Leading IT and biopharma expert, Diana McKenzie, says security and privacy are top priorities in digital health

It was a great pleasure to chat with my former Amgen colleague, Diana McKenzie, for the most recent episode of our Digital Health C-Suite Series. Diana is a technology executive, advisor, and board member with over thirty years of leadership experience gained from growing, scaling, and transforming global businesses in the Life Sciences and Software Industry with revenues ranging from $3-20B.

A visionary leader possessing a unique blend of digital strategy, talent development, enterprise risk management, and cybersecurity leadership experience, Diana instinctively connects people and ideas to transform the “art of the possible” into tangible business results. She inspires others to embed customer-first principles and best-in-class workplace culture and values within their companies and teams.

We covered a lot of ground in our discussion. Diana shared her strategies for accelerating digital transformation for biopharma, the importance of the patient journey to guide digital innovation, and why security and privacy are top priorities in any digital health initiative.

Established and emerging companies have differing digital health advantages

Established companies have no choice but to transform digitally. Nobody can be competitive today, especially given what we've been through with a pandemic, without embracing digital transformation. Balancing that while modernizing and maintaining legacy systems, understanding the digital strategy, and the regulatory compliance, security, and privacy concerns takes work.

Emerging or early stage companies are in a good position because they are digitally native. The good news there is they can move quickly and with agility, but there is a risk of building too fast without a strong enough foundation on which to scale.

Why Regulatory, security and privacy compliance should never be an afterthought

“Regulatory compliance, security and privacy can never be an add on. They are built in from the ground up, not only as part of the technology platforms, but also the company's culture and DNA.”

Important focus points for IT leaders building digital health solutions

Diana shared that there are three important focus points for IT leaders working towards transformation:

• Know the customer. Work to understand the desired outcome for the patient. Consider the patient journey, and all the touch points along the way and build those into the solution.
• Determine what to build in house and when to partner. Skilled resources in this space are scarce. If you're going to build solutions, recruit the right talent or re-skill your current team to do this new digital work. Choosing the right strategic partner can help you go faster.
• Build trust. This gets to the regulatory compliance, cyber security, privacy element which can sound overwhelming. Really, it boils down to trust as your team embraces developing the product from the perspective of themselves as the patient. Think about how to deliver the outcome and build trust with the patient and the other players in the ecosystem.

Addressing it from that perspective means you're automatically doing what you need to do to protect your company from any downside risk or potential harmful reputational damage.

“Above all, believe in the mission; that we can do better to help patients.” 

You can listen to our full conversation here (~14 minute video) and the full Digital Health C-Suite Series Playlist can be found here.