Influential Leaders in Healthcare 2019 | Healthcare Industry

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Inuential Leaders in

HEALTHCARE 2019

You never apologize for doing the right thing.

KARIM SMAIRA A Leader With a Commitment To Serve October 2019

EDITOR’S NOTE Towards Sustainable Healthcare Ecosystem

I

f we look back to previous conditions of the healthcare industry, we can recognize how businesses and leaders in healthcare have opened doors to broader opportunities and made healthcare services more accessible and affordable. The technology-led innovations, shift towards wellness, adoption of virtual care options, less painful and timeconsuming treatments are some of the results through which we can analyze how far the healthcare ecosystem has come.

Healthcare sector is on the verge of getting wholly transformed. It is taking huge leaps to create a customer-centric models and change the current status quo of the industry. With the advent of evolving technologies such as AI, big data, and more, healthcare service providers are able to provide improved solutions and make people aware of the diseases and their treatments. It has all become possible due to some influential leaders in the industry who are shaping the future of care and establishing a sustainable healthcare ecosystem.

These leaders have overcome all the complex challenges of the industry and brought a noteworthy change in the healthcare arena.

With an intent to acknowledge and admire these passionate leaders in healthcare, CIO Look has enlisted “Influential Leaders in Healthcare 2019”. These leaders

Inuential Leaders in

HEALTHCARE 2019 with their clinical skills, business competencies, and technical know-how, are taking healthcare to the next level.

An avid leader, Karim Smaira, the Co-founder and CEO of Genpharm features as the cover of this edition. In an interview with CIO Look, Karim emphasizes on the contribution made by him and the Co-founder, Kamel Ghammachi, in the evolution the pharmaceutical sector in the Middle East region of the health-care sector. His unique ideologies and a vision to serve people made him achieve many milestones en route to success. Being Co-founder and CEO of Genpharm, Karim has portrayed many impeccable leadership traits whilst taking the company to stature heights.

Additionally, this edition also features Garry Neale, the Managing Director of Procura Software, as Leader of the Year. Garry believes that ‘integrity’ is the hallmark of a successful leader, and this is at the heart of everything Procura does; whether it is being open and frank in communication with clients about both good news and bad, or internally with staff, leadership and shareholders.

Let’s unveil such alike, inspiring stories and interviews of many such passionate leaders in this special edition and spread a word about their contribution in making this world a better place.

Also, while flipping the pages, don’t forget to go through the articles and CXOs written by our in-house editorial team and industry experts respectively.

Let’s start Reading..!

Hitesh Dhamani

Cover Story

Karim Smaira Co-founder & CEO

Karim Smaira

08

A Leader with a Commitment to Serve

Leader of the Month 18

Garry Neale Managing Director

Garry Neale: Exploring Success with a Sense of Integrity

Amy Heymans

Andrea Bloom

Innovative Design Inspired by Empathy

Empowering People to Live a Healthy Life

24

32

Arlen Meyers

Dr Joanne M. Hackett

MD, MBA: Transforming Healthcare

by Entrepreneurship

Enabling a Better Quality of Life for Everyone

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46

Contents Women Empower Dynamics of Women Participation in the Ever-changing Modern Workforce

Incentives Solutions

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36

Articles

Innovating Space Innovative Companies in the Space Industry

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44

Rethinking the Products of Today for a Better Tomorrow

Expert's Outlook The Fuss about AI

K. Roy Editor-in-Chief

CONTENT

Senior Editor Alan Swann Managing Editor Bhushan Ghate Executive Editors Sourabh More

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October, 2019

COVER STORY

Karim Smaira A Leader with a Commitment to Serve

“

You never apologize for doing the right thing.

“

Karim Smaira Co-founder & CEO

I

n an interview with CIO Look, Karim Smaira emphasizes on the contribution made by him and the Co-founder, Kamel Ghammachi, in the evolution the pharmaceutical sector in the Middle East region of health-care sector. His unique ideologies and a vision to serve people made him achieve many milestones en route to success.

Being Co-founder and CEO of Genpharm, Karim has portrayed many impeccable leadership traits whilst taking the company to stature heights.

amazing mentors along the way. My family had to leave our home due to war. Adversity helps you forge personality and build character.

Travelling and living in different countries allowed me to learn five languages and get exposed to different cultures. Once I started working, I had managers at almost every position that trusted me and allowed me to take initiatives and experiment with new things. I believe all the above led to the development of my leadership skills and helped me prepare for setting up Genpharm, a private pharmaceutical company with my Co-founder Mr. Kamel Ghammachi.

CIO Look feels pride to feature such adherent leader in its new edition special edition, “Influential Leaders in Healthcare, 2019”. Below are the highlights of the interview:

market analysis, we identified a significant gap in the rare disease space. Access to orphan drugs in the MENA region is challenging. Lack of general public awareness, delay in genetic diagnosis, a complex and long patient pathway are some of the obstacles.

On the other hand, the high rate of consanguinity and the large family size lead inevitably to a relatively higher prevalence and incidence of genetic disease. Healthcare coverage and reimbursement to the national population in the GCC provided us with the geographic focus of our early efforts. Hence our mission to Commit. Connect. Cure.

How do you diversify your organization’s offerings to appeal the target audience in health-care sector?

From the onset we had a clear strategy and ambition. Our Vision as to what we wanted Genpharm to be remains the same. When we did our

Kindly take us through your journey on becoming a leader.

In addition to receiving a good education, I was fortunate enough to have early live experiences and

We are committed to serving the patients, connecting multinational companies and their innovative treatments to the region and ultimately being the first Gene therapy company in the Middle East to cure patients.

Headquartered in Dubai, Genpharm commercializes its product por olio across MENA Logis cs and distribu on to facilitate market access MSL, KAM, and Sales representa ves in each country

Ac ve role in pharmaceu cal and healthcare forums as speakers and experts

Strong Exper se in Name Pa ent and Early Access Programs Strong KOL management in specialty care and rare disease

Tunisia

Long established rela onships with major hospitals and ins tu ons

Syria Lebanon

Morocco

Iran

Iraq Jordan

Algeria

Libya

Kuwait Bahrain

Egypt Saudi Arabia Oman

Yemen

Qatar UAE (Dubai, Headquarter)

Governed by clear values We always put our pa ents ďŹ rst

We are passionate about what we do

A leader has to make tough decisions in the best interests of the business. When I am faced with a difficult decision specially related to people, I always ask myself, is this the right thing to do for the business? It just helps me stay focused.

We deliver on our promises

Karim Smaira

Kamel Ghammachi

Co-founder & CEO

Co-founder & Chairman

Genpharm is the Partner of Choice in the Middle East and North Africa

Genpharm is a growing specialty pharma company focused on commercializing rare diseases and orphan drugs in MENA

Genpharm has a well-established network and rela onships with key stakeholders and decision makers

Genpharm operates in all key Middle Eastern and North African pharmaceu cal markets

Genpharm has experience in managing KOLs, scien ďŹ c advisory boards, pa ents advocacy groups, and CME programs in the en re MENA region

Genpharm has excep onal commercial and regulatory capabili es in the en re region

Genpharm’s opera ons are world-class including proper managing of distribu on and logis cs in MENA, and exper se in QA, PV, regulatory, and compliance.

What are the crucial traits which every leader must possess?

