This is what Dr. Amit Natavani, director of the medical field and director of the digital field at the life sciences company Sanofi says during the Science in the age of experience conference, held by Dassault Systèmes in Boston
The pharmaceutical companies - or as Dr. Amit Natavani, director of medicine and director of digital at Sanofi, defines today as life science companies, add to the drugs also technologies that can improve the patient's medical condition, and put an end to diseases." Natwani said these things during the Science in the age of experience conference, held by Dassault Systèmes in Boston, where the company presented, among other things, its solutions in the field of health, led by the digital heart project.
"Sanofi is one of the largest life sciences companies in the world. We produce a variety of medicines - from vaccines to medicines for cancer and even rare diseases. But we also have a division specializing in consumer medicine. This division sells medicines that can be purchased over the counter in pharmacies in most countries of the world."
Digital medicine - a collection of many technologies that will enable personalized treatment
"My definition of digital medicine, and there are many of them", explains Natavani, is the fusion between biological engineering and the physical sciences in order to focus on one thing - to improve the patient's quality of life and provide personalized care. Digital tools are an essential element in the future of life sciences companies. They can work in many ways. The new way we can use technology is, for example, to conduct simulations of diseases, discovering new targets, predicting how drugs will work. The new technologies accompany us throughout the entire drug development process, but this is only the traditional way, the digital tools can help us change the way we work."
"But if you look at it from the patient's point of view, we can use digital tools to create new diagnostic tools, or what we call digital biomarkers. We can also accompany our drugs with apps, which can help improve the performance of the drug and support the patient from the perspective of his symptoms. We can even replace medicines with digital technologies - what is known as digital healing. And we can also prevent diseases - for example, behavioral training. There are many ways in which technology can be used for patients at all stages of life."
Improving genetic therapies
"I believe that when it comes to the future of medical care, life science companies like Sanofi must embrace technologies and completely change everything we do," said Natwani. "We need to change the way we use technologies along the entire value chain, and also look at new ways of applying technologies in planning and understanding the results of treatment for individual patients, and design new technologies to help them specifically in a new way.
"We all know that healthcare costs reach trillions of dollars, and every government struggles to maintain the level of care. That's why everyone is looking to cheapen health, optimize it and bring improvement, especially in patients with diseases resulting from the improvement in life expectancy that we were able to bring thanks to the drugs that turned incurable diseases into chronic ones. But now we see an increase in the incidence of cancer in late stages of life thanks to the extension of life expectancy.
"In the search for new solutions, it is clear that drugs for many diseases are only part of the solution. If the patient is lucky and has a disease that has modern gene therapy, the best medicine of this kind guarantees 50%-70% success."
Sensors and big data
According to Dr. Natwani, "Telemedicine will help us treat hundreds of millions of people remotely. There will be a room like the NASA control center, where doctors will have chats with patients all over the world. There are already such experiments in China. In 2017 we have already seen a fully qualified robot in most of the main disciplines in medicine using artificial intelligence, deep learning and new technologies. And when you combine this with the genomic revolution, the ability to use the big data approach improves to gain insights into how to design the molecules to predict the diseases and understand their course.
"We know that technologies and tools can help treat a large part of the burden and improve the results of the drugs. We can treat many of the emotional or behavioral problems and for that we need to understand the data - that is, derive insight from the big data. Most technology companies focus on patients - they give them new mobile sensors, which provide them with new information, which allows them to take more control over their lives. Today, people can manage their medical records themselves. Many today take genetic tests, such as 23andme, and ask themselves what this data says about their health. In the US, a patient is allowed to download all electronic health records. Technology companies are coming today to help understand the data, and also discover diseases according to symptoms in a free search. Today's doctors are also more and more rewarded according to the success of the treatments they have prescribed. In the future, doctors will prescribe apps for patients. We are hearing from the FDA and other regulators that they are very supportive of accelerating the adoption of technologies using big data and artificial intelligence to understand and predict disease.
"The convergence of all these trends will manifest itself in digital medical services. Thus, for example, it will be possible to check patients remotely in places where access to doctors is not available. With the help of artificial intelligence that specializes in medical fields, it will be possible to give patients an initial answer, which may be enough for many patients.
"I believe that artificial intelligence is going to disrupt the way we provide medical care, the way we can give the patient molecules adapted to his disease and track digital and behavioral markers. This way we can find solutions, such as preventing outbreaks of epidemics in Africa."
Referring to the med-tech industry, Natavani said, "We see an entire industry that has come to help us predict diseases early and find ways to integrate the digital data into our experiments and improve the results of the drugs. Many companies are currently building a precise patient interface, which actually allows us to give a personalized approach.
"Just as Gutenberg's printing press caused the liberalization of knowledge, so today we are witnessing the liberalization of health through technologies," Natwani concluded.
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