Elenee Argentinis
Vice President, Data Strategy and Partnerships, Life Sciences, Optum
Elenee Argentinis is the Vice President of Optum Data Strategy and Partnerships for the Life Sciences market. In her role, Elenee leads the strategy for the syndication and commercialization of Optum data assets that help life sciences organizations research and demonstrate the value of their therapeutics across their life cycle from R&D to clinical development through commercialization and post market safety surveillance.
Previously Elenee worked at IBM where she piloted artificial intelligence technologies in drug safety and drug discovery solutions with life sciences clients and through academic collaborations in neurology, cardiology and burn and wound care. Elenee spent a dozen years at Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals where she worked across commercial functions from brand marketing and strategic planning to managed markets and account management. Elenee is an attorney with a J.D. from Tulane Law School.
Viswa Balasubramanian
Vice President, Symphony Health
As a VP Advanced Analytics Architecture, Viswa Balasubramanian is responsible for architecting Symphony’s next generation analytics applications. In his role, Viswa develops new strategies & implements algorithms to mine our volumes of data.
Viswa has over 18 years of experience spanning analytics, machine learning, application development & software engineering. Prior to working with Symphony, he has worked with several organizations in the healthcare space including Focus Diagnostics & IMS Health. Viswa has designed & developed several complex systems including “The (microbiology) Surveillance Network”, Electronic Lab & Clinical Analytics Architecture framework. Viswa earned his degree in Electrical engineering but has made Healthcare and Life Sciences his professional career.
Sravan Kumar Bhamidipati
Director, Decision Sciences, Axtria
Sravan Bhamidipati is a Director in Decision Sciences at Axtria. Sravan has over 10 years of analytics and consulting experience in the pharma Industry. He has rich experience in conducting secondary data analytics, predictive modeling and applying Machine Learning techniques on patient data – including patient pharma / medical claims, electronic health records in a variety of therapeutic areas like oncology, cardiovascular diseases, etc. Sravan has expertise in using a wide mix of analytical tools for building Machine Learning solutions on Patient Claims/EHR data using Python, R and h20.ai.
James Bierman
Associate Principal, ZS Associates
James helps lead ZS’s Pipeline & Launch Strategy Practice Area. James has more than 10 years of experience in the healthcare industry, helping multiple organizations develop commercial strategies and improve commercial effectiveness through research and analytics. Most recently, James has been focused on advancing ZS’s capabilities in data science (artificial intelligence / machine learning) for Pipeline & Launch Strategy applications.
Prior to ZS, James managed hospitality transportation services for Starwood Hotels and Resorts, Inc. at the St. Regis Resort, Aspen, and built commercial analytics tools and approaches for Value Retail PLC, Europe’s leading real estate developer and manager of luxury retail experiences.
James holds an MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management, and an AB in Economics, with honors, from Harvard University.
Julia Brodsky, Ph.D.
Executive Director, Data Strategy & Services, Novartis US Oncology
Julia has over 20 years of experience across pharmaceutical, finance and telecommunication industries. She is an Executive Director, Data Strategy & Services at Novartis US Oncology, leading a team responsible for driving data innovations to accelerate digital transformation for the benefit of patients and customers.
In her previous roles at Novartis, Julia led teams responsible for Market Access Insights & Analytics, Patients Services & Digital Analytics. Prior to joining Novartis, Julia has served on several management teams, including Sanofi, Organon, and Symphony Health Solutions.
Julia’s areas of expertise include data management, managed markets analytics, market segmentation & targeting, longitudinal patient-level data analytics, sales & marketing effectiveness and sales operations. She holds a PhD & an MS in Statistics from NYU Stern School of Business, and a BA in Computer Science from NYU College of Arts & Sciences.
Sreya Chatterjee
Associate Principal, Analytical Wizards
Sreya is an Associate Principal with Analytical Wizards, a cutting edge data science & analytics start-up focused on Life Sciences & Healthcare. She has over 14 years of experience of working in analytics consulting across Healthcare, CPG, Retail and Finance verticals.
She specializes in Segmentation & Micro Targeting, Patient Journey Visualization & Analytics, Multi Channel Marketing & Loyalty Analytics and provides support to AW’s product initiatives and client engagements. She holds a Masters degree in Economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, India.
Mike Cloutier
Associate Director, Data Science, IQVIA
Mike Cloutier is a hands-on Data Science manager and client-facing ML/DL Solution Architect with a hacker mindset. His main asset is his breadth of experience: write, talk, code, influence, and… solve problems. He is a jack of all trades having first work in consulting and currently as an R&D lead of machine learning applications for life sciences.
Mike specializes in execution and management of ML/DL and advanced analytics projects with a broad range of expertise in pharma, marketing, commercial litigation and intellectual property. He has publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals and experience in writing manuscripts and presenting results to clients, and at seminars and academic conferences.