A leader must have a clear Vision and be able to articulate it. His vision has to be aspirational and bond people of different backgrounds and culture to a higher purpose. Then, leading by example and surrounding yourself with people that are able to execute and giving them the tools to do so is equally critical.

What are your intakes on roles of a leader serving for the health-care sector?

Regardless of the sector, by deďŹ nition a leader needs to be a driver of ideas and people. Because we are dealing with human health in our sector, a healthcare leader has a moral responsibility towards the patients and their families,

particularly in the rare disease space. Most of these diseases are genetic and pediatric in nature. They are degenerative and have a negative impact on both quality and life expectancy.

As per your opinion, what roadblocks or challenges are faced by leaders in such sectors? And what is your advice to overcome them?

Ironically our industry suffers from a very negative public opinion. This is due in large part to few individuals that have put greed and shareholder value at all costs above everything else. Unfortunately, this get a disproportionate media coverage, which in turn, creates a trust issue.

Nevertheless, most people employed in the pharmaceutical sector are genuinely driven by the ambition of advancing scientiďŹ c

research and ultimately treating patients. The recent breakthroughs in oncology and the rare disease space testify to this. The other point is related to the pricing of drugs in particularly in the US. The average citizen doesn't know the costs and rate of failure involved in research and in drug discovery. They also are not familiar with the value-based approach of pricing drugs. These treatments are actually costeffective, limiting the indirect costs associated with the disease and the multidisciplinary care required as well as the costs of regular hospitalizations.

I believe the key is to communicate better outside of the industry and to showcase all the positive impact that our industry has on the overall well-being of our society.

MENA is a sizeable and fast growing market Pharma market expected to reach $50 Billion by 2025 with CAGR of 10% 60

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30

15

0 2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

Middle East

22 countries with 300+ million people

Young popula on (20% ages 15-24)

2020

2021

2022

2023

2024

2025

Nort Africa

Great growth poten al with healthcare expenditure at 6% of GDP

Growing government investments in healthcare

How do you upgrade yourself with ever-evolving technological trends to boost your personal and company's growth?

In entrepreneurship, learning on the job is a big element. I am an avid reader of management books and a natural net-worker. I always enjoy connecting with leaders from other sectors and executives. I strongly believe that we can learn from someone else's experience and perspective.

In terms of company growth, we like to trust our employees with a tendency to promote from within and reward high performers. We have launched an employee option plan with this in mind. We want to give our staff a sense of ownership and responsibility.

We believe that engagement and commitment contribute to the growth of both the individual and the organization as a whole.

Being a specialist pharmaceutical marketing and consulting company, what is your contribution in evolving pharmaceutical sector?

We are at the forefront of innovation by making the most advanced treatments accessible to patients in the Middle East. We have established our brand in a relatively short time. Genpharm has become a highly reliable and trusted partner for multinationals looking at partnering in the Middle East. We would like to think that we have signiďŹ cantly contributed to raising the

Characters are not built, they are revealed in tough situations.

proďŹ le of the region globally but most importantly we have educated the public on the various aspects of rare disease helping patients get a faster diagnosis and accessing the latest therapies.

According to you, what is the current status of MENA healthcare and pharmaceutical sector? Kindly provide a brief note on it.

The MENA Pharmaceutical market represents only 2% of global pharma sales, but the forecasted growth is one of the highest. The region is inhabited by almost 300 million people. The markets are very diverse, and the healthcare systems are unequally developed.

Chronic diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular ailments have become national health concerns.

Governments play bigger roles in some countries investing in disease awareness and public insurance, while in others the private sector is well established.

There has been a great deal of focus on healthcare infrastructure lately resulting in major investments in building of hospitals and clinics.

Some markets are maturing fast with regulations, pricing and insurance schemes similar to the developed

markets of Europe. Ministries of health are further adopting healthcare assessment methodologies. Most have introduced fast track review processes, particularly for orphan drugs already approved by the FDA or EMA. Some of the current general trends are the development of local manufacturers, the push for pricing and budgetary controls though the encouragement of generics.

What will be your future endeavors and/or where do you see yourself in the near future?

We are going through a growth phase. We strongly believe that this will continue in the future. We feel that Genpharm has a tremendous potential for growth and value creation and I would like to see this happening in the near future. Having put patients at the core of everything we do, we are committed to making a difference to as many patients and families as possible.

As entrepreneurs we are faced with constant pressure and have to make daily decisions that can impact the company and the lives of others. I believe that business success comes from making the right decisions and always doing what you think is right in the context, regardless of what people think.

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Garry Neale Exploring Success with a Sense of Integrity

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e it managing high performance teams or taking an organisation to its utmost heights, an experienced leader is prepared for anything.

This is certainly true of Procura Software Managing Director, Garry Neale. His unique ideologies and persistent approach towards meeting goals have led him to achieving many milestones en route to his current standing.

CIO LOOK admires such leaders and appreciates their contribution in the ever-evolving IT and healthcare sector. As such, CIO LOOK takes pride in featuring Garry as Leader of the Year in its new edition “Influential Leaders in Healthcare, 2019.”

Below is his story.

Garry hails from Portsmouth, England which is the home of the British Navy, Charles Dickens, and even Sir Henry Ayers—who gave his name to Ayers Rock. He developed his competitive nature in his teen years competing at a national level in both athletics and soccer before moving to London to study Electronic Engineering. His professional career began in the hardware and software laboratories for IBM which in his case stood for “I’ve Been Moved” as he was relocated to several different divisions, locations and roles, providing him with a broad base of experience across the technology industry.

He then moved to Boole & Babbage Software who in a short space of time went on to purchase both a partner company and a competitor before subsequently being acquired itself by BMC Software. Being involved in these mergers and acquisitions, on both ends, has left a strong mark on his management style and given him absolute empathy and respect for his employees during

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Leader of the Month

Garry Neale Managing Director Procura Software Pty Ltd

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I hire great people and invest in them, and I try to build relationships with staff and customers for the long-term based on integrity and mutual trust.

these times of change and uncertainty. It was through these turbulent times that he realised the only constant in business is change—sales still have to be made, projects still have to be delivered, and targets still have to be reached.

Resilience and the ability to stay focused on the important matters was key to effective leadership.

His first start-up was with Clarity Blue in the data and customer analytics sector and after a very rapid growth and achieving the desired exit point in 2003, he emigrated to Australia to work for Fujitsu Management Consulting.

After two years at Fujitsu, including leading the bid team to a $100 million tender win at Education Queensland, he then spent seven years managing software companies in accounts payable automation and risk management until joining Procura Software in 2012.

He now has over 30 years of experience in the Software industry across Europe, the United States and Asia Pacific managing the delicate juggling act of protecting and driving investor interests whilst ensuring the absolute optimum outcomes for all clients. This journey has included start-ups, turnarounds, multi-nationals and lots of M&A activity and despite all of this, he still retains his sense of humor.

One of Garry’s keys to success is his humble and straight forward attitude. At Procura, whenever there is a new requirement from the marketplace, the company is not arrogant enough to think that it can always develop the best solution.

It will review the existing

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best-of-breed products and technologies in the space and, where appropriate, enter into a partnership arrangement which may potentially lead to an acquisition at a later stage. The Procura product set has been re-developed as a Cloud solution with an (Application Programming Interface) API-first development strategy which allows it to readily integrate and leverage third party products. The company also run regular User Groups and Client Advisory Boards to ensure that the teams are building end-to-end solutions which meet its clients’ current and future needs.

