Every year, the Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association, a nonprofit organization whose core purpose is to further the advancement and impact of women in the healthcare business, honors a wide array of executives.
Last week, we talked to some of the women who won HBA's Luminaries award to find out why “soft” skills matter in the new era of leadership.
For the second installment of our two-part series, we asked some of the winners of the Rising Stars award, who are honored by the HBA because they have "demonstrated noteworthy achievements" in their career, to identify the transformations they believe will have the biggest impact on the life sciences.
In the coming weeks, we will be featuring insights from HBA's Rising Stars and Luminaries related to industry trends, leadership skills and life-work balance on our LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.
Here are a dozen insights from the Rising Stars in the industry.
Real-world performance
“As an industry, we are transitioning our focus to implementation science and how our products perform in the real world. Patients need to have access to affordable therapies and accountability to improve patient lives across a broader spectrum of demographics at the center of innovation. By identifying and closing the gaps that prevent the benefits of scientific innovation between clinical research and real-world practice, we can make better progress in improving outcomes.”
Kasey Boynton, director, Client Engagement, Real World Evidence and Late Phase, Syneos Health
Problem-solving on a human level
“The biggest trend we are setting is adopting a human-centric and innovation-led approach to solving complex problems in highly regulated functions within healthcare and life sciences such as pharmacovigilance or VBC. By focusing on the actual users, be it patients or providers, and by easing their pain points, complex problems can be methodically solved.”
Vidya Viswanathan, digital health and innovation leader, Cognizant Technology Solutions
Patient engagement
“The industry is re-organizing to engage patients more actively than ever before, from drug development through commercialization. Companies are restructuring to engage patients early and often. They are driven to provide a consistent approach to patient engagement, which means better drugs, better patient outcomes and a more collaborative process overall.”
Stephanie Hayes, senior vice president, commercial partners, Reverba
Behavioral research
“Behavioral research and its positive impact on truly realizing omnichannel engagement. Why? It’s crucial to have meaningful insights about the pressures our customers face in order to encourage behavior change. Behavioral research delivers insights that help us understand our customers more deeply than their condition, past prescribing behaviors, or their approach to professional decision making. Behavior research helps us meaningfully shift our value proposition to focus more on the customers idea of value. Since we believe our customers are truly the center of everything we do, investment in who they are holistically and what influences their decision making is critical to our success.”
Brooke Fleming, head, omnichannel marketing and digital enablement, UCB, Inc.
Talent development
“Attracting and retaining top talent is a big trend. Companies are being challenged to change the way they operate and provide an environment more prone to talent development. Enabling talent to focus on their core skills instead of completing mundane tasks. Business transformation leaders design innovative operating models fueled by automation and efficiencies, leading organizations through changes, and breaking barriers of traditional mindsets and behaviors.”
Paula Hackl, senior vice president, transformation officer, Eversana
Market access
“Our purpose is to innovate to transform the lives of patients and their families. The vertical integration and terminal consolidation across the payers’ continued evolution has market access at the forefront of managing change and demonstrating value while driving that innovation on behalf of patients.”
Heather Higgins, associate director, regional payer account executive, Jazz Pharmaceuticals
Early disease detection
“The trend I am following is driving access to therapy at an earlier stage of disease progression. People wait for years until they are so sick, they almost die. It’s our role to partner with clinicians and patient associations to educate patients and caregivers. More than 6.2 million Americans have heart failure, with diagnoses projected to double by 2030. Early detection is critical as physical symptoms often do not emerge until the disease has significantly progressed. At Abbott, we’re committed to partnering with physicians to educate patients and caregivers about the early signs and growing number of treatment options available that allow people to live longer, fuller lives.”
Anne-Karen Hunt, divisional vice president, commercial heart failure, Abbott
Exponential innovation
“The biggest trends I’m tracking are innovative well-being and care delivery. I agree with industry trend-spotters who say patient-centric organizations will provide structural and technological transformation; leverage community to encourage behavior change; and drive patient and caregiver education. Given this shift from traditional boundaries, industry norms will dissolve and new roles will emerge. My role is to support and operationalize these shifts as exponential innovation propels pharma forward through a pioneering approach to customer interactions.”
Sand'Eria Lewis, director, operational excellence, Astellas Pharma U.S.
Share of voice
“The world has changed for everyone since the pandemic and it is now more important than ever to ensure everyone, including our partners, patients and employees, has a share of voice. By actively listening, we can better understand how their world has changed and how we can adapt to better meet their needs.”
Colleen Mahoney, associate director, commercial learning and development, Sobi Inc. (North America)
Digital transformation
“In my role as a strategic consultant in Italy, the biggest trend I’m tracking is the digital transformation of healthcare. Due to the pandemic, patients and physicians leveraged digital tools to communicate and today, with the European Funds, new infrastructures and processes will create a new digital healthcare ecosystem.”
Patrizia Palazzi, strategy consultant, Siemens Healthineers AG
The power of automation
“The convergence and intertwining of business and technology is stronger than ever. Technologists have an equally important role in the co-creation of business strategy. The biggest trends that I am currently tracking are the power of automation and creating the total customer experience with technology to drive successful business outcomes.”
Disha Patel, digital technology and innovation site lead, Amgen Inc.
Risk taking
“Risk is a constant factor in decision making. Being capable to make good inferences in an ambiguous and uncertain context has always been important. The impact of unexpected risks in recent times has heightened the criticality of this capability. Those who have been able to navigate and take smart risks have created opportunity and solutions of value.”
Sue Bailey, senior director, clinical operations, IQVIA