Mike was acknowledged for creating new and alternative ideas for complex design and business questions leading to conducting R&D on marketing & commercial analytics, on real-world insights, on patient preferences, and on various mandates for pharmaceuticals.
Kevin Coltin
Senior Consultant, Deloitte Consulting
Kevin works on applying advanced analytical methods to challenging problems in life sciences and healthcare, such as improving medication adherence, optimizing sales call planning and messaging, clinical trials, and safety reporting. He has experience building statistical models in R, Python, and SAS, and has worked with linear models, decision trees, cluster analysis, classification methods, data visualization, and other mathematical and statistical methods. Some of his recent work in commercial analytics includes measuring the effectiveness of sales calls using causal inference methodologies, and using clustering models to understand the market in advance of a product launch. In R&D and safety, he has worked on building natural language processing models for identifying adverse events, and using predictive models for risk-based clinical trial monitoring. Kevin has a master’s degree in mathematics and a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and economics.
Cristina DeFilippis
Senior Consultant, Deloitte Consulting
Cristina is a Data Scientist at Deloitte. Her work involves using analytics to drive insights and solve problems in life sciences, often working on problems that require innovative thinking and custom solutions. She has broad experience working with pharmaceutical companies, with prior engagements including analytical deep dives of product performance and sales, a multi-phase salesforce planning process for targeting prescribers, clinical trial quality assessment, and analysis of patient medication adherence. She has also done work related to the opioid epidemic in the U.S. – collecting, analyzing, and visualizing public data to better characterize the problem across states and counties. Cristina regularly employs predictive modeling, data mining, and data visualization techniques in her work, utilizing expertise in programs such as R and Python. Cristina has a Master’s degree in Applied Statistics and a Bachelor’s degree in Biostatistics and Business from Cornell University.
Brian Demitros
VP, Analytics, Merkle
Brian has 18 years of experience in marketing analytics, attribution modeling, data mining and software engineering. Brian is responsible for leading Merkle’s measurement and attribution practice, with a focus on people-based analysis to understand how a series of events influence customer behavior and inform contact strategy in owned, earned and paid channels. Prior to joining Merkle, Brian worked for IRI and Accenture developing and implementing large-scale analytics solutions. Brian holds a Masters degree in Applied Economics from Marquette University.
Aaron Foster
VP, Business Analytics and Insights, Pfizer
Business analytics is the science of driving better business decisions and having a competitive advantage to how you use statistics and data to make them. Aaron Foster is a Leader in Business Analytics & Insights at Pfizer, Inc., and his global organization supports four of Pfizer’s core innovative businesses: Vaccines, Oncology, Rare Disease and Emerging Markets.
Aaron’s focus is using real-world data, survey techniques and artificial intelligence to understand unmet medical need and help Pfizer develop medicines to address these needs. He also guides marketing and sales strategies for approved medicines to help patients, physicians and other stakeholders understand their role in treatment and prevention. In addition to working at Pfizer, Aaron is a lecturer in Applied Analytics at Columbia University’s School of Professional Studies.
Earlier in his career, Aaron was a statistician at KPMG LLP and a Biostatistician at Bristol-Myers Squibb. He holds a Doctor of Science in Biostatistics from Harvard University and a BS in Mathematics from Morehouse College.
Rushil Goyal
Associate, Axtria
Rushil Goyal has three years of experience in Advanced Analytics, having worked with Fortune 500 clients across pharma, banking, and retail. Rushil holds a Master’s in Data Science from Rutgers University and a Bachelor’s in Engineering. Rushil has contributed to various analytics solutions with cross-functional exposure to Customer Segmentation, Marketing Mix Modeling, Revenue Optimization, and Multichannel Planning. Rushil has also published four International Research Papers in Applied Data Mining. At Axtria as a Decision Science Associate, he has worked for multiple pharmaceutical clients on projects including Marketing Mix Modeling, structural equation and mixed effects modeling, Sample Optimization, ANCOVA Test Control, and Next Best Action models. Rushil also has prior experience extracting insights from unstructured data using ML techniques.
Sagar Gulati
Consultant, 159 Solutions
Sagar Gulati has over six years of business analytics and management consulting experience in the pharmaceutical and insurance industry. He has partnered with various sales and marketing pharmaceutical executives to help them on strategic business needs. He holds a bachelor’s in Computer Science and Engineering from National Institute of Technology, Jamshedpur, India.
