AUDIO Epi 5: The Healthcare BIG Mistake You're Making With Data Analysis

AUDIO Epi 5. This IPZO facto FULL Episode features a discussion of the interconnectedness of healthcare ecosystems, inspired by growing up during a dictatorship and the importance of communications. This emphasizes the use of all our senses to communicate alongside the limitations of relying solely on  data limit when evaluating innovations for optimal patient involvement with their care. Gain insights into the significance of medical science and its impact on healthcare and innovation.

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➡️ Connect with us!
InnoPathwayZ (IPZ) https://www.linkedin.com/company/innopathwayz-llc/
Zina Manji, Founder & Principal, Regulatory Strategist, InnoPathwayZ https://www.linkedin.com/in/zina-manji/
➡️ Dr. Eddie Power, CEO & Founder emPower Medical LLC, Medical Strategist & Thought Leader https://www.linkedin.com/in/eddie-power/
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RESOURCES
Article by Dr. Eddie Power referenced in video. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/eddie-power_considerations-for-effective-communication-activity-7031654938325712897-m9C_?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAAS6H_8BjMTCEvM1BH3bE7KGA0wD8pWkY3Q

Considerations for Effective Communication of Medical Information PDF link: https://link.springer.com/epdf/10.1007/s40290-023-00461-3?sharing_token=3OuANtcDF6782iSLqDgMm_e4RwlQNchNByi7wbcMAY7dQ6ZxmQ0jRFzagXHMQCNHypJjGwRRn4jfeW7dtZLLdGXxl-A-kBcNzgsp0kqAMheNOL8NmmoNEM-o0p65f98QKxFVcci6riN30o5A6dkHtGK3wuaiwUy0T3fv9J5Eu9U%3D

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Because with healthcare Innovation, there is No Way But Forward!

Transcript

I was born on the rock of Gibraltar and when I was growing up there, there was a dictatorship that led me to my interest in microbiology and in fact that these all work in an interrelated ecosystem. The more we think about all our different senses, how we use those to communicate, I think the more trustworthy you become, trapped of saying that, you know, data are other one truth and data haven't changed. 


They're both accurate depictions. You can see why you call yourself a storyteller as well as medical. They're strategists. That actually maybe healthcare at its essence should be more about collaboration rather than being a competitive ender. 


Now instead of being an expert in your own medicine, I'm starting to become an expert in the healthcare system and that way that now we were putting all this, I call it medical risk, onto people who were not scientifically or medically trained. 


The healthcare industry as a whole is still very silent. Things have got to change, right? The system is just not working. You mentioned AI, I mean, what it doesn't yet have, right, to my mind is a sense of purpose, of intent, right, and say consciousness. 


And what I mean by that, it was really not that it ignored rules and regulations, but it came up with the result. Technology is advancing much faster than a new way of delivery or innovating or new regulations or ethics even. 


Putting those people in a position where they can truly make an informed decision, be deliberately polemical, you know, challenge the status quo, you know, they're coming to something better. Well, hello, welcome. 


I'm your host, Zina Manji, and founder of InnoPathwayz. I've spent over 20 years in life sciences industry working with med tech and startups, crafting strategies for new innovation. So welcome to the ipzo facto podcast. 


It's a creative play on words on ipzo facto, which means by the fact itself, suggesting something is inherently true or inevitable. So here at InnoPathwayz, we believe that when it comes to innovation, there's no way but forward. 


The ipzo facto episodes focus on innovation, strategy, transformative change in health care, and health care touches us all. But we don't need more buzzwords. We need bold moves. So we're bringing you guests all along the health care spectrum. 


including patients in upcoming episodes. So I'm really delighted today to bring to you Dr. Eddie Power here to the stage. Eddie, I have never met a pharma medical affairs person professional that has touched such diverse areas as you have in the industry and also including direct communication. 


So I'd love for you to introduce yourself to the audience and share what inspires you most. Thank you, Zeen, and great pleasure to be here with you and be able to share some of our thoughts and have a very nice conversation with you. 


So Eddie Power, I'm the CEO and founder of a medical affairs consultancy called Empower Medical. So we're very boutique and very focused on that. I have 27 years experience in the pharma industry, primarily medical affairs, but I have had a couple of roles in strategic marketing and also in clinical development. 


And during those 27 years, I've worked for six different companies, both large and small. And prior to that, I was on the faculty at a London medical and dental school for 12 years. And that's where I started really getting into the whole area of communication, learning and professional development. 


And when you ask me what inspires me most, I think it's that never-ending search for curiosity that I see in others, people looking for things that are going to make them better, going to help other people improve their lives, their experiences. 


And just that, that mindset of self-improvement, I think is so inspirational from so many walks of life, not just healthcare, but anything else, media, sport, even politics sometimes. can inspire us, though sometimes it does become a little bit polemical. 


