The Big Interview: Novartis CTO Elizabeth Theophille

“One of our major focuses for the following 4-six several years will be to refresh our SAP landscape which will call for a finish overhaul…”

Pharmaceuticals’ second in the sunlight arguably arrived with COVID-19, when an market usually demonised as “Big Pharma” commenced attracting broader recognition as a genuinely impressive one that is central to combating to the pandemic and one which will be at the coronary heart of responding to any other long term general public well being crises.

Pharma has drawn fresh new notice from all those operating in the tech sector as a consequence. The thought of marrying an intellectual challenge with a social excellent — reverse engineering a computer system virus, and accomplishing the exact same to a real virus to obtain approaches in which to restore a method to well being is among the obvious parallels — appears to have struck a chord throughout the tech world anything born out by latest surveys. (The reality that it is a massively lucrative market equipped to remunerate expertise effectively may possibly also aid.)

That shift in general public sentiment was tidily captured in a study of 2,500 technologies professionals — in China, Germany, India, the United kingdom, and the US — by Switzerland’s Novartis, performed in May perhaps and June 2020: this observed that seventy two% of tech professionals are far more probably to think about pharma for their following position in contrast to six months back. (The study also instructed that healthcare and pharmaceuticals were now far more than two times as desirable as monetary expert services, telecoms and production to tech expertise.)

Novartis CTO: “We’re all fishing in the exact same pond”

They are wanted: throughout the sector, huge function is underway to innovate: as Bertrand Bodson, CDO of Novartis, puts it: “COVID-19 has caused a seismic shift in the adoption and scaling of electronic technologies in our sector, at a speed under no circumstances found just before.”

Novartis’ Elizabeth Theophille, Head of Technology, Architecture and Digital (a de facto CTO part) is among all those who made the shift from other sectors. Beforehand Team CIO at Nokia, she admits she understood minimal about pharma when she joined the company: “I was in all probability some of the very first tranches when Novartis were seeking for tech experts that under no circumstances had a healthcare background”, she advised Computer system Organization Evaluation in a simply call.

“We’re being far more open to obtain expertise from other industries, simply because we’re all fishing in the exact same pond when it arrives to obtaining excellent men and women: engineers, info researchers men and women that can construct and architect cloud options and aid organization transformation.”

Speaking from Paris, she painted a photo of a varied staff at the company, operating on numerous overlapping info science, automation and cloud engineering problems: “I have a staff of about three hundred associates. I have a massive staff of architects I have a staff of info researchers I have a staff of automation experts: a myriad of skills throughout my firm – and they occur from distinct backgrounds as effectively.”

Cloud-run innovation 

It’s a major changeover for an market extended-found as deeply conservative and possibility averse. Element of that shift has occur with an expanding openness to the cloud, which has aided break down internal siloes and minimize complex personal debt, she suggests.

As CTO, Theophille notes: “I am also top the architecture, layout and construct of the ‘Novartis Business Data and Analytics Platform’ which is a multi-cloud system run by AWS & Azure.  This system will maintain our huge quantities of info throughout Novartis that the organization will use for new insights and decisions…”)

“I feel a major transformation has been all-around making use of cloud Platform-as-a-Services (PaaS) to construct new options we could really start out to get much better insights and conclusions from the info that we put on the cloud, irrespective of whether that was industrial info, marketing info, scientific trials and so on. We’ve also been constructing a lot far more client encounter purposes on the cloud. There has been a major improve in attitude [at Novartis] all-around sharing info at an business degree, as a substitute of retaining that on your have focused server. There is a lot far more believe in in in how we collaborate as an organisation.”

New (as of 2018) Novartis CEO Vasant Narasimhan has been vocal on this, and the want to make greater use of info. The company’s 2019 annual report [pdf] captured some of his wondering, together with the reality that the organization has now gathered around two million client several years of info by means of scientific trials by yourself.

As Narasimhan famous: “We’re using techniques to make the most of this strategic asset. In 2019, we expanded and introduced key info and electronic initiatives though forming new collaborations to increase our expanding internal abilities.”

He additional: “We’re integrating enormous quantities of info that earlier existed in silos within and outside the house the company and using a holistic glance at it. The info ranges from visuals of cells that have been addressed with distinct chemicals, to blood samples from people analyzed in just scientific trials. We’re making use of machine understanding and synthetic intelligence to mine the built-in, anonymized info for connections and designs that are indiscernible to the human brain. Our info researchers are constructing styles and purposes that will empower Novartis groups to request new questions, make much better predictions and help you save time. We can use the system to prioritize drug targets, identify progress alternatives for compounds, and far more.

Novartis CTO: Offer chain preparing is a expanding part of the part

“To make acquiring of program materials far more efficient, we are standardizing technical specs and consolidating suppliers. The instance of laboratory gloves illustrates our development: We went from 100 distinct kinds of laboratory gloves around the world to just fourteen, and from 55 suppliers to one, conserving USD .six million. We are also constructing a databases to offer a far more detailed view of our buying and are beginning to use info analytics to aid us much better manage what we obtain, when and from whom.”

That’s a major concentration for CTO Elizabeth Theophille, who advised us: “I have a major concentration correct now on how we do desire preparing for provide chain how we glance at our interactions with HCPs (healthcare professionals) and the encounter that they get, especially when they join Novartis functions. I also glance at how we simplify the way we manage material from a electronic asset administration perspective and how we approve all of our elements that commercially get prolonged to HCPs. And I’m just seeking at how we can use technologies and organization procedure to to improve the way we function.”

“We have robots alive and kicking”

This contains overhauling the finance function: “We have commenced to construct robots making use of Microsoft Azure: making use of this to in fact deliver with each other software automation and to simplify a lot of of the complicated procedures that we have at Novartis.

“We have robots stay alive and kicking at Novartis – most of them are accomplishing a lot of automation in our monetary expert services spot. We’ve also automatic the pharmacovigilance procedures in which, you know, we have to report adverse events”

What’s the major pending job then?

“Every calendar year we review our Technology Outlooks centered on the organization approach and new rising tech. In my part I have Technology Refresh and consider new rising technologies.  One of our major focuses for the following four – six several years will be to refresh our SAP landscape which will call for a finish overhaul in organization procedure transformation, technologies upgrades and new approaches of working…”

(CTOs and CIOs globally will recognise the head aches that can occur with this — and the temptation to go away it to previous in massive electronic transformation checklist).

“This is an incredible time for the electronic transformation of well being care”, she concludes. “It’s truly been a outstanding journey above the earlier number of several years. We’ve invested a major sum of money, and [forged] partnerships with Microsoft, AWS and other organisations to aid us renovate making use of their cloud technologies to analyse our info and deliver our info with each other and to construct info science and AI styles.

“The pharmaceutical market is absolutely critical to aid people. So it is it is really essential that we get a diversity of know-how and encounter from other industries that can aid us accelerate this electronic transformation.”

See also: The Huge Job interview – Previous GCHQ Director Robert Hannigan