In the latest installment of our BrightInsight Digital Health C-Suite Series, I spoke with Kal Patel, CEO and founder at BrightInsight, about our company’s approach to the latest developments in AI, how life science companies are seeking to use it, and how BrightInsight harnesses AI to drive value with data. Here’s a recap of the discussion. You can watch the interview here, and all interviews in the 2024 JPM Digital Health C-suite series here.
Starting with R&D, generative AI is already creating value in multiple ways, first in terms of discovering and identifying meaningful, as-yet-undiscovered drug candidates. “Secondly, we're seeing a lot of work around designing drugs that are essentially more ‘druggable,’ meaning better efficacy and lower risk of side effects.” Third, and perhaps underplayed, is efficiency and speed. “If you can get drugs to market faster, then obviously that makes them more valuable. And if you can do it more efficiently, then obviously that's going to reduce your costs and let you do more.”
On the commercial side, companies can use AI to reach patients and physicians they haven’t been able to previously, on a much more personalized level, “really speaking to what that individual needs to help them in their journey.” The technology also enables that process to happen more efficiently, with lower costs and use of resources. “It's not about sales reps going away, it's about how sales reps get much, much more effective by leveraging AI to help them be more efficient and more personalized.”
With a focus on disease management, often with blockbuster pharma drugs, BrightInsight’s approach begins with personalizing the patient’s journey, whether that’s helping them to better understand their disease, or assisting with onboarding onto therapy. That’s become especially important as therapies have grown more complex, with infusion, self-injection, or other modalities that are more complicated than taking a pill.
Adherence and persistence are another important area. “One of the biggest challenges for almost all pharma brands, regardless of therapeutic area, regardless of how the drug works, is that the patient will churn off and/or be in a situation where they're skipping doses or missing doses.” BrightInsight is using AI to help predict churn, enabling intervention via personalized nudges that help keep patients on their therapies.
But the key value proposition is that the BrightInsight Platform can deliver algorithm-driven solutions to meaningful clinical problems that are compliant with privacy, security, regulatory, and quality requirements, at a global scale.
Compliance has always been a core component at BrightInsight. “At the genesis of BrightInsight five years ago, privacy, security, regulatory and quality were already why we started the company.” The advent of generative AI technologies only raises the stakes, amplifying the need for gold-standard compliance.
“One of our customers was talking about the massive investments they're making internally on GenAI, and I asked them, ‘Given all that capability you have, why do you work with BrightInsight?’ And his response was, ‘Why would I go build an expertise that you guys have already deeply invested in and proven out and scaled?’ He's going to do what others are not already doing to drive value in his business, but where he has a proven trusted partner, why would he replicate that?”
From a clinical perspective, BrightInsight’s customers are deriving insights into how patients are using their products, and the results they're seeing from the therapy, in the form of real-world evidence (RWE) that's never existed before. “Understanding how patients are engaging and using these therapies, so that you can use that insight to drive things like much more personalized adherence.”
With gene therapies, RWE is even more important in providing validation for often one-time treatments costing millions of dollars. However, “what I haven't seen from the industry yet is the innovation on what's the right data and what's the right way to collect that data?” Companion apps not only deliver value to the patient before, during and after therapy, but also collect quality-of-life and clinical data on the patient’s journey. “Ultimately what we want to help our customers show is that the economic value of the money spent is actually yielding for society as well.”
For patients, digital health solutions offer the information and support they need, when they need it, instilling a sense of ownership around the disease they're trying to manage – in addition to helping them stay compliant with therapy.
“If you do those two things, and drive that compliance, drive that confidence, then you ultimately let them create data that's really around their own experience.” Generative AI not only drives that personalization, but also makes the data more digestible and efficiently usable. That enables more constructive conversations with the patient’s healthcare provider, leading to better outcomes.