But if we seek inspiration, we can often find it in the places that we least expect. That that's such a wonderful introduction, Eddie, I feel like I've gotten to know you in kind of a special way with how you introduced yourself. 


It's not just, this is what I do professionally, and this is who I am, but really, all the background that that you come with. And that's so inspiring, actually hearing your your introduction. We recently met, talking about, you know, inspiration, we recently met in person at a Pharmageddon event by Impatient Health. 


And I there we talked a lot about purpose was at that event. And you actually shared your purpose story, which was really fascinating. and something I would have never guessed, a really unique background. 


So would you would you mind sharing with the audience your kind of purpose background? Absolutely, well you know to start with I was born on the Rock of Gibraltar and for those of you who don't know where it is it is literally a rock at the bottom of Spain and when I was growing up there there was a dictatorship in place at the time in Spain so the border was closed it's only three square miles 30,000 of us were living there on top of each other good grounding for Covid lockdowns by the way but right across the the straits is Africa and it's only eight nautical miles away but you could see Africa there we were fortunate to have a very robust healthcare system you know the UK flew in medicines provided medical care but the only way we could get out was either flying to London to the UK or getting a ferry across to Africa and Africa you know to this day was still devastated by infectious disease and that's what really piqued my interest you know and for us living in such a small square mileage hygiene and things that dealt with with infection were often top of mind you know there was a robust public health system we didn't have fresh sources of water you know drinking water had to be shipped in and so it was quite it was quite a unique unique experience but it's what led me to my interest in in microbiology and infection disease just because of what I could see over on another continent that was literally within within touching distance. 


And my purpose really grew from that, that we lived in such a privileged little world. But yet, like right across the way, there were people who were suffering, undergoing disease, didn't have access to the resources. 


And that's what led me first to infectious disease. And my first position at the teaching hospital that I mentioned was as a course director for what was then called the clinical microbiology course. 


But I still remember to this day, my very first ever lecture to 300 medical and dental students on microbiology. I was so excited. I had spent hours putting together these slides that by the way then weren't electronic. 


You had to hand write everything on overhead acetates to project the students. And I thought I was crushing it, you know, I was talking Escherichia Coli, this and Staphylococcus or is that. And then within five minutes, I saw a paper airplane come out of the corner of the amphitheatre. 


And within within another five minutes, there were dozens of paper aeroplanes and holes. And I completely lost the audience. And I was devastated. You know, went straight back to my professor back then and said, hey, I thought I'd done a brilliant job, yet I failed miserably. 


And he I always recall his words. He sat me down and said, you know, Eddie, he says, you just need to think about the audience and what their needs are, what their wants are, you know, what are they looking for? 


He said, you know, 300 medical dental students, most of them aren't interested in infectious disease. They want to be surgeons. They want to be gastroenterologists. They need to know enough about something to be able to get them by and get them to qualify and get the certifications and the degrees, the diplomas. 


But they don't need in depth detail in something that's not of interest. And I really took that to heart, which kind of evolved a lot of my purpose in in how we communicate and particularly in science and medicine. 


How well can we communicate having experienced a lot of poor communication over over my career? And to this day, Zena, I keep a paper airplane on my desk to remind me of that and to remind me that whenever I'm communicating with somebody that I understand what that perspective is, you know, what their wants, what their needs are and tailor that conversation and that communication to them rather than what. 


or do I want to communicate? Yeah, that is a very unique background and experience. And I can see why you call yourself a storyteller as well as a medical affairs strategist. And so talking about your background and kind of the political situation and kind of those environmental external factors, right? 


When we're in pharma or any type of industry, you kind of do your role, but you never know when external factors are going to come. It could be a pandemic, which we all recently have experienced and still recovering from. 


It could be, market issues. It could be any political issues in any country or your own country, depending on where you're delivering care. And so with your specific experience, and you mentioned, although the political situation was such a dictatorship, you said that the healthcare system was very robust. 


So I'm really interested in how you find, yes, it might be a provocative question, but how have you found the positives from that? Like how did that work robustly in in your opinion? And is there anything from that, from a healthcare system perspective that you think other countries could do better, like where you are now, for example? 


No, absolutely. So two things spring to mind. One was that there was a lot of investment in education and improving people's standards of education and really trying to address and implement that at a population level. 


But with that also goes a sense of community, and the fact that within a healthcare system, it's not just about the individual, and it's not just about me first. It's trying to make sure that whatever you do, or whatever steps you take, not only for your own good or benefit, but as you expand your circle, your family, your friends, and then the broader community. 


And for me again, that was one of the reasons why infectious disease in particular was so was so appealing because it's something that can be contagious, you know, that can be spread, you can take measures as an individual that help protect others, vaccines being a prime example, but it's taking an accountability for your community as well as just yourself and it's something that for me has always kind of driven me throughout my career. 


It's something that I think for all of us, that sense of purpose has to come from within. You can't have something external to you or to your beliefs provide that purpose or you can leverage and I always think, you know, work for six different companies. 