As Procura is a multinational company, it also relies heavily on the latest communication and collaboration applications in order to successfully coordinate teams across the globe. Procura employs professionals who can work anywhere and at any time to meet demand.

The business needs to operate with staff working from home, those in different time zones, and those who work in a different client office each week. The ability to run projects on time and within budget all rely on good people and even better technology, and Procura is often praised by clients for their ability to deliver, support and enhance care for their patients. It has recently launched the PainChek mobile application as an important part of its Procura Clinical Management System which integrates Pain Management, Wound Management and Medication Management into a holistic clinical care solution. This is a market-leading solution in the aged-care industry.

Garry believes that ‘integrity’ is the hallmark of a successful leader, and this is at the heart of everything Procura does; whether it is being open and frank in communication with clients about both good news and bad, or internally with staff, leadership and shareholders. It may not always deliver on-time and onbudget 100% of the time (although the company tries exceptionally hard), but Procura will always be open with clients and stakeholders so that expectations can be set appropriately and contingent plans can be updated. Having a strong EQ and sense of humour is important for building great relationships and Garry personally prides himself on being at his best in times of crisis when a leader needs to be at their most centered and productive.

Once the app has been used to scan the patient’s face and assess for pain (even with a patient who is unable to communicate), a chart is created in Procura. A series of automated workflows then ensure that the appropriate medication is administered, reviewed and managed, and can even initiate a GP consultation if appropriate.

Pain trends are then monitored and recorded over time to optimise this process and ensure the best outcomes for the patient. This has already proven to be lifechanging for both patients and caregivers, as previously the alternative was to over-medicate, sometimes further sedating patients and contributing to their inability to communicate.

With such a huge burden of legislation and compliance in the Healthcare sector, and with such a rapidly changing landscape, having an exceptional team of staff is by far the most important asset to ensure success.

Procura has recruited some of the best clinicians, implementers, trainers, product managers and sales staff in the industry and Garry’s role is to attract, retain, and incentivise those staff, and remove any barriers to their success.

The Procura team has grown the business in Australia and New Zealand from five customers and six staff in 2012, to over 200 customers and 60 staff currently.

It has just achieved the milestone of 1 billion home care visits managed through their software. The next five years are already mapped out to continue to push the product into the cloud to reduce cost and complexity of ownership. It will then continue to build an ecosystem of tightly integrated best-of-breed products and technologies to ensure end-to-end Client Management, Clinical and Financial Systems. Garry is also looking at further acquisitions of aligned product companies to accelerate the company’s growth and ensure that it stays ahead of the pack.

Being a software company, Procura employs IT professionals at the cutting edge of the current digital disruption in the aged care sector. It is constantly researching and developing tomorrow’s requirements to stay at the forefront of the industry. It operates within a network of complementary software providers and Garry regularly meets with other CIO’s and CEO’s to share and partner on latest developments.

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Amy Heymans Founder & Chief Experience Officer Mad*Pow

“

It’s an exciting time to be in design – our work has the potential to improve so many people’s lives.

“

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Mad*Pow

AMY Heymans Innovative Design Inspired by Empathy

T

Health Experience Design (HXD) conference 10 years ago, then create the Center for Health Experience Design (CHXD) three years ago. Both the HXD conference and the Center draw participants from industries across the health ecosystem to share resources and collaborate on patient experience problems. Recently, Mad*Pow was acquired by Tech Mahindra, boosting the company’s ability to not just envision amazing experiences, but also bring them to life in a completely holistic way for its clients.

he ‘care’ in ‘healthcare’ symbolizes the significance of ‘care and empathy’ in the everevolving healthcare sector. The inclusion of “care” as part of our health process has become an essential element of the changing healthcare ecosystem.

Meet Amy Heymans, Founder & Chief Experience Officer at Mad*Pow. Because of her background in design, Amy understands the importance of empathy in the design process. She believes that design, along with bit of care, can help improve the human condition.

Under her guidance, Mad*Pow has achieved many milestones in helping improve the healthcare ecosystem.

Amy was inspired to pursue a career in design because she knew she could help improve lives on a large scale.

Under her guidance, Mad*Pow worked across a variety of industries, but some experiences with early clients inspired Amy to put a larger focus on health and health care. As a result, Amy established a health practice, working with organizations across the ecosystem–from health tech, pharma, nonprofits, government agencies, retail, providers, and payers. “The community in health is so rich and diverse,” Amy says. She is inspired by the amount of empathy in this industry, and the shared purpose of driving toward better health and improved quality of life.

Below is her story: Amy pursued a career in design because it requires a keen eye to look at things from a different perspective and find new ways to solve problems. Her expertise in web design, experience design and research helped her identify people’s needs and then use design to meet those needs. After working as a freelancer, Amy teamed up in 2000 with business partner Will Powley to start Mad*Pow. The company focused on making digital solutions more useful, usable, and desirable. Eventually, Mad*Pow extended its focus into innovation, service design, and behavior change design, which Amy believes is the next frontier in design.

Mad*Pow leverages strategic design and positive motivation to create innovative experiences and digital solutions that are good for people as well as for business. The company aligns business strategy with experience strategy by creating a path that puts empathy and the understanding of human behavior at the core of its clients’ operations. Human-centered design activities help the Mad*Pow team identify what

As Mad*Pow grew its client base, Amy developed a passion for using design to improve health experiences and had a desire to build a community around that passion. Amy’s passion motivated her to start the

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motivates people, what they desire, and what should happen next as they interact with clients, their customers and other organizations. These insights fuel creative approaches that allow Mad*Pow to collectively envision new and exciting experiences. It leverages an in-depth understanding of behavior science to create products and services that help people achieve greater health and wellness. Mad*Pow identifies target behaviors for change, uncovers their underlying modifiable determinants, and draws on techniques best suited to shift behaviors into new patterns. It also designs and builds scalable, usable, and accessible digital solutions that deliver seamless and compelling experiences while producing measurable business results for clients.

how the solution fits in their ecosystem, how it can connect with existing resources, how data should flow in and out, and with which entities they need to cooperate.

As volatile changes in technology can be witnessed daily, Amy prefers to set goals and keep pursuing them.

She knows that reaching these goals is going to take time. Her stubbornness can be a positive thing, because it makes her diligent and helps her persevere to meet her goals; it drives her success. She reminds herself to consider, what does she really need? What does she want? She works hard to keep learning about herself and the business by reading and staying current on industry trends and standards. She is not afraid to create the resources she needs to succeed, even when they don’t exist yet, e.g., the CHXD, Mad*Pow’s Financial Experience Design (FXD) or HXD conferences.

Mad*Pow brought empathy and patient centricity into the health care industry ethos before it was in the limelight. Now, 10 years later, empathy and patient centric-solutions are well known and embraced by the design and health communities. Amy founded the Health Experience Design (HXD) conference 10 years ago because there was an unmet need to bring the health and design communities together to share experiences and collaborate on solutions. The success of the HXD conferences spawned the Center for Health Experience Design (CHXD), a free online community where users can share information, continue learning and foster collaboration year-round. Amy has been able to create multi-stakeholder collaborations among organizations that are serving the same types of patients. For example, CHXD was able to connect government and non-profit organization with companies that want to collaborate on better solutions to address tough challenges.