Abhinav Gupta
Senior Manager, Digital Analytics & Personalization, United Health Group
Abhinav Gupta is a seasoned professional, having strong expertise in the areas of Digital & Marketing Analytics, Business Consulting, Consumer Strategy and Stakeholder Management. Currently he has been associated as a Senior Manager for Digital Analytics & Optimization to engage and drive Customer Experience in the areas of Digital health pivoted around Behavioral, Mental health and Insurance domain. Throughout his vast experience of 11 years, he has been the front runner in driving digital transformation projects across various genres of industries ranging from Retail, Finance, Media, Travel and B2B Verticals. He has always been focused & imparted value towards key initiatives pivoted around Customer Engagement, Digital Adoption, Channel Attribution, Onsite Personalization, ROI Analysis & Correlation analysis.
Gupta is interested in an accelerated approach in utilizing Analytics as a key driver in contributing towards a better modern healthcare, using a plethora of consumer data by filling in gaps and providing sustainable personalized solutions for better customer engagement.
Pankaj Gupta
Senior Principal, Commercial Services, IQVIA
Pankaj Gupta is a Senior Principal at IQVIA and leads the development of integrated and innovated solutions within commercial services group. In his current role, Pankaj utilizes the IQVIA data assets, machine learning solutions and functional expertise to design and develop new solutions that help clients optimize the brand performance. In addition, Pankaj has extensive experience delivering advanced analytics solutions to drive sales and marketing strategy for clients.
Pankaj has led several engagements to help clients optimize customer experience and business impact from all of their online and offline sales and marketing programs. Prior to joining IQVIA, Pankaj worked with Pursuit Solutions where he established analytics practice for the organization from ground up and at marketRx where he led multiple enterprise analytics engagements for sales force optimization and promotion evaluation. Pankaj graduated from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, India with BS and MS in Mechanical Engineering.
Karin Hayes
Principal, Symphony Health
Karin Hayes leads the design and execution of innovative analytics and advanced statistical modeling solutions to enhance marketing and sales effectiveness utilizing healthcare encounter insights. Previously, Karin has been in product development, product management and marketing roles for 14 years with Symphony Health and prior acquired companies.
Previously Karin worked for Oncology Therapeutics Network (OTN), an oncology specialty pharmacy distributor, where she was Director of Information Services and E-Commerce. She was instrumental in developing and marketing oncology treatment applicatgions, tools and services to the pharmaceutical industry. She also developed customer facing web services for OTN’s award winning website, Lynx2OTN. Karin also has over 15 years of pharmaceutical industry experience. She progressed through sales and sales management positions before taking responsibility for key integrated health care customers in California. In this role, Karin assisted customers in developing and implementing quality improvement assessments and programs, pharmacy management analysis tools and disease management technology. Her last role at Bristol Myers was leading a multi-departmental team to develop models and processes to enhance customer segmentation, sales forecasting and the measurement of marketing effectiveness.
Vikas Hegde
Data Science Manager, ZS Associates
Vikas currently leads ZS’ US Data Science hub on the West coast. He spends most of his time on AI/ML/Data Science engagements with pharma and biotech clients on the West coast. He leads teams of data scientists, data engineers, and business technology professionals, on innovative advanced applications of AI/ML - Examples include building ML products for dynamic targeting, automated classification of non-conformances in manufacturing, recommending and executing the next best marketing action for brands, using anonymized patient level data for marketing insights, etc.
Vikas has worked with ZS for around 11 years and during this time worked with multiple pharma companies across North America.
Vikas holds an MBA from the Indian School of Business, and a B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Karnataka, India.
Srihari Jaganathan
Associate Director, Advanced Analytics, UCB
Srihari Jaganathan is currently an Associate Director, Advanced Analytics at UCB Inc. He has over 12 years of experience in pharmaceutical analytics. His primary interests are in applying simple analytical models to make better decisions in the commercial organizations. He has also widely published in various medical and analytics conferences and journals. He has competed in Kaggle Walmart Recruiting - Store Sales Forecasting and was placed 2nd out of 691 competitors from across the world. He recently competed in M4 time series forecasting competition and was placed 4th out of several competitors in the world. Srihari was awarded the Best Podium Presentation award at the PMSA 2017 Annual Conference. Srihari was also awarded a Gold Medal by the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy (AMCP) at their 2017 conference.
Anvita Karara
Associate Director, Digital and Customer Experience, Boehringer Ingelheim
Anvita Karara leads the Digital Analytics at Boehringer Ingelheim (BI) focused on digital channel insights and optimization, personalizing customer experiences and establishing global best practices. Anvita is accountable for developing world class digital analytics capability at BI . She has expertise with marketing data analytics-establishing business KPI’s, channel optimization and business innovation models. Prior to this she has worked with leading bio-pharmaceuticals such as Amgen and Genentech supporting clinical and commercial analytics. Anvita Karara has completed her Executive MBA from Columbia Business School, with Dean’s list honors and received her Master’s in Science-Biotechnology from Carnegie Mellon University.