I definitely leveraged the company to help me get to that purpose and to help me fulfill. But I never relied on the company for about providing me with my purpose, if that makes sense. That totally makes sense. 


Yeah, that really resonates. And I think you're you're also sharing that it's it's that individual that personal rather purpose that creates an anchor. Right. By by which you can navigate changes or shifts as they happen. 


But you have a strong core of your own personal purpose. Absolutely. And I think what it does, you know, it also keeps you ready for the for the opportunity. You know, we always talk about change that may be external. 


It may be things that you can't control whether you're in a pharmaceutical environment and your company merges or acquire somebody else. You know, all my moves, bar one through those six companies were through mergers and acquisitions. 


And it's not always being able to anticipate what's going to happen. I never liked the interview questions that said, what's your five year plan? Well, who knows? Right. And I fell into pharma really through serendipity more than anything else. 


But but it's being aware and self-aware of the opportunities that arise through that change. And then you become proactive about taking advantage of those opportunities, you know, being able to challenge yourself, stretch yourself and seize the moment. 


And that you you have to be bold, you know, you have to be courageous. You can't be afraid of failure. You have to. do fail, you have to embrace that failure and take the learnings from that. Most of the major scientific and medical advances in history have come through failure. 


It's just that somebody had the mouse and recognized that within that there was an opportunity to do something different that could actually lead to better outcomes for people, for patients, for healthcare as a broader whole. 


So that's going to be my guiding philosophy, ideology, if you like, and it's kind of what's fueled me through my 30, 40 years now in various sides of the healthcare environment. Thanks for that, Cher. 


I think it's really powerful and empowering, which leads us to your founder story as well. So as you have gone through your journey of different, all these various companies and these various roles. And as you said, they, you know, some of these shifts were because of external happenings with company organizations. 


And I really love your advice on embracing change. I think oftentimes I've seen in shifts within the organizations that I've been in people, sometimes people take a victim mentality and become very negative because they feel like they've been harmed. 


And of course we can't take away from the fact that, you know, it is a difficult situation and everyone's gonna meet the moment where they are. And it is hard to think, how are you gonna overcome this hurdle? 


But definitely I think a more empowering way to tackle that is as you said, is embracing that opportunity. See what you can leverage and how you can continue your journey with that changing that challenge into an opportunity. 


May not seem so easy at the time. So before we go on your founder journey, to say, would you say it's for yourself, it's like kind of what Steve Jobs says, you connect the dots looking back versus, did you see, how did you feel in those moments? 


Yeah, so for me, there were a couple of drivers that kind of led to that point in time, you know, in my life, right, as well as career. One is, was working through different companies and at different companies, you know, I had a growing sense that the way there's, companies thought and acted was very parochial. 


And by that, I mean that they were very focused on their own medicines, especially if they still had pattern life on them. And after end of pattern expiry, some of those interests kind of faded away. 


But I also had a growing sense, you know, throughout my career that actually maybe healthcare at its essence and at its core should be more about collaboration rather than being a competitive endeavor. 


You know, and by that, I mean, the more that you give a person, I don't like the word patient because it often boxes people into a certain framework and can sometimes lead to a kind of victim. time and time, because I'm going to call people who have some disease or some condition that needs addressing. 


But for me, the more choice that a person has when they're trying to address some health care issue or some health care event, then surely that's the betterment of all of us. And if you kind of start stripping away that competitive element, then from a person perspective, that's a much better environment in which you have some choice, you can have different options. 


So that had kind of been framing my thinking for a while, particularly having come from a teaching hospital environment where a very different approach to health care. And then I had the privilege in my last job to be responsible medically for one of the COVID therapeutics. 


And it was a unique experience for us all, but certainly in a pharma environment, here you had this disease that nobody knew anything about. There were no known therapies, no known vaccines. And we were kind of learning as we went, because for every other disease area that I can think of, even if you innovate and bring something better onto the market, there's still always some kind of standard therapy behind that that the health care medical community can fall back on. 


And this was this was unique and really privileged to bring a therapeutic to mind, because it was the one time where I think pharma and health care the whole governments took and say we really did. save millions of lives and you know to me you couldn't within farmer I felt that I couldn't get to a peak higher than that and by that time you know I had been long enough that at Pfizer that was my last company that I was you know vested in all my all my like retiree benefits and you know I'd been there long enough and I was old enough and it led me to think well you know when I try something different you know and something new I want to be able to do things that interest me that excite me that actually take away some of those constraints of having to work within one lane or one channel i.e. 


one farmer company and just being able to touch on things that I think can potentially make. make a difference and that's what led me to find my company and it's really led me to expand my network to work with a number of brilliant people, brilliant minds in areas related to pharma, so things like artificial intelligence, tech companies and just communications companies, which as I've mentioned is an ongoing pattern of mine and how do we communicate effectively and it's been quite liberating honestly, 


it's been fun, like we were touching on before, and I know these journeys people should assume is always easy, you know, or a better roses, it's been tough at times and you're taking up the certainty of being an employee with a regular income to something that actually isn't regular, but the rewards can be much higher and I want to say rewards, I mean from a personal level, from an intellectual level rather than a financial level, 


if that makes sense. Yeah totally, I hear you and I think when we go on a founder's journey, it's typically or maybe it's common to look at contribution, so you're kind of feeding that how can I contribute to impact in different ways that you are the architect of as the founder and whoever you have working with you, so then really it gives you more opportunity to take on different types of work or different types of engagement than you typically would have been doing. 


