Lab to Lives

Send us Fan Mail For this episode we explore the evolution of the collaboration and partnership structure between sponsors, CROs and technology vendors in life sciences with Temitope Keyes, Executive Director of Encapsia. Temitope has had a front row seat to the digitization of the clinical trial process.    We speak about the paper handling system that used to characterise clinical processes, and...

Send us Fan Mail We speak to Dr. Elin Haf Davies, CEO and founder of the technology company Apartito. We dive into the topic of designing trials with especially paediatric patients in mind. Elin shares with us her perspective on this topic from her background from healthcare, regulatory authorities, pharma and now also tech.    Elin takes us through the mindset change the industry has undergone fr...

Send us Fan Mail Are pharmaceutical companies allowed to engage with patients and HCPs ? Judging by how infrequent such interactions are, you might get the sense that it is strictly forbidden. Though such interactions are regulated, navigating these for the promise of understanding the perspective of the clinicians as well as patients is worthwhile.    We speak to Andreas Dam , the founder and CEO...

Send us Fan Mail The Life Science industry is both known for great leaps of innovation on the product side, and conservatism of process and practice on the other side. In this episode we dive into the actual state of innovation on the product side as we speak to Alexander Gray, the Chief Medical Officer of IDEA Pharma.  The innovative potential of phase II trials in Life Sciences today is often lo...

Send us Fan Mail We speak to Dr. Jack Pearson and Sofie Askervall from Natural Cycles about digital contraception and clinical trials based on data science . We explore how an app can become approved by the FDA as a contraception and the benefits of being more involved with your own reproductive health.  Besides being used by women as a hormone-free contraceptive, Natural Cycles can use the platfo...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode Sam and Ivanna dive into the topic of wicked problem solving in life sciences with wicked problem wizard Nechama Katan.  To understand wicked problems we explore complex problems as a contrast. Examples of complex problems are a game of chess or a clinical trial data submission to authorities. Both have a lot of steps involved, but in the end you know whether you s...

Send us Fan Mail We speak to G.T. LaBorde, the CEO of IllumiCare about clinical trial recruitment at the point of care . Patients want to participate in clinical trials. Health care professionals are willing to refer patients. But there is a disconnect between point of care and clinical trial recruitment.  “90% of providers say they feel comfortable talking to patients about clinical trials. Only...

Send us Fan Mail We speak to Savva Kerdemelidis and Nicholas Fiorenza, founders of Crowd Funded Cures about alternative financing models for clinical trials and drug development in general.  Grants and especially patents have long been the predominant mechanisms for securing financing for novel treatment. IP law shapes the incentive structure of the life sciences industry - creating suboptimal beh...

Send us Fan Mail Sam and Ivanna speak to Andy Yates, the Chief Scientific Officer for Artelo Biosciences about how they are tapping into the potential of the endocannabinoid system to increase treatment results for oncology patients.  Artelo Biosciences has departed from the cannabis plant as the single source of cannabinoids to target specific parts of the endocannabinoid system, and separate the...

Send us Fan Mail Imagine if all pharmaceutical companies had to re-apply for approval of all existing drugs. Crazy as it seems, this is what is happening in the medical devices space.  Ivanna and Sam speak to Jon I Bergsteinsson, founder of Smart-Trial by Greenlight Guru. We speak about the state of clinical trials in medical devices - and the increased diligence required by the med MDR regulation...

Send us Fan Mail We speak to CEO of ObvioHealth, Ivan Jarry, about how clinical trials conducted for consumer products are different from trials in pharma and biotech - and how working with these has enabled ObvioHealth to create a holistic solution for decentralised trials.  When COVID came, ObvioHealth’s platform built for consumer products was what pharma and biotech needed to continue their on...

Send us Fan Mail Sam and Ivanna speak to Mark Wheeldon, the CEO of Formedix, about that there was once a time where sponsor companies would name their trial variables whatever they wanted, and the regulatory bodies had to make sense of sponsor-specific data labelling. This made it hard to look across trials to identify potentially identical applications - and catch potential risks for patient safe...

Send us Fan Mail Could a chimpanzee become a business school professor? He could, if you changed his DNA. In this episode we talk about how to change the DNA of the organization to pursue a new business model - and why that is such a hard thing to do.   In this episode we speak to a true industry expert and expert on the industry. Starting as a lab chemist in 1978 and spending 15 years in marketin...

Send us Fan Mail After a successful career as a strategy consultant, Philip is attracted by the higher purpose of the life sciences space and takes on a quest to find solutions for why clinical trial timelines are growing longer and more complex. Even though his project is still in stealth mode, Philip takes Sam and Ivanna through some of the reasons he has uncovered so far. We speak about the app...

Send us Fan Mail Matt Wilson guests the show and talks to Sam and Ivanna about how automating consent and recruitment processes can broaden the net in terms of the number of patients involved in clinical trials. A broader patient population means that underrepresented groups gain access to clinical trials and allow  a much more detailed characterization of an overall patient population.   Removing...

Send us Fan Mail “It is always fun to have some data that makes you go Wow! I didn’t know this!”  We speak to Ulla Sofie Lønberg and Helle Hartnack about whether men are risk takers and women reluctant to experiment with health technology, and if the only difference between the male and female physiology really is the ability to bear children. We discuss the findings in a recent registry study abo...

Send us Fan Mail Sam and Ivanna speak to Jakob Juul Rasmussen about the stubborn prevalence of paper in clinical trials, especially in small pharmaceutical and biotech companies. Paying money up front, covering the implementation and license costs and building up internal IT functions can be prohibitive for small pharmaceutical and biotech companies. This leads many companies to outsource their en...

Send us Fan Mail Sam and Ivanna speak to Willie Muehlhausen about how simplifying and automating patient reported outcomes is not so much complicated, as it is complex. Willie shares his perspectives on the evolution of ePRO and eCOA and how the newer trend of decentralised clinical trials is closely tied to mastering the collection of patient reported outcomes. Willie is working towards making it...

Send us Fan Mail Sam and Ivanna speak Adam Walker about the transformation in clinical data from his experience with CROs, sites and sponsors. Adam takes us through how clinical data collection has evolved from paper forms, to being collected digitally and now fully integrated with patients’ existing devices. This shift increases the volume of data available, the quality of the data, but also puts...

Send us Fan Mail Sam and Ivanna speak to Angela Slocum about the difficulty in quantifying the benefits of risk based monitoring when mostly you find no issues in your data. Angela does share an example of a fraudulent site being uncovered through risk based monitoring. We speak about how having experience from multiple clinical functions enables a unique platform for innovation when new demands a...