Much of the risk in personalized medicine is about compliance. Patient privacy in particular is one issue yet to be resolved. With consumers being understandably nervous about how their data is being used, stored, and shared, the pharma industry will need to prove it can be trusted to use their data responsibly.
So, how can pharma companies resolve the conflict between data-fueled development and data privacy? This is one area in which the expertise of Big Tech could prove invaluable.
For Dr. Peter Lee, Corporate Vice President of Research and Incubation at Microsoft Healthcare, not being able to get health data into the hands of the right people at the right time could mean the difference between life or death.
To ensure first responders and healthcare providers can access patient data when they need it, the industry will need to fully embrace the cloud and work swiftly to agree rules that will govern the safe sharing of private data.
As Dr. Lee notes, tech companies must come together to solve this challenge. "Somehow we all have to advance together in order to both capture and be ready to be the health industry's data infrastructure but to do it in a way that gives us a best possible chance for the interoperability and free flow of health data.”
The point around interoperability is key. For Dr. Lee, it is an essential step government must take to unlock the effective communication and flow of data.
Beyond data sharing, there is also the thornier issue of how we govern the use of technologies such as AI in personalized medicine, where access to data to train machine learning algorithms is essential.
Effective and responsible use of AI in medicine, according to Dr. Lee, boils down to four core principles, “fairness, accountability, transparency, and ethics”.
Listen to the Pharma Unlimited Podcast series– a new series where host Bertrand Bodson goes under the microscope to examine some of the biggest issues facing the pharma sector.