So how, how has your your journey now? What types of things maybe have you gotten involved with that you wouldn't in a in a typical role. And I think you've kind of highlighted yourself as a, as a storyteller, you mentioned about communications, which, as we see, and which was highlighted at Pharmageddon event as well by Impatient Health was trust, and how that is so important in communications. 


And you actually wrote a paper on on on that as well. So a couple years ago. And your your thoughts on what needed to be leveled up. in terms of how we communicate, because I think what you were sharing just now in your journey and shifting to different companies, different roles, and on your founder journey, hitting COVID and your background before is, and you're just right from the beginning when you were communicating to an audience about, 


you know, depth of microbiology, and they're just not not engaging with you in the way that you expected. So that has come to the forefront when it comes to communication and healthcare, both from a pharma perspective, from a clinician perspective, a healthcare professional. 


And now you, in your current role and how you provide strategy and feedback, could you talk a little bit more about, kind of seems to me like you've broken yourself out, you've got a breakout role as a storyteller in that creativity part of it. 


Do you think that that's something that you're now allowed to kind of create further versus what you were able to do in kind of those traditional roles? And then can you talk about those foundational shifts that you wrote about in your article on what actually needs to change? 


And I think probably putting that into practice since COVID and, you know, now with AI and everything else, we have to keep looking, kind of looking back at how we're making that human connection. Yeah, so one of the key tips for me, I think, over my career and what's led to what I'm doing today has been an appreciation that we all work in an interrelated ecosystem. 


and that there are a number of different actors within that ecosystem that could be people, it could be process, it could be policy, it could be regulation, it doesn't really matter, but the more we think that how we operate within that ecosystem and the different needs, perspectives, wants of all the players within that ecosystem work and interact, the better it makes us all at understanding where the real needs are, 


where the real pain points are, where the real problems are. And if I go back to my time in medical affairs, to use an analogy, I always felt that within medical, we were great car mechanics, and I use that as a deliberately provocative term, but what I mean by that is in the sense that we... 


were very familiar and very expert in those cars we worked on. Our medicines, our devices, we understood what was the best synthetic gold to use to drive them when you, all the attributes, you know, zero to 16, three seconds, or, you know, breaking distance of 100 meters, whatever it is, we were great at that and being focused on that. 


What I felt and what I've come to realize more and more is that we didn't have a good appreciation of actually how does that car work in an ecosystem and zero to 60 may be a great efficacy attribute in three seconds on a racetrack, but if you're driving in Manhattan it's completely relevant, whereas if you have really good working brakes or, you know, your indicators are working properly then that whole safety aspect becomes very relevant when you're driving in the city, 


but you don't need that if you're driving on a racetrack, and then beyond that, how does that car work with other aspects of that transport system? Traffic lights, roundabouts, pedestrian crossings, if you want to get to an island, do you get onto a ferry, if you want to get to the other side of the country, can you drive onto a train, so now you start behaving and thinking like a transportation expert, 


and if I bring that analogy back to medical affairs, now instead of being an expert in your own medicine, now you're starting to become an expert in the healthcare system and that interconnectivity, and it doesn't matter if you're talking about a drug or if you're talking about about some kind of software solution or some diagnostic companion is how is that, is that gonna be used? 


And is something that you've designed, say for hospital, appropriate for somebody to be able to self-administer in the home, which is what was happening in COVID. Like a lot of patients were being sent their infusion packs and they had to self-administer or the caregiver had to self-administer. 


And I was acutely aware that now we were putting all this, I call it medical risk onto people who were not scientifically or medically trained. And how could we go about communicating what they needed to know to be able to use those medicines safely and effectively? 


So it kind of ties back to that communication. And for me, what it's done in this role, it's broadened that lens and that network. We've got to be able to connect and interact with pharma companies, with solution providers, with healthcare practitioners, and kind of work with them to help connect all those dots together. 


I really love that analogy that you mentioned about car mechanic and then the overall transportation system. How do you navigate the roads? How do you navigate your vehicle through different situations, different climates, what have you? 


Also depends what vehicle you have. The analogies are, I think, really good and can go broad. Like tolls, where do you pay a toll? Where is there a freeway? Just access, where do I have access, right? 


I think that's brilliant and really easy, much more easier way to think about it. Like when I think about being in conversations about the healthcare ecosystem, it just right away, I'm like, okay, this is complex, depends who's talking from what angle. 