Amy states that the next evolution of health care is blending behavior science, motivational psychology, and public health frameworks with human-centered design, data science, and technology. And the beauty of human-centered design is that it’s interdisciplinary.

Mad*Pow will continue exploring new frameworks to pull all the parts together in a way that will create the most impact for its clients. Yet, Amy still believes that Mad*Pow has some work to do to push things forward.

Partnership with UC Berkeley School of Public Health Amy is proud, under Mad*Pow’s banner, to stimulate innovation industry wide by bringing together multistakeholder collaborations to address important challenges. For example, in 2018, Commonwealth wanted to better support lower-income employees who enroll in a high-deductible health plan (HDHP), so they set out to run a design and innovation challenge in partnership with Mad*Pow’s CHXD to grow awareness of this problem space and crowdsource novel solutions.

Amy believes, through empathy and collaboration, one can easily prevail in the intensely competitive health care sector. In business, and when it comes to delivering care, experiencing the same pain point again and again can feel defeating, like the problem is unsolvable. Amy’s goal as a leader is to see a problem from all sides, to inspire empathy in others, and to paint a picture of what is possible.

A team of students from U.C. Berkeley’s Center for Health Technology won the top prize for their app called the “Plan Picker.” Plan Picker lets employees complete a questionnaire about medical use, financial assets, and risk tolerance; this information directs employees to the plan that best fits their health and financial needs, and even screens users for Medicaid eligibility. Post-enrollment support features within the app include educational videos, a deductible calculator, a prescription drug price checker, and a doctor visit copay estimator. “This kind of collaboration is the future of the health industry, and Mad*Pow takes pride in facilitating that collaboration,” says Amy.

Amy believes that business leaders need to involve all stakeholders who will be affected by a solution in the process of creating it. Businesses need to consider personal perspectives – the patient, doctors, caregivers, and families. Companies should not assume they know what’s valuable to the end-user, even if they are or were a practicing doctor or patient. In fact, that’s a handicap because they will automatically assume that their target audience thinks as they do. When business leaders engage with doctors and patients on a continuous basis, the solutions will become clear.

They will come to understand what motivates people,

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Dynamics of

Participation in the Ever-changing Modern Workforce

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Women Empower

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Collaboration, and not the cutthroat competition, is the modern era’s principle virtue to achieve success. Many endeavours which seem to be beyond the bounds of possibility can be attained by combining efforts from different resources, channels and departments. Further, collaborating products with consumer experience are enormously important. It leads to crafting the best solutions for customer’s pain points and compelling value propositions that reflect their overall business objectives.

one are the days when women were stereotyped to a certain set of skills and professions, restricting them from exploring the world of endless opportunities. Today, women have announced their arrival in many fields of the business world.

Therefore, it seems more important than ever before to recognize female contributions in every profession.

Fighting through biased work culture in favour of male dominance, women have conquered the unconquered on the account of their distinct calibre and predilections. In the times when the world female participation rate is to the dispiriting levels of around 67% and pay-off rate of about 63%, achievements by women go-getters are praiseworthy.

Multiple studies have found that women prefer to work in teams, while men prefer to work alone. An unfaltering affinity towards collaboration primes women to garner success in different fields of business which gives them an edge over others.

Increased profitability can be a motivating factor for many firms to hire more pool of female talents as many studies support the fact. Statistical research shows that Fortune 500 companies with the highest representation of women on boards financially outperform companies with the lowest representation of women on boards.

Moreover, gender-diverse teams have higher sales and profits compared to male-dominated teams, and a recent Gallup study found that gender-diverse business units have higher average revenue than less diverse business units.

Listening capabilities is one of the distinguishing aspects of feminine species as compared to their male counterparts. Instilling and pursuing ones thoughts is undoubtedly important for effective working. But being a better listener is something that can make a difference as studies show that the customer values and trusts the firms if they perceive that they are being listened to by the firms. With inherent caring and affectionate traits, women outclass men when it comes to understanding critical demands of the customers.

Emotional Intelligence (EI) - the ability to identify and manage one’s own emotions as well as the emotions of others - is an essential skill when it comes to dealing with a diverse class of consumers. Women are naturally gifted with higher EI making them better suited for pressure situations and avoiding counter-productive decisions while keeping emotions in check.

Trust over female leaders is an attribute which needs to be reciprocated while making the choice. More American workers perceive female executives as honest and ethical than male executives. Pew’s “Women and Leadership” surveyed Americans in 2015 and found that 34% say women are better at this, while only 3% say men are better at it (64% say there’s no difference).

Emotional Intelligence encompasses two major dimensions – awareness of one’s self and awareness of others. Both the attributes are very much significant for the survival and success of any organisation. Selfawareness involves being familiar with trigger points and behavioural traits when put to the test. This, in turn, helps to modulate impulses avoiding conclusions which are harmful for the welfare of business. In addition to selfawareness, an awareness of others is equally critical in business. Analysing and decoding non-verbal communication – that amounts to 93% of the message – eventually benefits in convincing and converting a lead into a client.

While it’s unclear whether this means women are actually more honest, it’s a subtle reminder of how tangled some business decisions can be. Leaders are often tasked with choosing between options that aren’t black and white, ethically speaking, and the capacity to lead honestly is important to the entire company’s success and job satisfaction.

Not to mention, increased job satisfaction and organizational dedication to cite positive and meaningful business culture are the added advantages feminine employees carry to the organisation.

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Women are generally uneasy about asking for what they want. They must stop thinking about what they need as a self-serving request. They must develop the courage and fortitude to stand up and ask for what they want.

However, the journey is not all merry go round every time.

Hindrances – seen, unseen – are there to check the unrelenting zeal of women aspirants to thrive in the industry. These obstructions need to be pointed out and rectified to create an environment that fuels women empowerment.

While proving value, women tend to overcompensate in order to demonstrate that they are adding value. Instead of doing it all alone, change the paradigm and track to encourage others to take on more responsibility, thus enabling them to scale and multiply their own impact.

Lack of confidence, according to many experts, is one prime reason women tend to question themselves and doubt their worthiness. In order to advance, they must coach their inner critics.

Not to forget, biased work culture and regional barriers are the crucial obstacles in the road of women work participation. But, today women are breaking these shackles and coming out boldly to be a part of economic processes shouldering their male counterparts.

There has been obvious progress in achieving gender equality around the world over the past two decades: more girls are attending school, more women are working and are being elected to public offices, more women hold management positions, and the situation involving women’s legal as well as social rights have also improved.

Out-speak and define what women want professionally if they want to get succeeded. Too often they don’t know or rely upon others to define it for them.

“Building relationships with those in positions of leadership is critical,” Susan Brady, executive vice president of Linkage Inc. says. “Put down the to-do list long enough to connect with decision makers across the organization, and help them understand who you are and what you bring to the table.”

However, a great deal still remains to be done to achieve equal outcomes for women and men. Recognizing women’s abilities, the values they bring to the organisation, the transformation they achieve as far as work environment is concerned, and considering monetary benefits associated with the female work participation, corporate sector need to welcome their emergence with open arms. No future is far where maledominated workplaces will be a tale of extinct, we believe.

