Eric Lefkofsky (CEO of Tempus and co-founder of Groupon):
“Treating a cancer patient without the benefit of modern software is the same as driving at night without headlights. If you don’t introduce some amount of data, you will end up going down the wrong path.”

AI and machine learning have received a lot of attention over the last year, poised to become a big game changer in many industries, including the healthcare sector. The industry is responding with a rise in potential applications with companies developing new approaches and innovative tools. The pharma sector is engaging AI to provide analytical solutions to accelerate drug development, while the tech industry is entering the healthcare market to build winning solutions, and the clinical sector is advancing AI for diagnostic decision making and treatment evaluation.

At the Precision Medicine World Conference PMWC 2018 Silicon Valley, Eric Lefkofsky (CEO of Tempus) was interviewed by Atul Butte (Director, Institute for Computational Health Sciences, UCSF). Eric shared his views on the biggest challenges in cancer treatment and how to best address them by finding value in the data. Find the full interview on the PMWC blog.

Eric: “We view this data challenge as a problem that can be solved. Meaning, we can put rich data into the hands of oncologists, pathologists, radiologists, surgeons, and researchers and we believe if you do that, you end up saving most probably 100,000 of the 600,000 patients a year from dying.”

The benefits of a data-driven healthcare are manifold and undeniable. Yet, for AI and machine learning to create the value needed, significant hurdles must be overcome. To arm the physician and researcher with the data they need, and to ensure patients will contribute to public data initiatives, orthogonal data sets (both clinical and molecular data) must be combined, proper bioinformatics and analytics tools must be in place, clinical data must be extracted from sometimes arcane medical record systems, and the data must be structured, cleansed, and understood. Clearly, a lot of work still needs to be done, but as Vinod Khosla commented at PMWC 2018 Silicon Valley:

“AI will do more for medicine in the next 20 years than all the biological sciences combined. AI is something that human beings can’t comprehend as it is exceeding the human capability, and as such it is challenging to fully understand the potential and how it will impact our lives, or healthcare in particular.”

PMWC 2018 Michigan, June 6-7, is a great opportunity for everybody in the field to learn, contribute, and help build a foothold for AI to become the reality in healthcare. We have invited (and continue to invite) a number of leading scientists and critical thought leaders who will review and cover relevant subjects in AI and deep/machine learning for two dedicated AI and machine learning sessions.

Here is the list of thought leaders that are among our confirmed presenters:

Eric Topol
The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI)

Francis Collins
National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Eric Lefkofsky
Tempus

Nancy Cox
Vanderbilt University

Jenna Wiens
University of Michigan

George Sledge
Stanford University

Susan A. Murphy
Harvard University

Julie Iskow
Medidata

In addition, we’ll have presentations from the following organizations:

  • Ayasdi
  • Athelas
  • Children’s Mercy
  • Ciitizen
  • CosmosID
  • Data4Cure
  • Fred Hutchinson
  • Genomenon
  • Guardant Health
  • Harvard
  • IBM
  • Immusoft
  • iNDX Technology
  • Karius
  • LOOL Health
  • Medical College of Wisconsin
  • Medidata
  • Mendel.ai
  • Natera
  • NorthShore University Health System
  • One Medical
  • Providence
  • Scripps Research Institute
  • Stanford
  • Strata Oncology
  • Tempus
  • Theravance
  • University of Michigan
  • UCSF
  • Vanderbilt University
  • ViewCure
  • Vertex
  • Wayne State University
Looking forward to seeing many of you at the upcoming PMWC 2018 Michigan conference scheduled for June 6-7 in Ann Arbor, MI.

In addition, we’ll have presentations from the following organizations:

  • Ayasdi
  • Athelas
  • Children’s Mercy
  • Ciitizen
  • CosmosID
  • Data4Cure
  • Fred Hutchinson
  • Genomenon
  • Guardant Health
  • Harvard
  • IBM
  • Immusoft
  • iNDX Technology
  • Karius
  • LOOL Health
  • Medical College of Wisconsin
  • Medidata
  • Mendel.ai
  • Natera
  • NorthShore University Health System
  • One Medical
  • Providence
  • Scripps Research Institute
  • Stanford
  • Strata Oncology
  • Tempus
  • Theravance
  • University of Michigan
  • UCSF
  • Vanderbilt University
  • ViewCure
  • Vertex
  • Wayne State University

Looking forward to seeing many of you at the upcoming PMWC 2018 Michigan conference scheduled for June 6-7 in Ann Arbor, MI.

Interview with Gabriel Bien-Willner of Palmetto GBA

Q: What does your role entail as the director of the MolDX program at Palmetto GBA?