Daniel Kinney
Sr. Director, Data and Analytics Platforms, Janssen Pharmaceuticals
Daniel Kinney is the Sr. Director, Data and Analytics Platforms at Janssen Pharmaceuticals, the pharmaceutical division of Johnson & Johnson. In this role, Danny leads Janssen data strategy, management, and analytics enablement across the Janssen North America commercial organization. He is the lead for Janssen strategy and relationships with commercial data suppliers, and operations and analytics partners, and helps identify and leverage new sources of data to deliver insights and drive analytics. Danny leads Janssen’s cloud-based data infrastructure and analytics ecosystem, including current focus on the industrialization of AI/ML applications.
Danny has been leading data and analytics teams in pharma for 18 years, in a career that spans Bristol-Myers Squibb, IntegriChain, Sanofi, and Janssen, and worked for the Federal Reserve before coming to pharma. Danny holds an MBA in Finance and International Business from Columbia Business School, and an AB in Economics from Princeton University.
Danny and his wife, Noël, live in Cranbury, NJ, with their 6 children.
Ka Lok Lee
Senior Associate Director, IQVIA
Ka Lok Lee is currently a Senior Associate Director, Advanced Analytics and Consulting Services at IQVIA. Ka has over 12 years of experience in applying marketing science techniques to the pharmaceutical industry and has been with IQVIA since 2010. He has published numerous research papers in top-tier academic journals and his works have won several best-paper awards. Ka received his M.S. in Marketing from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He also received a B.S. in Economics from the Wharton School and a B.A. in Mathematics from the School of Arts and Sciences, both at the University of Pennsylvania.
James Lin
Advisor, Analytical Wizards
James has over 18 years of advanced analytics, commercial operations, sales & marketing analytics experience in the pharmaceutical/Biotech industry. James has extensive experience in developing commercial strategies and improves commercial effectiveness through forecasting, data analytics, incentive compensation design and effective targeting through predictive analytics/modeling. James has supported successful oncology launches as well as integrating new products through acquisitions, including territory alignment, territory sizing, sales force deployment, field reporting and overall sales operations support.
Becky Malia
Sr. Director, Medical Advanced Analytics, GSK
Becky is currently the Head of Medical Analytics for GSK’s US Medical Affairs business. In this role, she is focused on applying analytics approaches to fuel innovative and effective data driven decision making for Medical Affairs and embed a data and analytics driven culture. Becky has focused her career on driving business decisions through the use of data and analytics. She has over 20 years of experience in analytics leadership roles across Pharmaceuticals (varying roles within Commercial and Medical) but also across other sectors such as Financial Services, Insurance, and the US Government. Becky has breadth of experience not only within the US but at a global level in delivering analytic insights that drove different decision making in the UK, Australia, Japan, and Finland. She has her undergraduate degree in Mathematics with a dual emphasis in Statistics and Information Systems and her M.S. in Statistics.
In Becky’s tenure at GSK, she has led analytic teams focused on optimizing investment and resource allocation to maximize business impact; understanding the effectiveness of consumer and HCP promotion as well as direct to patient programs across engagement channels; developing a deeper understanding of patient adherence, compliance and persistency; predicting HCP behavior and uncovering the drivers of that behavior through synthesizing multiples sources of data; uncovering HCP and patient insights from unstructured voice of customer text in combination with other sources such as RWE using machine learning approaches; measuring and understanding customer experience and the value delivered; and developing visualizations for easier consumption of information and to inspire decision making. Becky is passionate about highlighting opportunities to apply analytics across various areas of the business and how analytics capabilities in all aspects of the business can drive smarter decision making.
Bernie Manente
Associate Partner, Foster Rosenblatt
Bernie’s career has been dedicated to successfully commercializing oncology products. His work focuses on understanding the marketplace, developing meaningful insights and setting the stage for effective brand planning. He has deep expertise is in quantitative modeling of markets and brand performance with particular capability in multivariate scenario gaming.
Additionally, Bernie manages the Foster|Rosenblatt OncoEdge® epidemiological database that quantifies patient incidence & prevalence and identifies treatable patient populations as well as palliated patients.
Mukesh Masand
Principal, 159 Solutions
Mukesh Masand is a Principal with 159 Solutions. He has over a decade of data analytics experience in the pharmaceutical, biotech, and financial services industry. He has advised sales and marketing executives at mid-to-large sized pharmaceutical companies to launch and manage products in retail and non-retail settings. He holds a Master of Science in Finance from Texas A&M University – Mays Business School.
John McIntosh
Associate Director, Actelion (Johnson and Johnson)
John McIntosh is Associate Director Marketing Analytics at Actelion, a Janssen Pharmaceutical company of Johnson and Johnson. Over the last 13 years, he has focused almost exclusively on pharmaceutical Business Analytics supporting commercial operations. Prior to Actelion, John held positions at Depomed and Roxro Pharma. John received a B.S. from University of Oregon in Decision Science and Economics.