Not really clear about what outcome we're trying to drive because everyone's in kind of their silos within that healthcare system spectrum. And everyone has different agendas or different remits within that healthcare system. 


But I really love how you talked about collaboration and integration and when we talk about talk about treatments, whether it's a drug, whether it's a medical device or digital therapeutic or whatever it might be, there's the way it's administered. 


But it's also can the ecosystem actually provide access to that treatment to the individual? And how is the individual interacting with that treatment? Because ultimately, if that treatment is not put into action by the individual it's intended for, the benefits will not be realized. 


So it's, it's a real should we shall we say it's kind of a holistic or how would you describe this it's holistic broader view, when you're delivering treatments and care. Because you of course there's the safety and efficacy part of it. 


There's what is the health care provider or professional understand about it. What does the reimbursement system. How do they evaluate the treatment and that goes to access. And then ultimately, which is probably the one of the core things is how is the individual then interacting with that treatment and what is their experience. 


Is it a positive experience is it something that they can keep doing what can be improved and you mentioned doing coven. I guess there's some experimentation that had to occur and a mindful medical risk taking in that so could you talk about how or how have you found Is, or what are your thoughts on integrating all of that together when you're delivering care and that more collaborative integrated way to actually have that direct communication and engages the, 


the, the user on a personal basis. Absolutely, you know I like simply yet I tend to call all of that like systems thinking and there's an element of of realism right and futures thinking as to, you know, what could be different in order to be better and I think you know when I think collaboration. 


The industry, the healthcare industry as a whole is still is still very siloed on the companies each talk and communicate about the wrong portfolios and the their own medicines, devices that they offer, which isn't optimal at all for a person who's trying to seek information on what different say treatment options may be available or for a healthcare provider for that matter because you end up having to trawl through different proprietary drug company websites and then try and piece it all together. 


And for me, part of the future thing is, well, what if we had a one-stop shop where all of that information could be in one place for a person, for a healthcare provider to be able to access and ask questions. 


And it means giving up a degree of control, right? It means that you probably need more transparency right, in terms, you know, not only of benefits, but also risks, you know, of medicines development. 


But you also at least in the US, you've got that kind of silos on the provider and the pair side of things. You know, with all those companies that I worked with, I moved through four different states in the US. 


I had a different healthcare provider in each state. There was no communication between any of those, right? It was up to me. I wanted to transfer my healthcare records. Because I worked for six different companies, I had health insurance provided by six different pairs. 


They didn't talk to each other. And, you know, if you were already approved by one, you still had to undergo these medical questionnaires each time you joined a new one. So, you know, that whole fragmented system to me is right for change. 


And it's where that kind of collaborative mentality should come in. You know, that's where kind of the future thinking comes in. Is it a hard task? Yes. Will we ever get there? I don't know. But, you know, surely we've got to aspire, you know, to something like that, because we benefit everyone, right? 


People in care, the providers of that care, the organizations paying for that care, you know, the policy makers, the regulators. And if we understand all those levers and how we can best get them working in unison, and in the same direction, then the best will all be for it. 


So, aspirational, definitely practical. Who knows? Probably not, but we need that purpose, right, to drive us to try and get there and, you know, take baby steps. If you can improve something one step at a time, then you're already on a good path. 


Yeah, I think you're right. It does kind of take it is about futures thinking it is about systems thinking. That's a great call out there. And I know something that you you practice and where I mean, things have got to change, right? 


The system is just not working. And we all feel that we're wherever you are in the healthcare spectrum. We're all receiving care at some point. And so we see things on the front line ourselves. And some of us are also creating those treatments on the. 


delivery side of things as well or administrative side of things or legal side of things. But do you feel, I mean, with with AI coming as here, right, and with AI becoming more advanced and technology growing to advancing to such stages, I mean, lots of people will talk about 2025 as kind of an inflection point. 


I guess when it comes to technology, they say that, you know, when you think about the industrial revolution, the digital revolution, all these different waves and revolutions we've gone through in the past, now the change will be exponential where we are going to be seeing in a shorter period of time, hundreds of years worth of advancements where you can all already kind of see how if you look at Gen Z, 


Gen Alpha, their lives are very different from what we experience. It's a whole different world where I would say my life and kind of broadly on day to day aspect and how things work was not so different than how it worked for my parents, right, who were born in the 1940s. 


But now if you look at me and the next generation, a little bit different, but now when you really start to see Gen Z, Gen Alpha very dramatically different, where even as we learned at Farmageddon with the Gen Z panel, life purpose is even very different. 


Many are not necessarily necessarily looking for I'm going to buy a house I'm going to buy a car I'm going to be settled in one place, either because it may not be as easily accessible, or because roles are changing all the time. 


But even just the environment in which they're living is very different. And so you could you could imagine if you're, you know, practicing futures thinking. And people having more of a voice. This probably may be also a futures thinking but people who have more of a voice of how they are receiving care, and that such and such care is not good enough. 