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ANDREA BLOOM

Empowering People to Live a Healthy Life

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native of Bay Area, Andrea Bloom the Founder and CEO of ConnectWell started the company with the intention to help people live better lives through empowering them to improve their health and well-being. The organization’s public-private partnership with the UC Berkeley School of Public Health guarantees access to a vast library of health and wellness content that is continually reviewed and updated to include the latest standard of care guidelines and scientific findings on health, wellness, and disease management.

Andrea was a 2020 task force member of the American Heart Association in order to engage and inform the greater Bay Area community when it comes to improving cardiovascular health by 2020.

She founded a co-ed adult softball team to reengage team members with a sport they enjoyed during their youth. With her husband and three children, Andrea enjoys hiking throughout the Bay Area, skiing and snow shoeing in Tahoe, and traveling.

She received a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from University of California, Berkeley with departmental honors, high distinction in general

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ConnectWell

Andrea Bloom ConnectWell

John Swartzberg UC Berkeley

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scholarship, and Phi Beta Kappa and a Master in Business Administration from Harvard Business School.

ability to scale health information for easy access, anytime and anywhere.

Developing a Deep Skill Set in an Industry from the Ground Up As a child of a physician, Andrea's exposure to the field of healthcare from a very early age became a springboard for her career and passion for helping people achieve well-being. After receiving her MBA from Harvard Business School, Andrea started her career in healthcare at Johnson and Johnson's diabetes division in Silicon Valley in product marketing.

On the product side of the business, she participated in researching the unmet needs of the market and in bringing new medical devices to people with diabetes to meet those needs. On the marketing side, Andrea became an expert in understanding the underlying causes of diabetes and the stakeholders that help people manage their disease: doctors, diabetes educators, pharmacists, and the patient.

Assembling a Team with the Expertise for Success Given that the San Francisco Bay Area is an epicenter for health and wellness thought leadership, Andrea assembled a Scientific Advisory Board made up of subject matter experts in different areas of wellness. She built a team of talented, experienced individuals with diverse backgrounds who could hit the ground running and work in an entrepreneurial and collaborative environment.

Together they created and deployed consumer-oriented wellness programming in the areas of healthy eating, physical activity, stress management, sleep, and maternal health.

information through their health and wellness publications. Andrea was introduced to Dr. John Swartzberg, who oversees the development of the school's health and wellness publications and their large editorial board consisting of faculty and physicians from both UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco Medical School. Dr. Swartzberg and Andrea formulated a strategy in order to form a public-private partnership to digitize and consumerize the school's vast collection of health and wellness publications. Both of them further expanded their team to include a Chief Medical Officer, Lead Health Writer, and Technical and User Experience Expert so that they could build an offering that would enable people to unlock their potential of reaching a higher level of health and well-being.

Forming a Partnership with a Leading Academic Institution Next, it was the need of the hour to partner with a leading academic institution that had deep experience in consumer-oriented health publications covering a wide range of health conditions. She found that partner in her undergraduate alma mater, UC Berkeley. For 35 years, the UC Berkeley School of Public Health has been a pioneer in providing evidence-based wellness

Developing an Offering that Appeals to the Target Customer and their Users According to Andrea, she and her team have achieved their vision of transforming the industry's most trusted health and wellness information into an engaging digital health content offering and making it available to their partners.

ConnectWell works with a broad array of healthcare providers, health engagement platforms, benefit

Identifying Trends and Acting on Them According to Andrea, the demands on the healthcare system have dramatically shifted from acute care to chronic care given the steep rise in the prevalence of chronic disease.

Because chronic conditions are long-term health issues, people must get involved in managing their care in order to maintain their health. Observing these trends, Andrea eventually decided to found ConnectWell. She shifted her focus from disease management to wellness — empowering people to live well and incorporate healthy lifestyle habits into daily living. To empower people in their health and well-being, they need to have access to engaging, accurate, up-to-date, and expertly vetted health information. Andrea could see the digital revolution unfolding and that it would eventually hit the healthcare system — enabling the

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The Content Suite has 3 areas that are complementary in supporting total health and well-being: Health & Wellness Digital Library: Extensive coverage of health, wellness, and disease topics from A to Z Ÿ Wellness Initiatives: Wellness education with strategies and tools to help in the adoption of healthy lifestyle practices Ÿ Healthy Recipe Collection: Healthy recipes that are tasty, easy to make, and made from whole foods and healthy ingredients Ÿ

Staying Current with Tech Trends Being located in the heart of the tech community has given Andrea and her team the much needed advantage of tapping tech talent and incorporating the ever-evolving technical trends. The underlying architecture of ConnectWell's content offering makes it visually oriented and easy to navigate, while providing seamless integration into the portals of their customers.

ConnectWell's content is tagged for easy topic search, so it can be directed to end users based on their individual health and wellness needs, tapping into their partners' AI capabilities through ConnectWell's API. Building Interest in ConnectWell's Services Andrea believes digital health services are rapidly expanding, and innovative companies are highly interested in integrating the ConnectWell offering as a part of their services to advance their value proposition. The challenges Andrea

“

My approach to business leadership is: “Develop deep and broad expertise in a field, stay abreast of trends, assemble a high-performing team, partner with leading organizations, and collaborate with your customers.”

“

providers, and employers that license ConnectWell's content for integration into their platforms to engage their patients, members, and employees in their health. These companies can now deliver on the promise of improving the health of those they serve by integrating the ConnectWell Content Suite as part of their services.

and her team face are breaking into the more traditional healthcare companies which are large bureaucracies that are slow to adopt new services. As a leader in healthcare, it is incumbent on her to help the healthcare system incorporate new services that advance and enable cost-effective patient education and engagement to improve health outcomes and well-being. Helping to break down old paradigms and providing insights to other industry leaders so they can envision how they can thrive in this ever-changing healthcare landscape is a role she embraces. Andrea works to create dynamic partnerships so that traditional healthcare companies can ensure their future and not be left behind due to the rapid changes that digital health is bringing to the healthcare industry.

Future of Healthcare When it comes to the future, Andrea believes that the future of the healthcare industry will be one where the patient is at the center, having the knowledge and skills to be a committed and vested partner in their care. ConnectWell and the UC Berkeley School of Public Health

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plan to be a big part of this future as their suite of health and wellness content provides the means to educate and empower these patients.

About ConnectWell: ConnectWell is a mission-based company that is a leading-edge provider of digital health and wellness content that is academically sourced and designed for a consumer audience to engage people in their total health and wellbeing. ConnectWell's partnership with the UC Berkeley School of Public Health ensures a continuous flow of up-to-date, expertly vetted health information. This partnership enables ConnectWell to serve large communities and cross socioeconomic and geographic boundaries through distribution over a wide range of digital health platforms, ensuring access to the most trusted source of health and wellness content.

| October2019 |

Rethinking the Products of Today for a Better Tomorrow

Celia Pool Co-founder DAME

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Incentives Solutions

T

he world is finally waking up to the single-use plastic crisis.

Over the last 10 years we have created more plastic than the whole of the last century combined. Half of the plastic we create is used just once, and then thrown away, taking 500 years to decompose. By 2050, the oceans are predicted to contain more plastic than fish. The plastic crisis is now too big for recycling alone to fix.

Global governments, businesses and consumers need to collaborate quickly to make impactful change before it’s too late. However, change is difficult when environmentally damaging habits have become so entrenched and often appear more financially appealing.

Technology is helping in this fight.

