(upbeat music)
-: Welcome everyone.
We're so glad you can join us today.
We have an outstanding CEO discussion planned,
and we're honored and excited to have Giovanni Caforio,
CEO of Bristol Myers Squibb,
and Kevin Sayer, CEO of Dexcom, as our panelists.
During today's session,
Giovanni and Kevin will share their perspectives
on the 2022 health care industry outlook.
It promises to be an engaging and insightful session.
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-: I think it has changed
the way we think about drug development,
because when you think about developing a vaccine
in one year, of course, the pandemic created an incredible sense of urgency
and the teams that worked did a fantastic job,
but it's impossible for me to then go back and say,
"Let's go back to taking ten years
to develop the next cancer medicines."
-: With respect to the providers,
during the COVID times in particular,
we have been able to introduce an element of telemedicine
with our data in the Cloud and our connected devices
to whereby diabetes treatment,
for patients on Dexcom system became very natural,
in a telemedicine environment.
-: We have an imperative to do things differently,
and I think there is a real opportunity.
We've learned how technology accelerates
the development of medicines by making clinical trials
easier to monitor by eliminating some of the maybe visits,
or tests that we were doing that weren't necessary.
We've exchanged data with regulators on a continuous basis.
In many cases, we've seen institutions and governments
being willing to work with us,
in very, very different ways and exchange perspectives live.
-: In the FDA with Dexcom, in particular, over time
it's been a very good relationship,
and it's based on a very simple concept here,
we talk to them and had a partnership before we start,
"This is what we're going to do, how we're going to do it."
And when we do what we say we're going to do,
things go very well.
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-: You know, we have over 85 important partnerships
with biotech companies, with academia,
where we are advancing programs together.
And it's really the core, as I said,
of the innovation strategy of BMS.
I think from my perspective,
it requires us to be really open
of people that may be thinking about science
differently than you.
It requires building a very high degree of the trust,
a level of transparency with your partner.
And what makes it easy in our case
is that we have a common goal,
you know, we know we have a patient
that is waiting for a very different treatment option
for a very serious disease.
And that brings different teams together
in a very, very unique way.
What we hear from the companies we work with,
is the desire to be doing work together,
and advance a common mission,
because obviously there is a lot of passion
for what's been invented
in a startup, in a small biotech company.
And we don't take the approach of being the large pharma
that comes to the table,
you know, we take the approach
of being a true committed partner
that will work with transparency and build trust over time.
(upbeat music)
-: Health equity has always obviously been a huge issue,
but I think Covid really did shine a light
on disparities in care.
So let me ask, you Kevin first, and then Giovanni,
you know, in the diabetes field,
disparities in care, I think play a massive role.
How does Dexcom think about it?
What is your approach to addressing it?
And what advice do you have for others?
-: We actually did some research and some surveys on this,
and we found there's great disparities in CGM usage,
even when reimbursement is the same,
there's disparities in usage of our devices,
yet everybody, like in the medicare population,
everybody's eligible, everybody's covered.
-: We saw that at the beginning of the pandemic,
we became really concerned
that patients would lose access to important therapies.
You know, we were right at the beginning of the pandemic.
We made a decision, for example,
for any patient that lost their health care insurance,
because they lost their job due to the pandemic.
We made all BMS medicines available for free
to patients in the United States.
-: Well, when we run studies,
we run studies across the board,
age, education, gender, ethnicity, everything,
we try to include every single group
when we're developing evidence to support the product.
-: I think the one area that we've decided
to really take leadership position in,
is the area of the diversity in clinical trials,
because ultimately I think it's really important
to build trust in every community
for what a new medicine,
or a new therapeutic approach can do.
And so we're investing significantly to make sure
that we have a diversity of geographic location,
clinical trial investigators, and of course,
patients in clinical trials.
-: The last piece I'll tell you
is just driving access in those communities.
The last piece of the world to reimburse for our system
has been the Medicaid plans,
and we've gone from zero Medicaid plans four years ago,
to 45 of the 50 states now cover us.
(upbeat music)
-: We are increasingly focused
on the role we can play as a large company.
And it's for a number of reasons.
First of all, you know, we are a health care company.
So ultimately I think the health populations,
the health of our customers is important,
and is impacted by the choices we make on the environment.
Second is because that's what our workforce
is asking us to do.
-: It's become an integrated element in product design,
in our migration from G6 to G7,
we're significantly decreasing the footprint of our device.
There's much less plastic,
there's much less size,
there's much less to throw away.
You know, when you start down this path,
it's kind of the last thing on your mind,
because what you really need to do,
is just get the thing to work, you know?
And get the technology out there,
and get it developed up, and you wake up and say,
"OK, how do we change our footprint going forward?
How do we use less plastic?
How do we recycle more?"
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-: I think it's the number one, you know, priority.
And it has changed so much over the last two years.
You know, attrition rates have gone up,
expectations have changed significantly in the workforce.
I think for us, it really starts
with highlighting the mission of the company,
and being a patient-centric organization
that really focuses on doing what's best for patients.
That resonates with many scientists,
and resonates with our workforce.
-: Mission-driven recruitment has really been a theme for us,
as we hire talent,
and they hear from people who use our product.
It's very easy to get people to come that way,
but we're in a different age now,
we're not competing with just other
health care mission-driven companies.
We're now competing with the tech giants
for software programmers,
and for electrical engineers,
and things of that nature.
We've got to grow and develop people,
and create development programs
that we haven't done in the past.
And so we're working very hard on infrastructure
to make people successful.
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You know, we were the first company
to share data with others,
to enable people to see how somebody's doing.
So we try and give our users the data
where they can use it to best be successful,
and it's complicated,
but it really makes coming to work every day
extremely rewarding.
But our approach is going to be open architecture.
If a user wants their data displayed in a different way
than we display it, let's figure out a way to get there.
And there we're providing numerous options for that.
We integrate with insulin pumps
for automated insulin delivery.
We integrate with insulin pens with Bluetooth signals,
integrate with all sorts of different entities
to get the data where it needs to be.
-: During the pandemic at BMS,
we have launched six new medicines.
And in many cases, these are very different ways
of treating serious diseases
versus what physicians and patients were used to.
We've made a number of investments
to have digital platforms to interact with customers.
And I think we've demonstrated
that it is possible to develop a very effective
relationship, digitally, with health care providers,
with prescribers,
and help them understand the new treatment option,
adopt a new medicine,
because those launches actually have been very successful.
-: There are many more software solutions coming digitally
to help people manage those
who are taking intensive insulin.
As I look at the rest of the diabetes world, though,
the Type 2 side,
I'm very excited to get CGM out into that population,
to whereby they have data to make decisions.
(upbeat music)
It's what we're all about.
We have two-year-olds on the device.
we have 95-year-olds on the device.
Completely different experiences.
So personalization is absolutely coming with what we do,
and we can do that through software,
and then through also interaction with the data
that we take to the Cloud and we can share with others.
So, I think not only is it part of our business today,
it's going to be an even bigger part in the future.
And that's how we'll continue to grow.
-: We are not yet at the stage
that we have a deep interaction with individual patients
on their treatment choice.
Although, I think we'll get there.
I think where the way we think about personalized therapies
is really to develop the right treatment approach
for every single patient,
which is a combination of different medicines
at a different stage in their disease.
Sometimes the integration between radiotherapy,
surgery, and pharmaceutical interventions.
And I think that's tailored
to every single individual patient.
Ultimately, I guess, you know,
the future is connecting the person
and the institution that is treating the patient, with us,
to be able to understand what treatment
is the best treatment for that patient, based on data.
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