Can that be a driver to bring in and and force or push pharma companies and and healthcare clinicians or practices. to say, well, I'm going to go over here because this particular practice engages with my digital tools and is seeing my data and engaging with my data on these tools in a day-to-day perspective. 


And I feel that this clinician, this physician knows me better. That's kind of a competitive advantage where maybe it's that selection, right, that you talked about is maybe having more choices from that perspective. 


But of course, this is all complicated. Well, how does that work with an insurance? You talked about your own experience with different states. So it's also kind of hypothetical there, but I don't think it's out of the realms of reality completely as tools and technologies increases. 


And you mentioned your own example that you experience with COVID and because of a situation driving, well, infusions have to be done at home now. How can we make that happen? Something drove that to happen, whereas probably it would have taken some more years before anyone innovated something to occur, right? 


Absolutely. I definitely think that technology has always brought around change and significant change. And even when you look at healthcare, there are surgeries that are done today that didn't exist even 10, 15, 20 years ago. 


There are people alive and walking around today living healthy lives that probably wouldn't have been alive without some of those technological advances. And for me, sure, I mean, you can acknowledge the risk and there's potential downsides, but it's also looking at the opportunity, and how you can, you can harness them. 


You know, with some of these new technologies, you mentioned AI, I mean, it's certainly we're seeing it right, it has the potential and the applicability to certainly speed up a number of tasks to be make us be more efficient. 


What it doesn't yet have, right, to my mind is a sense of purpose, at least the word purpose, of intent, right, and save consciousness. And what I mean by that, it was really notable there where they tasked some AI tool to do something. 


And in essence, in order to get to what it had been tasked to do it, it, it went off compliance, it ignored rules and regulations, but it came up with the result that it had been tough. So that's what I mean by by consciousness and by intent is making sure that we're aware of the potential pitfalls as well as the benefits and that we learn to harness and use those technologies. 


AI is the the flavour du jour but you know there's more things that are coming you know in cloud computing you know come in and again transform a lot of the way a lot of the way that that we've done business um in in the past I mean even even at a social level and we do see it right are the next younger generations I think are much more accepting we're going to say and perhaps more trusting of some of these new technologies than some of those are all it's a it's a different you know priority for them you know again just take my own personal example I'm very cautious about what I do online you know I have VPN set up I have cookies blocked um I can certainly like speaking to my own adult children they don't even think like that they don't seem concerned about that it's just part you know part of the fabric uh of life and existence so so there's also I think a different perception of benefit and risk as generations you know come through I mean you know when books first started being printed they were seen as something bad and something that could influence people in in in the wrong ways and you had the same with radio you had the same with television uh and it's been there right generation after after generation. 


But I do think that we can all learn from each other if we're open minded enough to think like that. Yeah, exactly. And I think as change accelerates more and more, um, you know, that opportunity to get used to, you know, in a slow way, right? 


It's it, it's, it's not going to be there, right? I mean, technology is advancing much faster than how we can figure out a new way of delivery or a new way of innovating or new regulations or ethics even, right? 


When it comes to delivery of care communications or uh, you know, it, it, what you even develop as care. Right. And so there are those things that, that, um, requires some mindfulness in, when you mentioned it, what's the intention here? 


And, uh, looking at risk-based solutions or looking at technology in a risk-based way, I mean, it does require some experimentation. Um, I do think companies are, are more open to experimentation than they were in the past. 


And I think partly that is driven by a competitiveness to be ahead. But I also think, you know, how, how change often comes by in a successful way, it's because it's in, in, um, the healthcare system is because it's helped to save, you mentioned, save time, save costs, there's efficiencies built in. 


But let, let's shift here a little bit to this, uh, since you're focused a lot on communications as well, on trust. So with all of these changes happening, you went through COVID, um, we, we have seen, uh, an issue of trust in, in how communication is received, how it's processed. 


How have you found, um, have you found tactics or ways of thinking or, uh, kind of some of the suggestions you, you, you made in, in, in what you've written on how do we need to think about and practice communication differently to, to regain trust and also when something's new out there to actually acquire that trust and keep that trust. 


Yeah, so there's a couple of different strands of fault zenith. First is, even when you think about communication, often I think, you know, pharma falls down on the kind of written word as a default and it may be an animation or a graphic, but you know, we communicate through sight or we communicate through body language, you know, we communicate through the way we present ourselves. 


You know, now when you walk into say a GP's office, they often have soothing music and lightening smells sometimes, right, they'll have some fragrance that's there. So the more, the more we think about all our different senses, you know, and how we use those to communicate, I think the more trustworthy you become, right, it's not just, it's not just a one channel type of communication but then it's also communicating in a way that people feel comfortable with and, 


you know, too often, you know, when I was writing that article companies, not just companies, by the way, but the healthcare community as well right falls back on to. Well, data are just numbers on a table or a bar, but actually, you know, right, you can look what we're doing now, we're actually looking at data all the time. 