Tarun Minocha
Director, Digital Analytics & Enablement, United Health Group
Tarun Minocha is a Director at UHG steering Digital engagement & Analytics practice for Optum Global solutions (subsidiary of UHG). He has 14+ years of experience cutting across the length and breadth of Digital engagement, technology & analytics working across domains & industries.
He has spent last 10 years working with organizations to chalk their digital transformation journeys to create and sustain value for stakeholders & shareholders. Tarun expertise lies in enhancing marketing ROI for organizations leveraging analytics. Tarun is passionate about how organizations can leverage ML & AI on healthcare data to help people live better lives.
He is an expert in digital marketing measurement, multichannel attribution, micro-segmentation & personalization, customer journey mapping (including patient pathways), Omni channel campaign performance and strategic insight mining from social media.
He is also an avid blogger and well known speaker at various digital & marketing conferences .
Abhishek Panditrao
Associate Principal, ZS Associates
Abhishek Panditrao is an Associate Principal with ZS Associates in the San Francisco, CA office. Abhishek has 10+ years of experience in pharmaceutical sales and marketing analytics, with objectives ranging across field resource allocation and planning, defining customer strategies through insights, identifying business / customer opportunities and enabling field execution. Abhishek works closely with ZS’s expertise group on US Health Ecosystems with a focus on bringing novel sub-national trend analytics to enable effective execution in local geographies. He holds a BS in Production Engineering from College of Engineering Pune and a MS in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University.
Ashish Patel
Sales Founder, CareSet Systems
With a head for sales optimization, Ashish is the heart of CareSet. As a founder, he is incredibly passionate about the mission: leveraging CMS data to improve patient lives. Ashish came to CareSet with a process engineering background as well as extensive cybersecurity and entrepreneurial experience. Daily, he combines these perspectives with his client's capabilities and missions. Whether in front of a computer or a crowd, Ashish teaches his audience that boring data can deliver not-boring improvements to the healthcare system.
Himanshu Patni
Manager, ZS Associates
Himanshu Patni is a Manager with ZS Associates in the San Francisco, CA office. He has worked as a strategy and analytics consultant in the healthcare industry for 7+ years. Himanshu has significant expertise in helping clients in the healthcare industry synthesize meaningful insights from multiple inter-related data sources to address a variety of issues including market and opportunity assessment, customer segmentation, customer value proposition design, commercial organization design and sales force effectiveness. Himanshu holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur.
Jane Portman
VP, Health Analytics, Merkle
Jane Portman is an established analytics professional with15 years of experience in healthcare analytics. At Merkle, Jane leads the Health Analytics practice, bringing together innovative analytic analyses and customer insights to support people-based marketing solutions for her clients. Jane is a subject matter expert in digital analytics, with extensive experience in digital and media optimization and measurement from previous agency engagements.
Prior to joining Merkle, Jane worked at Publicis Healthcare Communications Group, where she created and implemented the analytics framework for multiple pharmaceutical consumer and physician marketing programs. Jane also consulted for DraftFCB, handling a variety of digital healthcare strategy client engagements. Jane also has extensive client-side out-of-industry experience, having led the audience development efforts at Newsweek.com and media measurement and optimization efforts at E*TRADE Financial.
PKS Prakash
Data Science Manager, ZS Associates
Prakash (PKS Prakash) is the lead data scientist in ZS' Bangalore office. He has over 13 years of data science experience with a focus on healthcare, manufacturing, pharmaceutical and the e-commerce domain. PKS Prakash currently leads the advanced data science practice in patient analytics and customer centric marketing at ZS.
He has a doctorate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, U.S. and also pursued his second doctorate in engineering from the University of Warwick, U.K. He holds a master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, U.S., and a bachelor’s degree from the National Institute of Foundry and Forge Technology (NIFFT), India.
He has published widely in research areas of operational research & management, soft computing tools and advanced algorithms in leading journals such as
IEEE-Trans,
EJOR and
IJPR among others. He co-authored “Algorithms and Data Structures using R” and “R Deep Learning Cookbook”, published by PACKT.
Rajkumar Rajabathar
Engagement Manager, Symphony Health
Rajkumar Rajabathar (RB) uses his 8 years of experience in providing high impact consulting services for pharmaceutical companies. He is passionate about using his knowledge of business, math, data & technology to solve complex business problems through a consultative approach. Expertise includes leading innovative analytics projects in the areas of - closed loop marketing strategy; improving R&D productivity through disparate patient data like claims, EMR, prospective & retrospective clinical trials data; interactive analytics capability for commercial assessments; sales, marketing effectiveness & assessment of incentive compensation plans, RB is well positioned to create impact across cross-functional teams. With his experience, he guides his teams through strategy & analytics projects executed within the commercial effectiveness team. RB holds a bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.
