaders in health for two days of thought provoking talks, workshops and discussions on how to improve the quality of the health experience. The conference fuses the technical and creative elements of Health 2.0’s Health:Refactored and Mad*Pow’s Healthcare Experience Design Conference.

Join me at the Customer Experience Summit 2014 in Princeton/NJ on March 6, 2014

Pharma Customer Experience Summit 2014 at The Nassau Inn Hotel, 10 Palmer Square, Princeton, NJ on March 6, 2014

Join me for the SAPA-CT Milestone Celebration Meeting at Yale University on Feb 22

“Bridging between US and China in Current Pharmaceutical World – Strategies, Innovation and Implementation”

Join me at 11:15am at the Sino-American Pharmaceutical Professionals Association‘s new Connecticut Chapter (SAPA-CT) Milestone Celebration Meeting held at Yale University (N107 The Anlyan Center, 300 Cedar St, New Haven, CT, 06511), 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, Feb 22, 2014.

SAPA-CT, Boehringer Ingelheim, BMS, and Association of Chinese Students and Scholars at Yale (ACSSY) will co-sponsor this event

Health Care Delivery and Management Challenge at Columbia University, Nov. 9, 2013

6th Annual Healthcare Delivery and Management Case Competition

Friday, November 9, 2012
8:30 am – 4:00 pm

Location: Map

Hess Commons

Event Title:

6th Annual Healthcare Delivery and Management Case Competition

Event Type:

Special Event

Sponsor:

Department of Health Policy and Management

Co-sponsor:

Cigna, HayGroup and National Cancer Institute

Invite Limited To:

By Invitation Only

RSVP:

Yes, Contact Rachel Sabb, 212.305.1844

Description:

For MPH, EMPH, PTM, MBA, EMBA, and MD
(including dual-degree) graduate students

To be held Friday, November 9, 2012
At Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health

GOALS OF COMPETITION:

Create opportunity for students to apply classroom learning to a real-world healthcare case, using strategic decision making to solve health service delivery problems
Allow students from the three Alliance schools�Business, Medicine, and Public Health�to collaborate in a cross-functional way
Utilize faculty from the three Alliance Schools to advise teams

For more information/rules and to register your team for the competition, please contact Prof. Paul Thurman, Executive Director of the Alliance, at Paul.Thurman@Columbia.edu
Students must register by October 31, 2012

http://www.mailman.columbia.edu/students/student-life/student-digest/display?site=sdigest&event_id=11578

Links:
[1] http://www.cumc.columbia.edu/about/cumc_map.html
[2] mailto:rs2512@columbia.edu

Women in Life-Sciences: Pharma Think Tank at UCSF on Oct. 30, 2013

What makes us happy

Some years back I read a book by two researchers in search of what makes people happy. Beyond general curiosity, my motives were somewhat selfish: I wanted to find out what the secret to happiness so to apply it to myself and be happy.

Finding the “happy people”

I still remember the researchers approach. It was different from what I expected and has stuck with me since then: they did not come from a nerdy angle that started with lengthy definition for “happiness” along with complex parameters and complicated metrics as you may expect. These two researchers went out to find “happy” people by hearsay and then interview them to identify commonalities or factors leading to their happiness – and the very secret to happiness I was after.

Looking back, the researchers used the power of crowd sourcing (long before it became a household buzzword) to find those happy people. In this practical yet somewhat fuzzy approach, they asked broadly who knew people that were “happy”. Then zeroed in on those reportedly happy individuals that several others pointed to. It may not be the most “scientific” approach I ever heard but intuitively it made sense enough for me to accept it and read on.

What happy people have in common

The researchers found and interviewed, asking if these people felt truly happy and to found out what exactly made them so happy.

The responses surprised me. Most of them, as I recall, did not consider themselves “happier” than others in a particular way despite the many people around them believing otherwise. Of these presumable happy people, most appeared modest and content with their lives. Their happiness came from within and somehow ‘radiated’ out to others.

Overall, they were happy with what they had and not driven by the longing for things they did not have. It seemed they were more resilient or less tempted in what is advertised and suggest making us more beautiful, happy, smart, sophisticated, loved, needed, sexy, admired, or whatever once we buy this or that.

No problems in life?

It got even more interesting for me when the researchers got to the real ‘meat’ probing the million-dollar question: where does this inner happiness come from? Was there an event, experience, or cause? Were these people luckier in life than others, did they win the lottery? Did they not face the same obstacles that most of us encounter; did they not experience pain or feel despair as much?