A: The job directing MolDX is multifaceted; first and foremost the MolDX program is responsible for assessing molecular diagnostic tests on the market and makes coverage and pricing determinations for such tests and technology. This is usually done through local coverage determination policies or technical assessments.

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Interview with Peter Marks of FDA

Q: The CBER’s Regenerative Medicine Advanced Therapy Designation program has been very successful, with about 100 requests for designation in the two years of its existence. Can you please tell us about the program and how it was put together?

A: The Regenerative Medicine Advanced Therapy (RMAT) Designation program came into being as part of the 21st Century Cures Act that was signed into law on December 13, 2016.

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Interview with Calum MacRae of Harvard Medical School

Q: What patient data do we need to better understand the underlying cause of disease and how to prevent it?

A: Medicine at present is highly underdetermined and data poor. To be precise, one must be comprehensive, so medicine (with our consent) will use not only what we currently conceive of as biomedical information, but also data from across our lives.

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Headlines from PMWC 2019 Silicon Valley

A big ‘Thank You’ to all of our presenters and attendees for celebrating 10 years of precision medicine progress with us! PMWC 2019 Silicon Valley was attended by 2000 participants from 35 countries, which included over 400 speakers in 5 parallel tracks!

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Interview with Ken Bloom of Ambry Genetics

Q: Tell us more about your organization/company. What patient population are you serving and which services are you specializing in?

A: Ambry Genetics is a recognized leader in high quality complex genetic testing. We seek to find the genomic cause or contributors to rare diseases, abnormal phenotypes and hereditary disorders.

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Interview with Lee Pierce of Sirius Computer Solutions

Q: What is the state of big data and analytics in healthcare, and how to best use the reams of data available?

A: More than ever, Healthcare organizations are achieving measurable value through use of their data and analytics assets. There is more raw material available than ever to create value. This raw material is the data flowing from internal systems and applications and also from devices and systems external to healthcare organizations.

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Interview with Anita Nelsen of PAREXEL

Q: There are various new, emerging technologies that bring us closer towards a cure for life-threatening disorders such as cancer, HIV, or Huntington’s disease. Prominent examples include the popular gene editing tool CRISPR or new and improved cell and gene therapies. By when can we expect these new technologies being part of routine clinical care?

A: Today’s emerging technologies are making the promise of individualized treatment a reality.

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Interview with Ilan Kirsch of Adaptive Biotechnologies

Q: The Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded recently to James Allison and Tasuku Honjo for their work on unleashing the body’s immune system to attack cancer, a breakthrough that has led to an entirely new class of drugs and brought lasting remissions to many patients who had run out of options. The Nobel committee hailed their accomplishments as establishing “an entirely new principle for cancer therapy.” What is your first-hand experience the impact that those new drugs had on patients?

A: For decades cancer was viewed as solely a cell-autonomous condition.

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BMS buys Celgene | Lilly buys Loxo Oncology – Does this Signal a Return to Strong Deal-Making Activities in 2019?

Bristol-Myers Squibb’s blockbuster $74B deal to buy Celgene creates an oncology powerhouse amid industrywide excitement about the rapidly evolving science and explosive growth of the sector. The agreement could signal a return to deal-making for the pharmaceutical industry in the $133B global oncology therapeutics market.

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Interview with Gini Deshpande of NuMedii

Q: What need is NuMedii addressing?

A: NuMedii, has been pioneering the use of Big Data, artificial intelligence (AI) and systems biology since 2010 to accelerate the discovery of precision therapies to address high unmet medical needs. Artificial Intelligence approaches are a natural fit to harness Big Data as they provide a framework to ‘train’ computers to recognize patterns and sift through vast amounts of new and existing genomic

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Interview with Minnie Sarwal of UCSF

Q: Genomic medicine is entering more hospitals and bringing with it non-invasive technology that can be used to better target and treat diseases. What are some key milestones that contributed to this trend?

A: Completion of complete sequence data from the human genome project, and the advances in proteomic, microRNA and epigenetic assays added a layer of pathway biology to the understanding of human diseases.

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Interview with Shidong Jia of Predicine

Q: Once sequencing has been validated as a clinical solution via trusted workflows, and coinciding with the technological developments driving costs lower, we can expect accelerated human genome profiling for clinical Dx. How soon, do you think, will we see accelerated growth and what can we expect?

A: We will see accelerated human genome profiling for clinical Dx in 2019 and the coming years as more biomarker-based cancer drugs are gaining approval.

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Interview with Iya Khalil of GNS Healthcare

Q: Artificial intelligence (AI) techniques have sent vast waves across healthcare, even fueling an active discussion of whether AI doctors will eventually replace human physicians in the future. Do you believe that human physicians will be replaced by machines in the foreseeable future? What are your thoughts?