Jerry Rosenblatt
Managing Partner, Foster Rosenblatt
Jerry has been a Marketing Scientist for his entire academic and professional career. His Doctoral Dissertation was honored with the First Prize Award at the 1986 Academy of Marketing Science in Anaheim, CA. He has published over 100 conference and journal articles. In 2002 his consulting firm was acquired by IMS Health - as part of the acquisition, Jerry became the Head of the IMS Global Forecasting & Opportunity Assessment Consulting Practice. In 2008 Jerry partnered with Thomas Foster to form what is now Foster Rosenblatt. At the Annual meeting In 2018, Jerry was honored with the PMSA Lifetime Achievement Award.
Igor Rudychev
Sr. Director Insights & Analytics, AstraZeneca
Igor Rudychev is Sr. Director of Insights & Analytics with AstraZeneca. Igor has over 25 years of analytics experience and for the last 18 years he has been specializing in Pharmaceutical & Healthcare Insights & Analytics.
Currently, Igor is responsible for Business Insights, Market Research, Analytics, and Forecasting at AstraZeneca. Prior to joining AstraZeneca Igor was leading Samples Operations, Resource Allocation, Advanced Analytics, and Commercial Assessment & Forecasting at Pfizer. Before Pfizer, Igor was Vice President of Operations with Bayser, a Management Consulting firm in Chicago, where he provided strategic and analytical insights to the top 20 global pharmaceutical companies.
Igor has been published extensively in trade & peer review journals (including ASCO, WCLC, Journal of Clinical Oncology, Journal of Thoracic Oncology, AMCP, MMM, PDT, Phys. Lett., Class. & Quant. Grav., and Nuclear Physics B).
Igor has an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business in Analytical Marketing & Finance and Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics (Superstring Theory & Black Holes) from Texas A&M University.
Mert Sahin, PhD
Chief Marketing Officer, US/CAN Imaging, GE Healthcare
Mert Sahin is a marketing and commercial executive with 13+ years' experience in leading growth, innovation & transformation drawn from extensive international experience in Life Sciences, Medical Devices and Pharmaceutical industries. He has leadership experience on regional & global teams in matrix organizations with focus on new product launches, branding and positioning, marketing to various customer types (payer, HCP, consumer), KOL management, market research, commercial development, sales force sizing, training, strategic planning and implementation.
Ashish Sharma
Principal, Axtria
Ashish Sharma leads the Innovation Lab & Cloud Information Management practice at Axtria. Prior to Axtria, he spent 17 years in Silicon Valley, building platform based companies with large-scale, real-world data, with the goal of building intelligent systems that have real-world impact. Since 2007 he worked on applications of machine learning, NLP, and AI-Powered Consumer insights that supported many projects in the field of Anti-Terrorism, Life Sciences, Biometric and Sensor data.
His work on industrializing use of EMR/EHR data for finding new patient populations using AI/ML was featured at PMSA 2018. He also worked on using Brand Social equity scores for improving the accuracy of sales forecast in Oncology brands, which involved Industrial implantation of NLP and Machine learning.[PMSA 2016, 2017] Some of Ashish’s work led to accurately predicting Oscars in 2011, 2012, and 2013, and the outcome of UK elections in 2010, using AI-Powered Consumer Insights.
His passion for testing various hypothesis around AI-Powered Consumer insights led to crowd sourcing and crowd funding a feature film that is now featured on Netflix. Ashish Holds an MS in Computer Science and studied Entrepreneurial Leadership at Said Business School, University of Oxford.
Tanmay Sharma
Sr. Manager, Gilead Sciences
Tanmay Sharma has helped with the commercial launch and on-going support for the HIV prevention sales and marketing efforts at Gilead Sciences from an analytics standpoint (SF Sizing, Targeting, Call Planning, Marketing Mix analyses). He has worked across multiple therapeutic areas and has key interest in life sciences. Tanmay was a Consultant with ZS Associates prior to joining Gilead and has 5+ years of experience working on various Sales and Marketing business problems. He holds a bachelor’s in Chemical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, (BHU) Varanasi, India.
Tatiana Sorokina
Solutions Director, Data Science & Artificial Intelligence, Novartis
Tatiana Sorokina is the Solutions Director of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, an innovation team formed under Novartis Digital Office. In her role, Tatiana collaborates closely with internal customers across the entire product lifecycle to identify business problems that can benefit from innovative solutions using machine learning and artificial intelligence. Prior to her new role, Tatiana was in US Oncology Business Unit at Novartis building digital marketing solutions powered by AI.
Previously, Tatiana was the head of Data Science at Prognos, a healthcare AI company focused on predicting disease to drive decisions earlier in healthcare. She has also founded Parceed, the first artificial intelligence based platform built to guide medical students through the complicated medical education process. Apart from her full-time job, Tatiana is an Adjunct Professor at Rutgers Business School teaching Applied Artificial Intelligence course. Tatiana holds M.Sc. in Marketing Analytics from Columbia Business School and B.Sc. in Economics from Moscow State University.
