Lykke Hinsch Gylvin, MD, the chief medical officer of Boehringer Ingelheim, talks about patient centricity and AI as it relates to drug development.
www.webmd.com/cancer/video/hi...
-- TRANSCRIPT --
[MUSIC PLAYING]
JOHN WHYTE Welcome, everyone. I'm Dr. John Whyte, the Chief Medical Officer at WebMD. Patient centricity in artificial intelligence in drug development are two of the hottest topics right now. What do they really mean? What are people doing about it?
Well, to help provide some perspective, I had the opportunity to sit down with Dr. Lykke Hinsch Gylvin. She's currently the Chief Medical Officer and Head of Medicine at Boehringer Ingelheim. Well, Dr. Hinsch Gylvin. Thanks for joining me today.
LYKKE HINSCH GYLVIN Thanks for having me.
JOHN WHYTE Absolutely. Now, a big focus in recent years has been this concept of patient focused drug development. How has that changed what you do?
LYKKE HINSCH GYLVIN That really has changed. So first and foremost, at Boehringer, we do put the patients at the center of everything we do. However, for a long time in the industry, there's been a tendency towards talking about being patient centric.
But true patient centricity is actually to partner up with the patients. And we do that at Boehringer from a very early stage. So all the way from the research, all the way throughout our clinical development until the product is on the market.
We bring in the patients to consult us both on anything from patient needs, trial design, end points. Feasibility of the trials is also important. How can we drive clinical trials as a care option? This is, for me, patient centricity.
JOHN WHYTE Now, has there been obstacles to bringing that on board? Everyone has not always embraced that. You know, medicine tends to be very hierarchical. As you know, as a physician, doctors know best. Do what I say. I'm the expert. How has the culture changed to embrace this concept of patient centricity?
LYKKE HINSCH GYLVIN That's a great question. Well, the environment is changing. And that includes how we value medicines nowadays. And also, decision makers are changing from being the health care providers to now also including both payers, regulators, and very importantly, patients.
Patients are nowadays taking more and more responsibility of their own disease, treatment, and care. And so it's an opportunity for us to really leverage that relationship and that knowledge that's patients are sitting on at the end. So they are they are the end users of the medicines and care solutions.
JOHN WHYTE As a company, you've made a commitment to oncology. So I'd like to hear, why have you made that commitment to that space, as maybe opposed to cardiovascular or neuroscience? Not that you're not doing research in those areas, but you've made a point to say we want to have a focus on oncology. Why is that?
LYKKE HINSCH GYLVIN Well, we go where the patients need us, meaning where there's a high unmet patient need. And we know oncology obviously there is a need for I would say breakthroughs. There is a need for cure.
So it is important and our commitment in this space is meeting us, our heritage being with a strong foundation in innovation. And then the high unmet need that we want to serve with transformative medicine.
JOHN WHYTE So if we talk about patient centricity and we talk about oncology, do we currently have the right outcome measures from your perspective? Because if we say, we typically don't look at cure, right, we look at perhaps its longevity, , a certain number of years or survival.
Or maybe we look at time that one is symptom free or minimizing one's symptoms. So when you talk to patients and you develop these drugs, and this is a very important space, how do you marry all of this?
LYKKE HINSCH GYLVIN: It is important, because the traditional endpoints-- and we need those for a certain purpose. We definitely need those to serve the purpose of regulators. But I am very, very glad to see that how we value medicines nowadays and in the future is rapidly changing to also include the elements of what incremental value do we actually bring to the patients, both in terms of maximizing efficacy through biomarkers, precision medicine, minimizing toxicology and improving the safety profile.
Transcript in its entirety can be found by clicking here:
www.webmd.com/cancer/video/hi...