#13 João Bocas interviews Jeroen Tas, talking Innovation, Business Models & Personalised Health

Yeah, I remember that. Good seeing you again, albeit virtual.

That's a very good question. The reason we expect to live much longer than our parents is because of tremendous innovation in diagnostics, from blood tests to imaging to pathology. We've seen tremendous innovation in therapies, heart procedures, and recently new types of therapies like immunotherapies. But if you look at the innovation of the healthcare system as a system, it has been very slow. In the Western world, most systems haven't really substantially changed since they were founded after World War Two. The next wave of innovation will be the way healthcare is organized. That means we have to flip it 180 degrees because right now healthcare is organized around providers. If you have a problem, your GP will refer you to specialists, the specialist will do diagnosis, put you on therapy, and there may be a little bit of care afterwards, but it's on the terms of the providers. The big shift is going to be about you. You're going to carry your data, you're going to be referred to the right provider, and it's going to be very, very personalized. So the next wave of innovation is going to be truly personalized. Who are we to come around and say, 'Hey, you got to change the way you work?'

I think that's an excellent question. Obviously, we're a 130-year-old company, and you cannot stop people from having associations with that brand that may date back 20 years. For its technology, no, we're going to turn that around. We're going to be a health tech company whose purpose in life is to positively touch the lives and improve the health of billions of people. Actually, we're looking at two billion people by 2025. Now, you're completely changing your purpose, the reason of being, and you need to organize around that and change your portfolio. So we decided to divest lighting, consumer electronics, and now domestic appliances so that we can really focus on that purpose. Along the way, I think we need to prove to the world that we're truly helping them live healthier lives. More tuned therapy, so we want to march towards that world where healthcare is truly personal, where the diagnosis is truly precise, and where care is tailored to you. We have to bring the audience along on that journey and say, 'Hey, we're no longer a lighting company, we're no longer consumer electronics. We're here to help you live healthier lives.'

Well, I think that's a very good question because it comes back to what I said earlier. If healthcare becomes truly personalized and it's about you and your own understanding of your health and the goals you set yourself for health, then it means that you have to get involved. In other words, you have to be conscious about what drives your health, and you have to be properly helped, or if you can do it yourself, drive towards better outcomes. In order to do that, we need to help you get a much better picture of yourself. For example, I have a genetic predisposition for a certain disease that runs in the family, and I got it when I was born. Now I know it, I also need to understand how I can control it. My daughter has type 1 diabetes; she couldn't help it, it's not a lifestyle choice, it's something that happened and changed her life. So once we know what our risks are, once we know what our drivers are, which can be very personal, and you can do that by doing genetic tests, a heart test, or by understanding how you eat, how you sleep, whether you have stress, your social life, your education on health, all of these determine how you live your life, whether you can live a fulfilling healthy life. I believe these other factors play an equally important role. So when it comes to your own personal health, there's a lot of education, guidance, and insights, but ultimately you make the choice for yourself whether you want to do something about it. We've also seen models where the family gets involved. For instance, my daughter is 30 years old, living independently, but still my wife and I are very much involved in making sure she lives as healthy a life as possible. So I believe that many people also have support systems. Wearables play a big role in that. People say maybe a Fitbit is not fully clinically relevant, but you don't need full clinical relevance to understand patterns. Once you understand patterns, you can help change those patterns if they can lead to positive outcomes. So there's a whole lot to do there. I also see business models will change to support that. You already see many healthcare systems in the US where they combine the payer and provider role. If you're a payer provider, you have a big incentive to keep people healthy because if people are unhealthy, you have huge downstream costs. You see employers getting very conscious of the need for change. So employers, combination payer providers, and now big retailers getting into the game as well. You're in the UK, and I know that Walgreens Boots is really looking at creating a more healthy retail experience and linking that to care. We see Walmart getting in the game, CVS acquired Aetna. So if a big retailer buys a health insurer, the goal is going to be helping people live healthier lives and avoid expensive downstream care if that's feasible. So I think their role is to reduce stress, sleep better, all in support of a healthier life and controlling chronic disease.

Well, I'm at the moment working with David Agus, who is quite a famous doctor and a great oncologist but also a visionary on health. I'm working very closely with him to see how we can not only avoid people getting sick but also how to care much better for people when they're sick, have a much more precise diagnosis, specifically in the space of cancer care. Having the right tests after somebody has been treated for cancer, making sure you stay in touch and stop the disease as early as possible, but do it in a way that all the knowledge we build up there will become available to the entire world. I know that specialized cancer care is really the domain of super specialists with the complexity of the therapies, so it will be impossible for community hospitals to always be up to date and provide world-class cancer care unless you create a digital channel where you bring that expertise from David Agus or from Dana-Farber, which we're working on, and really make that knowledge available to the world. So democratizing very high quality care through digital channels means that a doctor in a small town in India or Brazil can actually provide world-class diagnosis and treatment of complex diseases like cancer. That makes me truly excited.

It was my pleasure. Always good to see you. Keep spreading the good news with your series.