Fred Trotter
CTO, CareSet
Fred Trotter is a healthcare data journalist and author. He is a founder of CareSet Systems and The DocGraph Journal, and co-author of the first Health IT O’Reilly book
Hacking Healthcare. Fred Trotter won the 2016 healthcare data liberator award for his work opening significant healthcare data sets.
Fred’s technical commentary and data journalism work have been featured in several online and print journals including Wired, Forbes, U.S. News, NPR, Government Health IT, and Modern Healthcare. As a technology entrepreneur, he is an alumnus of multiple successful technical startups including Rackspace, Exault (purchased by Verisign), and ClearHealth (the top Open Source EHR company).
Nilay Shastri
Senior Field Operations Manager , Genentech
Nilay Shastri is a Senior Field Operations Manager at Genentech. He has 10+ years of experience in analytics across several different therapeutic areas. In his current role, he focuses on providing advanced analytics-based insights at a regional level in the evolving healthcare landscape. He holds an MBA from Baylor University and a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Sardar Patel University.
Harpreet Singh
IBD Data Science Manager, Takeda Pharmaceuticals
Harpreet Singh is an enthusiastic and detail-oriented Data Science Manager at Takeda Pharmaceuticals. He has extensive experience with patient journey/flow, Targeting, Segmentation, Brand Strategy, and ROI analysis. He is part of the Specialty Analytics group. Earlier in his career, he worked in sales analytics with Hospira, a Pfizer company. He has strong statistical and analytics skills involving SAS over 7 years. He has a special interest in real-world data, predictive modeling, advanced visualization & storytelling.
Harpreet holds an MS in Management Information Systems from the Oklahoma State University and is pursuing an MBA from the University of Illinois.
Sumanth Srinivas
Director, Data Strategy and Innovation, Boehringer Ingelheim
Sumanth Srinivas is Director, Data Strategy and Innovation (Analytics and Insights) in Boehringer Ingelheim. In this role, he is responsible for leading innovation in digital and payor analytics. Currently, his team is exploring the capabilities of data science, machine learning and AI in commercial analytics. Sumanth has lead various projects related to IDN analytics and sales force effectiveness models and has been a subject matter expert in Managed markets. He is also instrumental in defining and successfully implementing the Go-To-Market model.
Prior to joining Boehringer Ingelheim, Sumanth has a wealth of experience as management consultant in various pharmaceuticals such as Wyeth and Pfizer. His pharmaceutical experience began in clinical trial management systems and is at present excelling in commercial analytics. He has experience in data architecture and has implemented data warehousing solutions in multiple industry verticals. Sumanth holds Masters degree from University of Texas, Arlington and Bachelors from Bangalore University.
Patrick Thompson
Director – PECG, Bristol-Myers Squibb
Patrick is currently Director of U.S. Pricing and Economics at Bristol-Myers Squibb Inc. supporting Innovative Medicines. His team is responsible for developing robust analyses and forecasts to enhance the organization’s understanding of market access risks and opportunities including the potential impact from evolving market dynamics and government regulations. In addition, his team helps brands design and execute access strategies, which seek to optimize brand value and mitigate risks.
With over 20 years of Industry experience, Patrick possesses uniquely broad, 360-degree industry insight combining prior success in pharmaceutical manufacturing, engineering, business analytics, forecasting and managed care.
Patrick has his MBA from Penn State University in addition to Bachelor degrees in Electrical Engineering and Applied Physics and currently resides in Bucks County Pennsylvania with his wife and three children.
Jean Patrick Tsang
President, Bayser
Jean-Patrick Tsang is the Founder and President of Bayser, a Chicago-based consulting firm dedicated to sales and marketing for pharmaceutical companies. JP is an expert in data strategy and advanced analytics. JP has published 25+ pieces, given 75+ talks at conferences, and completed 250+ projects. In a previous life, JP deployed Artificial Intelligence to automate the design of payloads for satellites. JP earned a Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence from Grenoble University, advised 2 PhD students, and earned an MBA from INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France. He was the recipient of the 2015 PMSA Lifetime Achievement Award.
Devesh Verma, Principal, Axtria Inc.
Devesh Verma is a principal at Axtria, Inc. He has over 18 years of diverse experience with brand marketing, technology, campaign enablement, data-driven decisions, data security and platforms built for reaching customers to deliver on customer engagement, business insights, advanced analytics and infrastructure capacity management across multiple domains. He leads Axtria's Marketing Solutions practice.