Reusable water bottles are now widespread, and apps that help you locate drinking water refill stations are now emerging. At the same time, reusable coffee cup technology is addressing the half a trillion disposable coffee cups discarded every year. Such items are gaining increasing social currency with consumers, who are keen to display them as markers of their environmental conscience. This revolution is encouraging, but what about the products that people aren’t so willing to talk about?

100 billion menstrual products are thrown away globally every year.

These are single-use, mostly made of plastic and cannot be recycled. You can choose not to have a coffee, you cannot choose not to have a period.

Reusable options (e.g. menstrual cups, cloth pads) have been on the market for decades, yet the adoption rate has been slow. The primary barrier to entry is the fear of habit change.

So how do we bring about a revolution? The answer is keep it simple. And take time to consider consumer psychology. As humans, we

abhor change. We are creatures drawn towards the comfort of the known. By keeping habit change to a minimum, consumers are much more likely to adopt a new idea.

This was our philosophy at DAME when we created the world’s first reusable tampon applicator. We ensured the design was familiar and intuitive, so women did not have to compromise on their convenient, established rituals. We knew that hygiene could be a significant barrier to entry, so we worked with leading micro-biologists and medical engineers and used the best medical grade, anti-microbial materials on the market. As a result, the consumer only must rinse the applicator in cold water after use to keep it clean. Simple steps, minimal habit change.

However, it is challenging to tackle an issue that has such little awareness.

Menstruation has historically been shrouded in shame, fear and discretion. It is not a topic openly talked about. This is a problem with feminine care as a whole: it is frequently dismissed and the women trying to address it are critically underfunded. In 2017 female founders got 2% of the $85 billion VC investment pot. About 8% of partners at the top British VC firms are women.

According to Harvard Business Review, stereotypes about female entrepreneurs persist: women are overly cautious, shy away from growth, have insufficient resources and consequently their ventures underperform. Yet there is no performance data to support these stereotypes.

How are products used by women supposed to change in line with human and environmental needs, when they aren’t given appropriate recognition or have women involved in all stages of the process? Women need to be given more of a voice if we are to create meaningful change. The world of AI is

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already highlighting the need to diverse away from male, white, Western coders if we are to avoid unconscious bias in the robots of tomorrow. Amazon had to abandon an AI recruitment tool that was discriminating against women, instead favoring prospects who mirrored Amazon’s existing male engineer workforce. At DAME women have been involved in every stage of the journey, not as a token gesture but as an absolute necessity.

However, our overarching business strategy goes beyond issues of inclusivity to incorporate a wider mission. DAME was founded on the belief that business can be used as a force for good. We use this core value to guide every decision we make in the business, bringing great clarity to our route forward. By communicating our genuine and authentic commitment to this mission, we hope that our message will quickly be picked up by those eager to join a movement for change. To date, we have seen this happen not only with our consumers and the press, but with employees.

People are increasingly drawn to companies doing good. 75% of millennials would take a pay cut to work at a socially responsible company.

All this strengthens our resolve at DAME to continue to tackle critical problems that are not openly acknowledged, that are significantly underfunded, and that have historically been controlled by giant monopolies. Today we are focusing on menstrual products, but our vision is to revolutionize the entire bathroom.

These are big mountains, but having strong guiding principles makes the navigation much easier.

-Words by Celia Pool Co-founder of DAME For more information visit wearedame.co | October2019 |

ARLEN Arlen Meyers MD,MBA President & CEO

Society of Physician Entrepreneurs

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N MEYERS, MD, MBA Society of Physician Entrepreneurs

T

hose who lead health service organizations need to evolve from technicians to managers to leaders to entrepreneurs to leaderpreneurs in order to thrive. Some call it practicing at the top of one’s license. In addition, filling the Csuite with more physician managers just makes it harder to innovate and adds further clutter to the organization. Leaderpreneurs lead innovators; they don’t just manage innovation systems. After 40 years as a professor of otolaryngology (ear, nose and throat surgery) at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, Dr. Arlen Meyers, President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs, transitioned from teaching, practicing and researching the art of medicine to teaching, practicing and researching the business of medicine, innovation and entrepreneurship.

Transforming Healthcare by Entrepreneurship

Arlen teaches innovation and entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado Denver Anschutz medical campus and the business school at the downtown campus. Also he is a physician in residence at the Jabs Center for Entrepreneurship.

In addition, he also consults to several healthcare companies which are creating drugs, devices, diagnostics, digital health products, care delivery

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entrepreneurship personal but don’t “ Make take it personally. Connect to what drives you but

“

don’t take the inevitable failures personally.

Instead, learn from them.

models and medical education platforms. The mission of Society of Physician Entrepreneurs (SoPE) a non-profit, global open biomedical and clinical innovation and entrepreneurship network is helping members get their ideas to patients.

mentors, experience, peer to peer support and career and professional development training. The most important trait, however, is an entrepreneurial and growth mindset. Innovation starts with mindset.

Nowadays, leaders are charged with winning the 4th industrial revolution that is powered by cyber intelligence. That involves creating, scaling and sustaining a culture of innovation and leading an ambidextrous resilient organization with a workforce that has an entrepreneurial mindset. Overcoming those barriers require an innovative structure, process and culture that is supportive and determines the success by measuring the results of outcomes, not process or engagement. In addition Arlen said “Be sure you clearly define entrepreneurship, innovation and value and paint a picture of success so followers know the goal.”

Arlen does not believe sick care, i.e. a system that predominantly takes care of sick patients instead of keeping them healthy, can be fixed from inside. That is the reason his non-profit, the SoPE (Society of Physician Entrepreneurs ) is a global open innovation network that includes many different stakeholders, not just doctors ,but also other health professionals such as investors, service providers, technologists, patients, academics and many more. Each member segment wants SoPE to do a different job for them and, therefore, the company emphasizes different value propositions to each segment. The overall mission, however, remains the same; helping members get their ideas to patients or help someone who is.

To get updated with technological trends, and to boost personal and company’s growth, Arlen practices entrepreneurial habits and has created an encore career portfolio. He reads articles and books outside of sick care, writes almost every day, and accepts assignments where he has limited experience. He believes that he is

According to Arlen, physician entrepreneurs and leaderpreneurs need education, resources, networks,

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learning from failure to fill his blind spots. He actively mentors, consults and advises start-ups developing new technologies. Teaching, speaking, connecting people and building robust internal and external networks, consulting with mentors and a personal advisory board and attending non-sick care technology events and conferences all are helping him to achieve consistency and growth.

resources to do it, so he decided to do something to change that.

Arlen is attempting, with the help of others, to lead change with the goals of transforming sick care to health care, reforming medical education and training, restoring the joy of medicine, and improving the disparity in global health outcomes through the deployment of innovation. He is building an international innovation and entrepreneurship network and helping, educating students to win the 4th industrial revolution. He is aiming to reduce sick care quality cost, access and experience inequities, and reconcile the conflicts between the ethics of business with the ethics of medicine with these he is changing the rules for the common good and creating sustainability.

Midway in Arlen’s academic career, with his colleagues, he invented a device to optically detect oral cancer. The team attempted to transfer the technology to commercial markets but never made it over the finish line. It was the first of many of his entrepreneurial failures. The experience taught him three important lessons including; 1) everyone thinks they have a good idea 2) they don’t know what to do with their ideas, and 3) they won’t be taught what to do with their ideas in formal training.