You know, we're looking at our expressions you can you can collect and insights on mood, somebody's feeling, and you can even put that together over time right if people are on the phone or videos or selfies and and put together all that to actually give you a journey of progress of a person who's in an intervention you know they are they more active other expressions changing if they were in pain. 


Are those expressions now suggesting that that pains improved. So, and each, each kind of stakeholder will probably want to get those data right in a slightly different way and you know we're talking about Gen Z and the newer generations will take talks all about expression. 


Yes, right and a visual. It's not about. Here's another table that I'm going to show you and by the way I know you can't see the numbers I'm going to put a little red circle around it. And that's what I'm going to focus on. 


focus on, why do you need all that? We know periphery to it, right? It's just getting to that message or point that you want to communicate. That's relevant to your audience. So thinking broadly like that, when code was happening, healthcare providers surveyed said that most of the information COVID came from the New York Times or the BBC because they had very succinct animations and graphics that allowed them to understand what this disease was. 


They didn't want to read a 20 page scientific publication. They needed to know enough to be able to recognize what it was and to be able to manage it or refer it on to specialists. in which disease physicians, sure, may have wanted that scientific publication. 


But, you know, for your average general practitioner or some denurgent care, you know, those learnings from media companies, in essence, were so powerful, you know, and got to the purpose, which was really at that point to save people's lives, right, who were suffering from COVID. 


So those, you know, are some of my thoughts. In an ideal world as well, Zena, and talking specifically about pharma and medical affairs, I am a strong advocate that you should be able to have an interaction and talk about any medicine or any device that's relevant to the disease area that you're engaging on. 


Doesn't matter if it's your company's or not. If you're really going to have a meaningful and constructive conversation, whether with a provider or with a person who's in care, having that lens makes you much more credible and makes you much more trustworthy, right, because now you say, well, here's all your Ds. 


And now you're putting those people in a position where they can truly make an informed decision. Right? It's not just here's information on my drug, and you're going to get it. And I'm not going to talk about anything else. 


But so that, to me, again, it's also aspirational, probably, but it's more, I think, of space and a place we should be trying to get in order to create that trust. with illness. Yeah, absolutely. And I think it comes down to exactly what you're saying. 


If we're delivering health care, and as individuals were receiving health care, what does it all come down to? What action needs to be taken? And how do I or how does the individual individual make that decision? 


Right. And many times you don't have a lot of time to read things or understand how it interacts with everything. But you might be suffering from a condition or maybe trying to prevent a condition where you actually want to be in action. 


And understanding that in a more holistic way and what the what the overall options are, can only make the health care experience better. And You know, during COVID, I did hear some company CEOs, you know, in this case, the media was, in this context, the media was trying to create competition. 


But it was interesting that there were some CEOs that were saying, well, I hope others are also working on some of these things because we've got billions all around the world who need to be served during COVID. 


So all hands on deck, it doesn't matter where you are. And we're not really afraid of competition because as one company, you can't serve them all. So it's going to take all of us. Absolutely. And you know, there may be like in cases like that alternative types of business model, right? 


Imagine it would be to pull the resources and put everything into one part. And if you came out with two or three different say therapeutic options, fantastic. And each company could take a percent of that, regardless of who was the originator, right? 


Putting that into a pot, but for the benefit of humankind, to me, that would be a really good collaborative, you know, example. And it's also starts getting away from this, this kind of volume based approach, right? 


That it's volume, more sales, more revenues, more. What if you had like Netflix, a subscription type model, regardless of how much of your medicine is prescribed or administered, then it starts taking away a lot of pressure to market, you know, to sell, but you can start providing some resources that actually help people get to informed decision making, right, and support them in their journeys. 


And, you know, really have a deep dive into the whatever disease area or whatever the time to prevent is. I mean, imagine a world like that without those pressures. Yeah, exactly. And I've mentioned this in another episode, I'll say it again, the talking to someone in medical affairs is I recently learned that it was a thousand years ago that Ibn Sina or Avicenna, the Latin version of his name came up with the, 


I think called the Canon of Medicine in 1025. And a key part of that was prevention. And now you see where we are a thousand years later, wonder where it will be even a hundred years from now, right? 


Because between 1025 and 2025, it's quite possible that level of change could happen in a hundred years or maybe even less from from now. That's right. And more and more people wanting to know what's happening in their bodies and with their condition, but also the technology allowing individuals and healthcare professionals to have a more immediate or more and more immediate realization of the results. 


You know, is this working? Is it targeted for the right individual or should we shift to something different? Yes. And you'd mentioned earlier, Dina, right, that having people, patients, like more empowered and sharing in the truth, that, you know, I think there has to be a recognition as well that not every actor in that has the same goals, right? 


