The Pistoia Alliance Pharma Innovation Council has been launched, bringing together 13 leaders from large global pharmaceutical companies.
The Council will explore common challenges at a grassroots level and seed ideas for new pre-competitive projects aligned with the Alliance’s strategic themes: Emerging Sciences and Technology, Improving the Efficiency and Effectiveness of R&D, and Empowering the Patient.
It is supported by the Alliance’s new Chief Portfolio Officer, Dr Hall Gregg, who brings 30 years’ experience as a technology leader in the life sciences industry. Dr Gregg has held senior positions at Merck, Amgen and Pfizer as well as American Red Cross and Quest Diagnostics; her expertise spans digital strategy, data analytics, cyber and data security, organisational transformation, and talent development.
“I joined the Pistoia Alliance because I see global collaboration as the key to unlocking the life science industry’s expertise,” commented Dr Gregg. “I am looking forward to working with colleagues and peers to advance the application of technology in life sciences and healthcare. The outputs from the Alliance’s portfolio of projects will accelerate research, improve responses to global health challenges, and most importantly, improve patients’ lives.”
The Pharma Innovation Council aims to produce one new project idea per theme and will bring together interested parties from member companies who could benefit from and want to invest in driving forward these new initiatives.
Common industry challenges that emerged at the first meeting of the Council include the automation of data analysis, enabling the Lab of the Future, and the development of industry standards to enable collaboration. New projects will sit alongside the Alliance’s current portfolio of projects, now overseen by Dr Hall, which includes the IDMP Ontology Project, DataFAIRy Bioassay Annotation Project and Diversity & Inclusion in STEM Leadership program.
A global initiative
The inaugural meeting of the Council took place in January 2023. The 13 members are:
- Alex Villalobos, Sr. Associate Director, Operations Excellence Digital Lead, at Boehringer Ingelheim, USA, Connecticut
- Andreas Steinbacher, Lead Discovery Informatics Data Management, at Roche, Germany
- Jim Rinker, Senior Consultant, Data Integration and Analytics, at Elsevier, based in the USA, Pennsylvania
- Linling Jiang, Head of Research Informatics China, at Novo Nordisk, based in China, Beijing
- Mark McCreary, Sr Director, Data Management and Curation, at Genentech Roche, based in the USA, California
- Chris Brabrandt, Head of Ideation & Scouting (Open Innovation) in the digital lab, at Boehringer Ingelheim, Germany
- Giuseppe Cognetti, Head, Future of Healthcare and Excellence, at Takeda, USA, Boston
- Thomas Ehmer, Innovation Incubator Lead, at Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany
- David Johnson, Operations Team Lead, Director, at Takeda, USA
- Jacque Lyons, Regulatory Creation Center Lead, at Pfizer, based in the USA, Pennsylvania
- Dorian Tisdale, Director, RIM Data Standards, Governance and Operations Johnson & Johnson, USA, Greater Philadelphia
- Melissa van Dyke, Senior Director and Head, Research Epidemiology, at GSK, based in the USA, Greater Philadelphia
- Andrew Buchanan, Principal Scientist at AstraZeneca, based in Cambridge, UK
