The Race to Find the Talent to Fuel the Digital Health Engine

Why it’s all about the composition when it comes to successful biotech businesses

Digital technologies are set to bring about a revolution in healthcare, with the prospect of greater choice and a wider range of treatments. But this transformation is being held back by a shortage of skilled people able to turn ideas into scalable businesses that will make a real difference to people’s lives.

Even before the pandemic hit, the digital health sector was expanding fast. According to figures from Rock Health Digital Health Venture Funding Database, funding of US-based start-ups rose from $1.2 billion in 2011 to $8.5 billion in 2018. But the latest report indicates that, after a slight dip in 2019, funding shot up to $14.9 billion in 2020 (the year that the virus struck) and nearly doubled again, to $29.1 billion, last year. As one industry figure remarked, Covid “shot this straight into the brain.”

At the same time, there’s a sea-change in the way that patients are interacting with physicians and what patients are expecting from the healthcare system. The pandemic has accelerated this shift given that most people have spent a significant proportion of the last two years at home. Overall, Covid has changed the entire landscape and accelerated the adoption of applications that are related to healthcare.

A digital revolution in human health

Mark Monane, MD, who is Chief Medical Officer of Monane Group Clinical Consulting and a Talentmark medical consultant, says: “Digital health strategies represent a key emerging tool in the medical armamentarium. The opportunity and challenge ahead will be optimizing the integration of digital health strategies into the standard of care for the benefit of healthcare practitioners, patients, and payers.”

The tens of thousands of applications that are now available range from remote consultations between physicians and patients and online prescription renewals, through to using artificial intelligence to help match cancer patients with clinical trials and using video gaming technologies to help with mental health issues.

Some of the investment the sector is attracting will enable incumbent pharma companies to reduce the costs and time taken on research and development. The potential for AI and data analytics to improve the efficiency of clinical trials, for instance, is huge. But the real drivers are consumer demand and investors’ perception that this is where the future lies. In fact, it is reckoned that investment in various facets of digital health accounts for more than half of all healthcare spending now.

Change brings challenge

We are at the beginning of a revolution in healthcare, with the prospect of much greater choice for consumers with a wider range of treatments — not just therapeutics — available to them as individuals. But, as with any dramatic change of this type, there are challenges. And one of the greatest challenges is ensuring that the right people are in place to transform these ideas into scalable businesses that will make a real difference to people’s lives.

What is required to be successful in this space is to hire “bilingual” people who know not only healthcare but also understand algorithms.

According to Sendhil Mullainathan, Professor of Computation and Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, what is required to be successful in this space is to hire “bilingual” people who know not only healthcare but also understand algorithms. The reasoning is you’re combining AI technology and computation with the understanding of the healthcare payer and provider system. And there are very few people who understand both.

David Berry, a partner at Flagship Pioneering, which identifies and supports life sciences start-ups and founder and CEO of Valo Health, which is focused on drug discovery and development, said in a recent interview: “Drug discovery is really complicated. Humans are really good at thinking about two or rarely three-dimensional problems. Biology is a very high dimensional problem and you need the computational tools to suss that out.”

Berry, unusually, is both an MD and a PhD. So is Adam Gazzaley, a professor at the University of California San Francisco and chief science adviser at Akili Interactive, a company developing therapeutic video games. One of the few courses catering to the need to identify more like them is a biomedical computation major at Stanford University that brings together the schools of engineering, humanities and sciences, and medicine to train students at the interface between computer science, biology and medicine.

Strengthening talent pipeline key

Not only is there is an extremely small pool of talent, but the situation is made worse by the fact that Google, Apple and a host of other technology companies — many of which have their own ambitions in the healthcare sector — are looking for the very same people. One leading digital health investor compared the importance of identifying computer scientists and machine learning experts to how the Houston Rockets basketball team successfully used data decision making to become an elite NBA team, adopting a similar approach to that used by the Oakland Athletics baseball franchise and immortalised in the book and film “Moneyball”.

Finally, digital health offers an unprecedented opportunity for young people who have been trained in an interdisciplinary way, combining an understanding of mathematics, computer science, Big Data analytics and AI to make a significant impact in the field of healthcare. And, when it comes to the talent pipeline and attracting the millennial generation, many of whom yearn for more meaning in their personal and professional lives, the choice of working for a tech company on yet another “app” or working on a health care product that will help people to lead more meaningful lives, their decision often is quite simple.

Peter Kaplan // Vice President Executive Search at Talentmark

At Talentmark, our job is to identify and source both experienced and underrated talent as well as high-potential candidates with the qualities required for success. There are no shortcuts when it comes to uncovering the brightest and most entrepreneurial people who can move the needle for our clients. Having a clear understanding of the challenges our clients face, combined with our passion to help them to navigate this new landscape is what drives us to work tirelessly on their behalf.