Ketan Walia
Senior Associate, Axtria
Ketan has five years of experience in machine learning and data science. Ketan worked extensively on providing analytical solutions facilitating strategic decision making to companies in pharma, IT, and the automobile domain. Ketan has significant research experience in developing deep learning and natural language processing models for deciphering patterns in unstructured data. Ketan graduated with a Master’s in Data Science from Rutgers University and holds a Master’s in Business Administration from Christ University, India and a Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering.
Jiaran Wang
Takeda Pharmaceuticals
One of Jiaran's recurring daydreams is the existence of a pristine pond filled with crystal clear, comprehensive, and clean data. Nearby, herds of analytics unicorns can drink at will, and the abundant foliage is actually the business outcome of their light work - better patient outcomes and exponential ROI!
In reality, Jiaran works everyday with the inherent challenges of healthcare data, having spent time across R&D (at a CRO and Novartis), Clinical Trial Operations (at Eli Lilly), and most recently, Commercial Analytics (at Takeda). Having diverse experiences has been a significant advantage in problem solving and innovation, and that’s why Jiaran believes in sharing knowledge. Please don't hesitate to go chat with her, as she sincerely believes she could learn from you. Some topics of interest: A/B testing, regression vs ML, next best action, MMx, and building a python bot to autobook themeland quick-passes. Jiaran also has practical experience creating automation workflows, BI dashboards, leading strategic change management, and arguing (and winning) marketing case studies at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management.
Chad Waraksa
Associate Director- VAP Analytics, Bristol-Myers Squibb
Chad is Associate Director of Value, Access and Payment Analytics for the Innovative Medicines portfolio at BMS. His responsibilities include payer-related analyses leveraging formulary, subnational and anonymous patient-level data. Collaborative projects have led to actionable insights into payer rejections, refinement of patient affordability programs, and the impact of government policy changes on Medicare phases – the latter leading to improved financial estimates of quarterly Coverage Gap rebate obligations.
Before his VA&P Analytics role, Chad joined BMS’s Incentive Compensation team in 2010, where he invented, modeled, and deployed a new type of bonus plan, still successfully used today.
Prior to joining BMS, Chad served eight years as a pharmaceutical consultant and manager at ZS Associates, including a one year rotation in Pune, India. Chad earned dual Bachelors of Science degrees in Chemical Engineering and Chemistry from the University of Delaware, and a PhD in Chemistry from Pennsylvania State University.
David Wood
Principal, Axtria
David Wood brings more than 35 years of experience in mathematical modeling of business problems, with over 20 years in sales and marketing analysis for Life Sciences companies. At Axtria, David serves as a Senior Principal, with emphasis on projects in mathematical modeling of sales operations and multi-channel promotion analysis. In addition, David has done substantial work in the development of Yield Management for the commercial airline industry (at Sabre Decision Technologies), and has worked in finance, energy and natural resource economics issues.
David holds a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, in Operations Research.
Emily Zhao, PhD, MSE
Vice President, Advanced Analytics, Global Statistical Services and Advanced Analytics, IQVIA
Emily Zhao has extensive experience in data analytics leveraging statistical models, artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML). Drawing on her deep knowledge and expertise in healthcare data analytics and its business applications, she leads a team of statistical modelers, data scientists and consultants to construct healthcare commercial effectiveness and real world insights solutions to drive brand strategy and optimize outcome. She provides leadership in both strategic directions and technical innovations.
Prior to joining IQVIA in 2011, Dr. Zhao was a marketing analytics director at Farmers Insurance. There she led predictive analytics for customer acquisition and retention, and pioneered media purchase models to optimize media buys for TV and digital channels. Previously, she had served as data analytics director at UnitedHealth Group, and had worked in advanced analytics functions for marketing and sales at Schering-Plough (now Merck). Earlier in her career, she had been a computational biology and bioinformatics consultant for GSK, mining R&D high-throughput data from pre-clinical and clinical settings to understand drug treatment effects. Her rich and diverse set of experience and expertise have brought deep appreciation of the analytics methodology and technology advancements across industries, and afforded her wholistic understanding of the opportunities and challenges in the healthcare industry.
Dr. Zhao holds a PhD in Immunology from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and an MS in Engineering in Computer and Information Science from the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering. She also holds a postgraduate Marketing Certificate from the Wharton School. She has multiple pending patents in AI/ML and frequently speaks at industry conferences.
Kaiwen Zhong
Project Lead, Axtria
Kaiwen is an innovator, focusing on leveraging big data and machine learning to deliver efficiency and insights in pharma. She is a Project Lead at Axtria’s Innovation Lab and Big Data team. Prior to Axtria, Kaiwen worked in pharma, finance, and growing startups. She graduated from Cornell University with a Master’s degree focusing on machine learning. Throughout her time at Axtria, Kaiwen has been developing and productizing capabilities for clients in marketing, healthcare, pharma commercial operations, medical affairs, data, and analytics, through AI, natural language processing, and advanced analytics.
