Tell us about your background and how it led you to transition from pharmaceuticals to digital health.

I’m a chemistry graduate and have spent my entire career in pharmaceutical R&D, with more recent roles leading drug development programs. In 2013, I saw the potential to use digital solutions to support patients in improving their medication use and self-management, demonstrating significant improvements in outcomes through this work. In 2018, I joined AZ’s R&D Digital Health group, where we enabled improvements to drug development through the use of digital technologies, demonstrating significant acceleration in R&D as well as improving outcomes for patients and sites. We published a summary of this work in Nature Medicine in 2023.

What made you most interested in engaging with the Milken Institute’s Health Advisory Council?

I believe we need to move from helping patients and clinicians manage advanced disease, which often requires treatment in a hospital, to identifying citizens at risk of disease and supporting prevention, early diagnosis, and treatment in the community. While innovative technologies and services have demonstrated that it’s possible to detect and intervene early the health-economic models for the use of these solutions at scale do not exist, which sadly limits the impact of these technologies. Through engaging with the stakeholders across the Council, I’ve been able to discuss how to disrupt the status quo to deliver greater value for patients and for society as a whole.

What was the most useful insight gained from the Council meeting for your work at Evinova?

The shift-left agenda towards more prevention requires a complete transformation across multiple sectors and will not be effective unless it is a whole system change including realignment of economic models and incentives. I was encouraged by the shared vision and passion for change across education, local government, health and social care, and the private sector including digital health and pharmaceutical companies. Case studies presented at the council meeting demonstrating the impact of early interventions on long-term outcomes provided me with the hope that solutions can be found at scale. As a company, Evinova is also very interested in supporting patients in becoming more involved in health research and benefiting from finding the right clinical trials for them where appropriate. To do this effectively will require cross-sector collaboration to support earlier diagnosis and presentation of treatment options.

What are the barriers you face in getting various stakeholders to understand the value of your products to sites and patients?

I’ve learned that it’s critical to provide evidence of the benefits of novel digital products and services for patients, health care professionals, and clinicians. All stakeholders are striving to improve outcomes but are also working in an environment where the risks of impacting clinical outcomes and the costs of care delivery must be carefully considered. In the R&D setting, where costs of development are high, trial sponsors need to have confidence that the solutions being implemented will deliver the desired benefits for study delivery.

As with all emerging technologies, there have been false dawns in digital health. At Evinova, we know it’s important that our stakeholders have confidence that our products and services will deliver their intended benefit. Because of this, we’ve focused on generating and publishing evidence of impact to allow our stakeholders to make informed choices.

Evinova is a relatively new company. What is the growth you envision for the future? 

Evinova launched on November 20, 2023, as a wholly owned subsidiary of AstraZeneca. Prior to that point, the group had been developing digital products and services purely for the use of AstraZeneca R&D. In our first year, in addition to continuing to support AstraZeneca’s pipeline, Evinova has been successful in contracting with large and mid-sized pharma companies and contract research organizations. We envision that the Evinova Drug Development Suite could become an industry benchmark to enable acceleration of pharmaceutical R&D programs in the clinical phase and improve outcomes for patients and health care organizations.

The digital health space is rapidly growing. What types of financial innovations or policy changes do you think are most needed to attract investment while ensuring they are accessible to everyone?

Getting new innovations scaled in the National Health Service is difficult. Putting in place agreed-upon methodologies for generating evidence, clear approaches for implementation, and mechanisms for reimbursement will be critical to driving scale. We’ve learned that a critical component of this approach will be working with the system to understand the health-economic benefits and full cost of ownership to ensure that the innovations can be targeted towards the patients who will benefit the most from the solutions and that commissioning decisions and incentives within the system can be aligned to benefits.