Author: Tom Krohn

Business Lead for the Lilly Clinical Open Innovation team. Passionate about transforming healthcare.

All Posts by Tom Krohn

Patnerships – moving beyond today’s model 1

LCOI, OI and Business Models, Open Innovation • Tags: , , , ,

Over the past month I’ve attended and presented at a couple of conferences.  Partnershipsin in CTsThe first was Partnerships in Clinical Trials, a gather of 1000+ professionals involved in clinical research. The second was the Evolution Summit.  (I’ve included my presentations at both below).

Evolution SummitIt was great to see a number of leaders I’ve come to know and respect including Craig Lipset of Pfizer, Tomasz Sablinski of TLC, and Deirdre BeVard of Endo.  To me, conferences are more about making and growing relationships than they are about specific content.  That said, the highlight of the Partnerships conference for me was a presentation by Eric Topol on disruptive changes in medicine and how this will impact drug development. More…

Time for Partnership 1

Open Innovation • Tags: , , ,

Partnership in CTs

It is spring time and that can only mean it is time for partnership.  As in Partnerships in Clinical Trials conference.  Next week, some 1500+ leaders in clinical trials will gather to discuss clinical trial transformation and ways to improve clinical development.  I’m honored to have been invited to speak and share an update on our Lilly COI work.  I’ll also announce an upcoming public challenge so stay tuned!

The need to change the status quo around clinical development to arrive at better treatments for patients has never been greater, and it’s exciting to participate in creating the future of the drug development.

As a preview to the conference, the coordinators selected a few people to highlight and you can hear a short interview on the conference blog site.  I enjoyed sharing not only how an open innovation mindset and implementation can help clinical development but also some thoughts on how my 10 years health care development in Madagascar is parallel to the current pharma challenges.

Conferences like this are great times to decompress from the busy-ness of daily implementation activity.  I’m looking forward to reconnecting with a number of people and meeting new contacts such as Tomasz Slabinski, Nick Dyer, Rahlyn Gossen, and many others.

If you are attending, please reach out to me and I’ll be happy to connect.

I am also honored to have been nominated by industry peers for Clinical Trial Innovator of the Year.  I have great respect for my fellow nominees and look forward to connecting with them again.  The conference should be a great learning and networking opportunity.

See you in Orlando!

Reboot: Clinical trials protocols for patient understanding 13

Clinical Trials, LCOI • Tags: , ,

In the world of presenting and understanding information, there is no doubt that smartphones and the iPad have given us a fresh take on how information can be presented to the user. It’s under this notion that a challenge was recently run to help re-design and re-imagine the Electronic Medical Record (EMR).

For those who have never seen an EMR file, they are filled with text and are heavy in data but lack any sort of design to make them usable to a wide audience. See Exhibit A below.  Edward Tufte would be appalled.

Sample EMR

The Health Design Challenge, run in cooperation with the US Department of Health and Human Services, prompted over 230 submissions to modernize the Electronic Medical Record. More…

Prepared minds observing the unexpected – enabling empowering innovation Reply

Creative Commons, LCOI, OI and Business Models, Open Innovation • Tags: , ,

World Drug Repositioning CongressAt the World Drug Repositioning Congress, the theme of the congress was best summed up by Rajesh Chopra of Celgene: “Prepared minds observing the unexpected”. Clearly in the case of drug repositioning, this mindset and approach comes through as scientists look to find new uses for old drugs. In all honesty, I went into this Congress with low expectations, but found it to be one of the best conference I have attended.

In a small conference room, about 50 leaders of drug development gathered to discuss new techniques and advances in drug repositioning. It was a good mix of participants representing pharma, academia, small biotech and patient advocacy groups. More…