If I'm put on a statin and, you know, my HCP might be focused on my cholesterol levels, right? Or, you know, my payer or employer might have an incentive for me to eat healthier. They could give me a discount right on my healthcare premiums, but my purpose might be, you know, can I have a cheeseburger once a week as an example, right? 


Yes. They're all, I think, valid objectives, right, in terms of our healthcare. You know, the regulator may have a completely different, you know, different objective. And sometimes I think we get like focused, like even farmer on Kipioa, where sometimes it's maybe quality of life that's more important. 


You know, we're both wearing glasses. I'm short-sighted. I'm not looking for a cure, but I wear my glasses because the quality of life improvement is fantastic. But that's my goal. I'm not seeking a cure. 


Now you're sure there's technologies in our like laser technology and things that may lead to a cure, but that's not what I want. Rather than being happy, my objective is to wear spectacles because it improves my quality of life. 


And you know, it's just the things that we often take for granted or even the way unconscious bias and the way we think that we don't often take into account. you know, in health care. And we often fall into the trap of saying that, you know, data are the one truth. 


And to give you again, I'm going to use another analogy for this, you know, I was brought up with a world map that had the UK right at the center. And the Americas were west and Asia was east. If you go to some of the maps that are used in Asian countries, now America is east. 


Yeah, west. The facts and data haven't changed the both accurate depictions of the world. Yes. But the perspective and the context in which you're viewing those facts and data are very different. Yeah. 


Context that we often don't realize. Like when we're communicating when we're providing information, it's always worth thinking about what context is my audience looking at it from. Yeah, I understand that, then I can be much more effective and providing them with something that's, you know, relevant. 


That's brilliant, Eddie. And it's reminding me of my own personal experience where I had a condition and I was discussing with my healthcare professional, but I knew that I was going to have to be put on this medication, which has very strong side effects. 


And I didn't want to be on that medication for six months. And so I just discussed with my healthcare professional to say, I don't want to do that. And I suggested, well, how about this? How about we take a more aggressive physical treatment and where the medication can be more targeted? 


And could we then have less of a treatment duration on the actual drug? And it actually worked. So I think that's really brilliant, Eddie, because even though I did that, I didn't really realize that that's what I was doing. 


And until you mentioned that. So I think for everyone listening, take that agency to have that conversation, just because what is being said to you about a treatment or procedure is given to you in a certain way. 


That doesn't mean there aren't other options. And look at what you brilliantly stated, Eddie, is your own personal context and what's meaningful for you. What is going to help you in your life? And what's the outcome you want? 


And that means you're also individually thinking okay, this medication and treatment might have a regulated benefit and risk, but I have my own benefit and risk that I'm looking for. So let's discuss that data that you have on this treatment and medication and procedure in the context of what are my own personal goals. 


Absolutely. Absolutely. I think use the right word there, right? It's having that agency, right? And the confidence in your own agency to be able to have those conversations and to make the decisions that are right for you at the end of the day. 


We're all individuals with our own kind of needs and wants. And that really should be the driver. Yeah, absolutely. So Eddie, this has been such a wonderful conversation with you. I learned a lot and I'm sure the audience saw different perspectives on how you look at healthcare and also, yeah, there's an admitted need for a change because what there is today is not working. 


But it does take all of us, as I said, as collaborate, to collaborate, to integrate, kind of look at how do we use that systems thinking and future future thinking to really make an impactful change. 


And wherever you are in your career, embrace change. and really go forward with looking at opportunities and challenges being opportunities and aligning that with your purpose. I think you've beautifully shared that through your story. 


As a wrap-up, I'd like to ask you, Eddie, what do you see today as maybe a critical challenge or problem that you see needs to be solved? And how is the work, if you could talk a little bit about your company and how you focus on these things. 


Yeah, so for me, it's the challenges still, and we've touched on it, is still having that communication that empowers people to be in a place where they can make decisions that will improve their own lives. 


And, you know, with part of that, I think there's there's that curiosity factor that needs to be there, you know, we can each challenge ourselves on being curious, you know, every day, you know, next time you walk down the street in a city, you know, look up, look around you, have a look at the architects that you maybe have never looked at before, because you're just focused on getting from A to B. 


If you live in an area that's more rural, look around you and look at the way that that birds, animals, fauna, flora interact with each other and how all of those systems work together and then, you know, take that mindset, you know, take that that kind of systems mindset with that curiosity to challenge ourselves and a lot of, you know, that kind of work that I do, that we talked about at places like Farmageddon is to be deliberately polemical, 


you know, challenge the status quo, you know, think against orthodoxy, think against doctrine, not just for the sake of it, but with the purpose of actually coming to something to something better. And I think if we all practice that in our daily lives, it just makes us, you know, much better human beings for the good of all of us. 


Such a wonderful conversation with you, Eddie. Thank you for joining us here on this podcast today. And I really enjoyed talking with you and getting to know you better. Likewise, Zina. Thank you for having me. 


Bye.