Bur­dened with for­mi­da­ble chal­lenges, such as in­con­sis­tent ac­cess and de­ploy­ment of care in ad­di­tion to the un­sus­tain­able cost of care, the US health­care sys­tem has laid the ground­work for the use of dig­i­tal tools to re­fresh the prac­tice of med­i­cine. In re­cent years, in ad­di­tion to the pen­e­tra­tion of tech gi­ants in­to the realm of health­care (cue Google, Ap­ple), ma­jor drug­mak­ers have al­so em­braced the sig­nif­i­cance of these tech­nolo­gies, hir­ing chief dig­i­tal/tech­nol­o­gy of­fi­cers to ush­er in the era of telemed­i­cine, wear­ables, cloud com­put­ing, ma­chine learn­ing and ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence. On Tues­day, France’s Sanofi said its chief med­ical of­fi­cer Ameet Nath­wani would al­so serve as the com­pa­ny’s first chief dig­i­tal of­fi­cer (CDO).

Sanofi fol­lows its peers in mak­ing the move. Last year, Pfiz­er and Mer­ck named their CDOs, while No­var­tis and GSK an­nounced sim­i­lar ap­point­ments in 2017.

Nath­wani, who was hired by Sanofi as chief med­ical of­fi­cer in 2016, is now al­so charged with in­te­grat­ing Sanofi’s ar­se­nal of med­i­cines with dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies and ink­ing dig­i­tal part­ner­ships.

The promise of dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy to po­ten­tial­ly de­moc­ra­tize med­i­cine, en­abling in­di­vid­u­als and re­searchers to gen­er­ate re­al-world da­ta, is an­oth­er rea­son dig­i­tal health tech­nolo­gies are so com­pelling. In the UK, for­mer health sec­re­tary Je­re­my Hunt com­mis­sioned Cal­i­for­nia-based Er­ic Topol, a car­di­ol­o­gist, au­thor and dig­i­tal med­i­cine re­searcher, to car­ry out an in­de­pen­dent re­view in­to the dig­i­tal train­ing needs of NHS staff. The re­port was re­leased on Mon­day, de­tail­ing the promise of ge­nomics, AI, ro­bot­ics and dig­i­tal med­i­cine in the pre­ven­tion, man­age­ment and treat­ment of dis­ease, and high­light­ed the im­por­tance of ed­u­cat­ing the NHS work­force of these ad­vances.

To­day, here in Lon­don, a thrill to fi­nal­ly hold our new re­port for @NHSEn­g­land @MattHancock @DHSC­govuk. As far as I know, the 1st coun­try to plan #health­care w/ #AI, #ge­nomics, dig­i­tal (and to 2040!). On­line, #OA to­mor­row, thanks to the great work @NHS_HealthE­dEng pic.twit­ter.com/HjxH4naY­GR

— Er­ic Topol (@Er­ic­Topol) Feb­ru­ary 10, 2019

Na­ture too has rec­og­nized the trans­for­ma­tive po­ten­tial of dig­i­tal med­i­cine. In an ar­ti­cle en­ti­tled “Dig­i­tal med­i­cine, on its way to be­ing just plain med­i­cine,” the jour­nal sig­nalled the launch of its peer-re­viewed jour­nal fo­cused specif­i­cal­ly on the dig­i­ti­za­tion of med­i­cine last year.

Pho­to: Ameet Nath­wani. SANOFI

The top career staff at the FDA have vowed not to let politics get in the way of science when looking at vaccine data this fall. But Alex Azar, who happens to be their boss’s boss, apparently won’t even give them a chance to stand in the way.

In a new memorandum issued Tuesday last week, the HHS chief stripped health agencies under his purview — including the FDA — of their rulemaking ability, asserting all such power “is reserved to the Secretary.” Sheila Kaplan of the New York Times first obtained and reported the details of the September 15 bulletin.

J&J’s one-two punch on EGFR-mutant non-small cell lung cancer has turned up some promising — although decidedly early — results, fueling the idea that there’s yet room to one up on third-generation tyrosine kinase inhibitors.

Twenty out of 20 advanced NSCLC patients had a response after taking a combination of an in-house TKI dubbed lazertinib and amivantamab, a bispecific antibody targeting both EGFR and cMET engineered on partner Genmab’s platform, J&J reported at ESMO. All were treatment-naïve, and none has seen their cancer progress at a median follow-up of seven months.

Late in August, as negotiations on a pricing deal with President Trump reached a boiling point, PhRMA president Stephen Ubl sent an email update to the 34 biopharma chiefs that sit on his board. He wrote that if the industry did not agree to pay for a $100 “cash card” sent to seniors before November, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows was going to tell the news media Big Pharma was refusing to “share the savings” with the elderly — and that all of the blame for failed drug pricing negotiations would lie squarely on the industry.

AstraZeneca has unveiled the final, mature overall survival data that cemented Lynparza’s first approval in prostate cancer approval — touting its lead against rivals with the only PARP inhibitor to have demonstrated such benefit.

But getting the Merck-partnered drug to the right patients remains a challenge, something the companies are hoping to change with the new data cut.

The OS numbers on the subgroup with BRCA1/2 or ATM-mutated metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer are similar to the first look on offer when the FDA expanded the label in May: Lynparza reduced the risk of death by 31% versus Xtandi and Zytiga. Patients on Lynparza lived a median of 19.1 months, compared to 14.7 months for the anti-androgen therapies (p = 0.0175).