Arlen is scaling the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs around the world in an effort to close global health outcome disparities through the deployment of biomedical and clinical innovation and entrepreneurship.

Arlen thinks it is cruel and unusual punishment to expect people to innovate and create value and pay them for value without giving them the education, training and

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I

For enterprises there are certain imminent crisis that demand that they change rapidly and market is not at all as forgiving as it was a few decades back, someone is constantly rooting for you to make a mistake.This is leading enterprise to transform under the integrated environment of Digital Transformation.

have been a strong advocate of conversational technology (VoiceTech/NLP) and AI and have pitched for it in various conferences, Guest Lectures at leading business institutes and to corporates and I am often being asked what will happen to our jobs? So this is true that Artificial intelligence seems like a big untameable monsters to most, and everyone is little anxious about future.

Voice Technology has lately become a stable AI process and would completely change the way we interact with technology in the future. Visualization will remain at the heart of it however with conversational technology, we can expect a shift to more verbal ads, like radio, but more personalized and actionable, but still to make a decision on which product to buy you would want to see it visually.

Also search will become more specific and hyperlocal, where we will be prompted to give verbal feedbacks, that would amount to popularity of products and places, how it happens with mobile applications today.

And that could be true sitting in 2010, but past few years new old research and young progressive companies and devision of enterprises are willing to make it their sole purpose that the infuse digital transformation in their company and provide assistance to others. But, with the prevailing reputation that comes at a cost of educating everyone, really everyone.

They see it as a risk and any have burnt their hands trying to tame novice early stage AI models. But thats fine, thats how we grow. I believe that we are intellectual beings with curious minds, why would we want to do repeatable jobs which machines can do with greater efficiency. We can delegate these chores and teach the machines to help us better and imitate human decision making, innovate at personal level and “Democratise Artificial Intelligence”.

Siri, Cortana, Alexa have brought conversation technology to people for some time now. They come bundled up with smart phones and can be used to do basic searches, to look up certain things, cue up songs etc. Speech technology has come much further than that. With its advancement we can now control our oven, tv and other house hold devices, can search complex data from cloud or can make phone calls for ourselves. It can change the way we function in our daily lives, our time with our family, services we receive and the jobs we do. It can eliminate learning curve of devices, repeatable chores, and compiling excel sheets.

And it will not happen eventually, it’s happening now.

Democratising AI through platforms for like voice technology - Natural Language processing so the technical algorithms can stay with specific user base while use of the AI algorithms can be made as simple as conversing with machines. Thats a sure shot way to upskilling resources for example: Team of Analysts can train dashboards and Business Intelligence tools to map business KPIs and generate Compelling Business Stories and Insights in natural language for everyone in the organisation to benefit from, and then keep building the training over it through machine learning. We are personally running trials with Fortune 50 companies on this, so when I say you need to start looking at ways to incorporate new technologies I mean it.

Developers will innovate to create more audio centric user interface, there will be discovery period for them to find out how to minimally prompt user to give inputs and implement voice modulated visual commands. We can see speech approaching a point where it would become so reliable that we can just use it, like how we do it with other humans, and not even think about it.

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Expert's Outlook

About the Author Preksha Kaparwan is the Co-founder, CMO, V.UX Designer of Realbox.AI. The versatile IHM Pusa graduate initially served as the chef but got inclined towards technology and business analytics and founded RealBox in 2015.

Within three years of its inception, they have raised $300k for Realbox and, their customers include fortune 50 and big 4 enterprises. As a thought leader she has been part of TEDTalk talk shows. She was awarded 'The sparks 2018' by your story for tech services for her exceptional contribution as a Tech Evangelist.

I am personally inspired to bring acceptance for conversational technology globally and I believe that the real success for this would not be when big corporations and industries would be using it but when every small and medium business and every household would be using it and help us to get a hold of our receding grip on reality from visually attractive and distracting screens on our tv, on out laptops and our smart phones.

Preksha Kaparwan Co-founder & CMO RealBox Data Analytics Private Limited

We have seen this kind of a shift with automated technologies and processes which has led to reduced laborious work, efďŹ ciency increased and averted accidents.

Smart phones brought technologies closer to the end user. So, I took side with ArtiďŹ cial Intelligence and Machine Learning technologies, that will aid seamlessly while co-existing in our realities. And impact is not just on us in our personal capacity but for businesses too and professionals who spend endless nights collating data and make pretty ppts to show to the bosses.

I believe that spreading the word on changing technological demography is not our responsibility or our burden. But you know why I make it my purpose??

Because it is a major step in evolution of technology and I know we need to harness it, shape it now, before someone else does it for you.

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DR JOANNE M. HACKETT Enabling a Better Quality of Life for Everyone

J

oanne M. Hackett, the CCO of Genomics England, is an accomplished entrepreneur, scientist and strategist with experience in the execution and management of complex business transactions.

She has extensive management experience in health and pharma industry which enables her to ensure the commercial success of the organization. Joanne possesses multidisciplinary knowledge and she is highly skilled in team management, setting external investment strategies and the identification and evaluation of targets.

Joanne has spent many years in business management which is reflecting on her strengths and weaknesses and she is trying to surround herself with people who complements her. She believes, “True leadership is about empowering those around you to be successful.” Joanne also believes that she has been very fortunate to have people around her who are excellent leaders and whom she could learn from. She has also witnessed behaviors that she did not want to emulate. Joanne has always tried to lead by example and listen twice as much as she speaks.

Genomics England has a very unique offering: the team at the company work very closely with the National Healthcare Service in order to provide clinical and genomic data for individuals with suspected rare diseases and cancer. This linked clinical and genomic data is crucial for advancing research and development, which in turn will positively impact healthcare. It is incredibly important for

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Genomics England

Dr. Joanne M. Hackett CCO

Genomics England 47

| October2019 |

research (be it academic or industrial) to be carried out on this data. As such, the team has designed a secure Research Environment that grants access to the qualified researchers. The hope is that the undiagnosed participants will one day get a proper diagnosis – which will be the result of the data being accessed. The linked clinical and genomic data is very useful for repurposing drugs, stratifying for clinical trials and for real world data and evidence to be generated.

I was once told that if my dreams did not scare me they were not big enough

It is necessary to know the audience, what the market has to offer and what changes are required to advance the industry. It is also incredibly useful to be aligned with major strategic initiatives. Don’t try to ‘own’ everything – it is much better to contribute to a larger ambition and move things forward faster.

For Joanne “leadership is about defining a goal and getting those around you to support and strive to achieve it.” The leaders who see themselves as a part of something greater are the ones who are more confident and can take others with them. Leaders need to listen, be objective, be fair and empower those around them. Leaders also need to be reflective and seek feedback. No one has all the answers, and there is never just one opinion.

It is very rare that leaders actually have the authority to make decisions in isolation. Consultation is the key. This goes back to knowing the audience – it is much better to have many leaders pushing forward the same agenda and influencing a wider network collaboratively.

Joanne has a genetic disease and she has always wanted to advance healthcare to enable others to have a better quality of life. She believes that good health is the best thing anyone could hope for and with her approaches; she wants to touch as many lives as possible.

Joanne spends a lot of time reading, attending conferences, events and showcases, and is implementing pilot projects to determine if it is feasible for full implementation. She also observes the way senior leaders conduct themselves and try to understand if any of the behaviours and strategies would be useful for her to adopt. she learns something new everyday.