A: I think that there’s a lot of speculation and uncertainty around AI, but I don’t foresee a time when we won’t need physicians.

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Interview with Ilya Michael Rachman of Immix Biopharma Inc.

Q: The Nobel Price in Medicine was awarded recently to James Allison and Tasuku for their work on unleashing the body’s immune system to attack cancer, a breakthrough that has led to an entirely new class of drugs and brought lasting remissions to many patients who had run out of options. The Nobel committee hailed their accomplishments as establishing “an entirely new principle for cancer therapy.” Besides CAR T-cell therapy what do you think next generation immunotherapies will look like to successfully combat cancer?

A: The next generation of immunotherapies will build on the insights discovered by immunologists like James Allison and Tasuku Honjo and extend them to modify the body’s response to tumors.

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Join me to Kick off PMWC Silicon Valley in the Santa Clara Convention Center, Focusing on Every Element of Precision Medicine

My team worked in collaboration with Bill Dalton, Kim Blackwell, Atul Butte / India Hook Barnard, Nancy Davidson and Sharon Terry to create a program that touches every component of precision medicine while bringing together all of its key stakeholders. Leading participating institutions including Stanford Health Care, UCSF, Duke Health, Duke University, John Hopkins University, University of Michigan and more will share their learnings and experiences and their successes and challenges, as they make precision medicine the new standard of care for all.

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Johns Hopkins
University Of Michigan

The Precision Medicine World Conference (PMWC), in its 17th installment, will take place in the Santa Clara Convention Center (Silicon Valley) on January 21-24, 2020. The program will traverse innovative technologies, thriving initiatives, and clinical case studies that enable the translation of precision medicine into direct improvements in health care. Conference attendees will have an opportunity to learn first-hand about the latest developments and advancements in precision medicine and cutting-edge new strategies and solutions that are changing how patients are treated.

See 2019 Agenda highlights:

  • Five tracks will showcase sessions on the latest advancements in precision medicine which include, but are not limited to:
    • AI & Data Science Showcase
    • Clinical & Research Tools Showcase
    • Clinical Dx Showcase
    • Creating Clinical Value with Liquid Biopsy ctDNA, etc.
    • Digital Health/Health and Wellness
    • Digital Phenotyping
    • Diversity in Precision Medicine
    • Drug Development (PPPs)
    • Early Days of Life Sequencing
    • Emerging Technologies in PM
    • Emerging Therapeutic Showcase
    • FDA Efforts to Accelerate PM
    • Gene Editing
    • Genomic Profiling Showcase
    • Immunotherapy Sessions & Showcase
    • Implementation into Health Care Delivery
    • Large Scale Bio-data Resources to Support Drug Development (PPPs)
    • Microbial Profiling Showcase
    • Microbiome
    • Neoantigens
    • Next-Gen. Workforce of PM
    • Non-Clinical Services Showcase
    • Pharmacogenomics
    • Point-of Care Dx Platform
    • Precision Public Health
    • Rare Disease Diagnosis
    • Resilience
    • Robust Clinical Decision Support Tools
    • Wellness and Aging Showcase

See 2019 Agenda highlights:

    • Five tracks will showcase sessions on the latest advancements in precision medicine which include, but are not limited to:
      • AI & Data Science Showcase
      • Clinical & Research Tools Showcase
      • Clinical Dx Showcase
      • Creating Clinical Value with Liquid Biopsy ctDNA, etc.
      • Digital Health/Health and Wellness
      • Digital Phenotyping
      • Diversity in Precision Medicine
      • Drug Development (PPPs)
      • Early Days of Life Sequencing
      • Emerging Technologies in PM
      • Emerging Therapeutic Showcase
      • FDA Efforts to Accelerate PM
      • Gene Editing / CRISPR
      • Genomic Profiling Showcase
      • Immunotherapy Sessions & Showcase
      • Implementation into Health Care Delivery
      • Large Scale Bio-data Resources to Support Drug Development (PPPs)
      • Microbial Profiling Showcase
      • Microbiome
      • Neoantigens
      • Next-Gen. Workforce of PM
      • Non-Clinical Services Showcase
      • Pharmacogenomics
      • Point-of Care Dx Platform
      • Precision Public Health
      • Rare Disease Diagnosis
      • Resilience
      • Robust Clinical Decision Support Tools
      • Wellness and Aging Showcase
  • Luminary and Pioneer Awards, honoring individuals who contributed, and continue to contribute, to the field of Precision Medicine
  • 2000+ multidisciplinary attendees, from across the entire spectrum of healthcare, representing different types of companies, technologies, and medical centers with leadership roles in precision medicine
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