The answer was a surprise, again, from what I had expected and consistent across responders. What these reportedly happy people had in common were traumatic life experiences, some of the saddest I have ever heard. They had suffered the most painful challenges a human can ever go through; heart-wrenching life stories full of grief with loss and pain on every level imaginable. They had faced certain death, lost loved ones or their health, survived war, crime, assault or terrible disasters. They had lost everyone and everything important to them, everything that they had considered the center of their life at that time.

Gratitude

What they also had in common was a deep gratitude for having overcome these major losses and crises. They were grateful for what they had today starting with their own life. Their happiness truly came from within. They did not crave getting the newest gadget first or show off status symbols of sorts. They were happy being with their friends and family, and going about a simple life they enjoyed every minute. They found beauty again in a flower and took the time to sniff it when others rushed by.

As a learning from these ‘happy’ people for myself, their happiness resulted from enduring a deep and meaningful suffering, overcoming a life-changing trauma and then to truly appreciate that you survived or made it through in the end to live another day.

It even reminds of Dante’s “Divine Comedy”, where to protagonist need to descend to Hell (suffering) and work its way up through Purgatory (transformation) to reach Paradise (happiness).

To this day, it serves me as a reminder to value and cherish what I have and can do, and not to become obsessed with what I do not have.

Looking into the abyss

Now we could leave it here to sit back, smile, and cozily reflecting on our lives feeling good for a little while. But why not take it further and ask the ultimate question: looking back when I die, what would I have done different, what would have made me happier?

Obviously, we do not want to wait to find an answer before it is too late. So, let’s crowd-source again and learn from other people at the end of their lives looking back. Thankfully, an Australian nurse recorded the regrets of the dying she worked with over a 12-year period. (The Guardian, Top five regrets of the dying, February 1, 2013)

Here are their top five regrets:

I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. – This was the most common regret of all.
I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
I wish that I had let myself be happier.

Read the list again. Take a minute and think about it. – Do any of these regrets resonate with you? What would be your greatest regret?

Now that you know what these soon-to-die people wished they had done differently in their lives, what will you do in the time you still have?

Synthesis

But how does this all come together? What is the change within us that in the end made the ‘happy people’ happy? I was still looking for answers, for a pattern and an explanation to this phenomenon.

Let’s take just one step back to look at the bigger picture and combine the path of hardship to happiness by the ‘happy people’ with the regrets of the dying. Is there a general formula that we can apply to ourselves to be happy?

Attempting an explanation

I don’t claim to have scientific evidence, nor did I mull through endless scientific literature, or study medicine or psychology; to me the answer I found appears quite apparent and not new either. It is known as “post-traumatic growth” in the medical world and defined as “a positive change experienced as a result of the struggle with a major life crisis or a traumatic event.”

Transformation

A change takes place in individuals during post-traumatic growth that transforms mind, attitude, and behavior:

Priorities change – they are not afraid to do what makes them happy
Feeling close to others – they seek and value closeness with people that are important in their lives
Knowing oneself better – they are awareness of their own needs and limitations
Living with meaning and purpose – they enjoy each day to the fullest, carpe diem!
Better focus on goals and dreams – actively seeking to making changes

This transformation changed the ‘happy people’ consciously or unconsciously, and it is this behavior and mindset that others see or sense, which leads them to the conclusion they are happy.

How to be happy

Now, wouldn’t it be great if you could replicate this this transformation and become happy without having to go through the hardship and suffering these happy-after-tragedy people all had to go through? – The good news is you can!

From what I learned from Jane McDonigal, a famous game designer, the favorable result of post-traumatic growth can build four specific individual changes:

Physical resilience – to not give in to sedentary behavior, meaning to get up and active, physically move!
Mental resilience – build up your willpower to persist in reaching for your goals
Emotional resilience – provoke your positive emotions to offset negativity (ideally in a ratio of 3:1, no kidding!)
Social resilience – draw strength from other people; as a practical approach, genuinely thank one person a day or touch another person for at least 6 seconds.

Everyone can benefit for this simply by choosing to do so. It gets even better: over 1,000 peer-reviewed studies confirm that applying these changes can prolong your life by up to 10 years! Amazingly, not only are the ‘happy people’ obviously happy, they also live longer!

So if you are in search for your happiness, as I was, chose to make these personal choices and start your transformation to happiness today!

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