Joanne has relentlessly pushed forward health partnerships between the A, B, C’s: Academia, Business and the Clinical community. She was instrumental in reconfiguring stroke services, merging three cardiovascular hospitals to their streamline services; implement a Genomic Medicine Service into the healthcare system. She was designing and implementing a Research Environment that houses clinical and genomic data. Joanne has also been instrumental in getting the Clinical Entrepreneurs Programme launched as well as the NHS Innovation Accelerator and the DigitalHealth and London Acelerator successfully running. Joanne spends most of her time mentoring, advising and investing in healthcare SMEs. She wants to continue to revolutionize healthcare. The deep personal satisfaction she receives from changing the way healthcare is delivered is enough to keep her committed and dedicated, regardless how frustrating it can be. For now, she will continue to change the world one genome at a time.

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Innovative

Companies

in the Space Industry

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hat do we call an area that is not limited to a single planet and has no physical boundaries?

We call it the era of the emerging space resource industry. As humans, we became a spacefaring species 60 years ago when Russia launched Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite. We are the only species to achieve this milestone in the 4.5 billion year history of the earth. Later, the space industry began to develop after World War II, as rockets and satellites later found civilian purpose.

original space race began from the ideas and skills of visionary theoretical engineers like Robert. H. Goddard, Wernher von Braun, and Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky, etc.

Today, space endeavors are propelled by a new generation of entrepreneurs including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Robert Branson. There are some more major players and innovative companies with the vision of space exploration and are as follows: SpaceX- SpaceX was founded in 2002 and has reached worldwide popularity with their historic milestones in space exploration. It is already the world’s most highprofile commercial spacecraft company. The aim of SpaceX is to revolutionize the space technology, with the goal of enabling people to live on other planets. Its success has been worth appreciating. Falcon 9 launch vehicle and Dragon Spacecraft are some of its milestones. Dragon Spacecraft has helped with regular resupply missions for NASA space stations.

Today, companies around the world are in transportation, energy sector, construction, hospitality, real estate, etc. and they are looking for their next growth opportunity.

Space is quickly becoming a place where the industries that power our global economy have started conducting business. Future developments in the space industries include space tourism, satellite manufacturing, and the launch industry. In recent years, however, private spaceflight is becoming reality in the space industry.

Blue Origin- It was founded in 2000 by Jeff Bezos, the technological retail entrepreneur and CEO of Amazon, aims to launch people in space. It is fully reusable, vertical takeoff vertical landing (VVTL) space vehicle. Though its goal is different from that of SpaceX, it targets the Space tourism industry. It is focusing on commercially available, suborbital human spaceflight and has developed a vertical launch vehicle (new shepherd) for it. New shepherd is

Of course, these private companies also compete against each other and it could be argued that a new space race has begun. But while with an element of competition, the success of the past decades shows that is possible to collaborate in space. For example, NASA a major government agency has relied on privately operated launch services like SpaxeX for its satellite launches. The

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Innovating Space

named after the Mercury astronaut Alan Shepherd, the first American Astronaut to go in Space. It is designed to take astronauts and research payloads past the Karman line, the internationally recognized boundary of space.

Observatory and it continues to produce data that enables astronomers to make extraordinary discoveries. Launched in 1999, Chandra has found evidence for a significant new class of supernova. It has also uncovered evidence of a powerful outburst from the giant black hole at the Milky Way’s center.

Boeing- Boeing is the world’s largest aerospace company and leading manufacturer in space and security systems.

Throughout the last 50 years, Boeing has been integral in every major endeavor to escape earth’s gravity. The satellite industry has made the headlines since the launch of its first Mercury capsule to the current ISS (International Space Station).

NASA has a long tradition of utilizing Northrop Grumman’s spacecraft, including the Spirit and Opportunity rovers that landed on Mars in 2004. The rovers will help guide the Mars as it investigates the viability of microbial life on the planet now or in the past.

NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) is the most powerful rocket ever built. Boeing is the prime contractor for the SLS design development, test, and production of the launch vehicle. SLS is the world’s only super heavy rocket capable of transporting astronauts to deep space. NASA is setting its eyes on the exploration of Mars with the help of Boeing technology. Boeing has successfully launched all of NASA’s Mars probes and rovers aboard Delta 11 launch vehicles. Recently Boeing engineer designed a spacesuit to protect astronauts from dust, radiation and other hazards when exploring the surface of moon and mars.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope will play an important role in studying planetary systems. NGC is the prime contractor for building the dreams of Webb technology. The telescope will be sensitive to infrared light which will enable it to understand an era of the universe just a few million years after the Big Bang.

Made in Space- MIS is the space-based manufacturing company, dedicated to making of reliable Additive manufacturing equipment and fiber optics (MIS Fiber) for Space. Additive manufacturing is also known as 3D Printing and is transforming the industry. It can manufacture larger and more complex objects faster, with finer precision and with multiple aerospace grade materials. MIS Fiber Optics, on the other hand, is produced without crystals that affect signal loss. Later, these crystals provide superior data transmission capabilities, high-speed internet as well as enhancing technologies in space.

Sierra Nevada Corporation- Selected by NASA, SNC’s Dream Chaser spacecraft is a multi-mission space utility vehicle. It used for transporting crew and cargo to LEO (Low Earth Orbit) destinations such as ISS (International Space Station). The system is designed to deliver up to 5,500 kg of pressurized and unpressurized cargo to the space station under the CRS (Commercial Resupply Service)-2 contract. It will carry supplies like food, water, & science experiments and returns to earth with a gentle runway landing. The spacecraft is selected by NASA to provide a minimum of 6 cargo missions to and from the space station by 2021. Sierra Nevada Corporation is making solid progress and likely to stay a key player in the private space company.

Virgin Galactic- Virgin Galactic is a spaceflight company founded in 2004 by British entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson. It is developing commercial space crafts and aims to provide suborbital spaceflights to space tourists. VG uses a larger, four-engine jet plane that carries passengers into space. It is similar in design to a private plane. These private space firms seem to have different interests in the space race, but actually, these companies share the same goals.

Northrop Grumman Corporation- NGC is a leader in science and exploration in space for more than 60 years.

Thiokol Chemical Company, now part of NGC developed the world’s first reusable space shuttle program in the late 1970s.

Looking at the future, there will be a need for laws, regulation, and controlling authority to govern space exploration. It will be necessary to have firm and wellunderstood protocols in the event space crashing, while there are serious issues around the safety of astronauts as well. At the moment, the UN’s Outer Space Affairs is responsible for promoting international cooperation in the peaceful uses of outer space. Perhaps, the entry of the private sector into space exploration will contribute to the growth of the economy as valuable targets for investment.

However, it will be interesting to see how healthy competition opens up in the development of the Space Era for Citizens.

Contribution to NASA: July 20, 1969, was a historic day when the world watched, astronaut Neil Armstrong took mankind’s first steps on the moon. The success of NASA’s Apollo 11 mission is still remembered and celebrated.

Several heritage companies of NGC are recognized for the vital role they played in the achievement of the Apollo 11 mission. NGC designed, assembled, integrated and tested the Lunar Module (LM) of the Apollo program.

NASA’s Northrop Grumman built Chandra X-ray

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| October2019 |