Jeff Elton, Ph.D., is CEO of ConcertAI, an AI SaaS options firm offering analysis options and patient-centric options for all times sciences innovators and the world’s main suppliers. ConcertAI is concentrated on accelerating and enhancing the precision of retrospective and potential scientific research utilizing supplier EMRs, LISs, and PACSs methods because the supply for all examine knowledge. It’s a long-term associate associate with the American Society of Medical Oncology and its CancerLinQ program, US FDA, NCI Well being Fairness initiatives, and nearly 100 healthcare suppliers throughout the US.
Previous to ConcertAI, Jeff was Managing Director, Accenture Technique/Affected person Well being; International Chief Working Officer and SVP Technique at Novartis Institutes of BioMedical Analysis, Inc.; and associate at McKinsey & Firm. He’s additionally a founding board member and senior advisor to a number of early-stage corporations. Jeff is at the moment a board member of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council. He’s the co-author of the broadly cited e book, Healthcare Disrupted (Wiley, 2016). Jeff has a Ph.D. and M.B.A. from The College of Chicago.
Because the founding CEO of ConcertAI, are you able to share your imaginative and prescient for the corporate at its inception? How has that imaginative and prescient developed since 2018?
We began with the concept that improved affected person outcomes come from deep and actionable insights. Gaining these insights requires knowledge completeness, knowledge scale, knowledge representativeness and superior AI intelligence. So, we created a Knowledge-as-a-Service and AI Software program-as-a-Service firm. We focused AI that permits inferencing and prediction. This included predicting occasions to keep away from, resembling sufferers’ non-adherence to their remedy or discontinuation of care due to a scarcity of optimistic response, which knowledgeable when scientific trials is perhaps the following choice.
Our imaginative and prescient has remained steadfast, and we proceed to anticipate extra out of our options. With the newest era of LLMs, agentic AI and different generative AI options, we will function at scale (and nearly in real-time—one thing we didn’t anticipate or anticipate in 2018). With companions like NVIDIA, we will advance our options to carry out higher than anticipated, acknowledge limitations and distinctive traits, and transfer on the tempo of the whole market’s improvements—the journey to this point has been terribly productive and exhilarating.
We have now opened up beforehand unimaginable efficiency in scientific trial automation options, automating the location of sufferers on evidence-based scientific pathways, superior workflows in radiological interpretation, and using digital twins as a decision-enhancing instrument for care and analysis.
Right this moment, we serve nearly 50 biopharma innovators and a couple of,000 healthcare suppliers—so whereas not at fairly the size of the whole market, we’re the broadest-reaching AI options for oncology within the trade.
What impressed you to deal with oncology and hematology datasets particularly, and the way did you see ConcertAI making a distinction in these fields?
The US began the “Warfare on Most cancers” in 1971 with the Nationwide Most cancers Act. This catalyzed large-scale authorities funding, which generated insights into the mutations that drive cancers, new modalities for therapies, expanded Nationwide Most cancers Institute-designated remedy facilities, and extra. Underneath the Obama administration, funding elevated once more by $10 billion in digital stimulus going to the NIH and, in flip, to the NCI. Underneath Biden, the Most cancers Moonshot 2.0 program was launched in 2022, once more catalyzing a completely new era of analysis and seed funding funding for tutorial, group, and private-public partnerships.
I give this historical past as a result of few illnesses or areas of healthcare have the extent of knowledge: genomic, transcriptomic, digital pathology, digital radiology, detailed digital medical information, and many others., and the extent of analysis that contextualizes these knowledge with validated insights by way of rigorous, multi-center, peer-review research. As additional proof, the American Society of Medical Oncology annual assembly is the most important medical assembly on the planet, with the best variety of new publications, posters and abstracts of any scientific discussion board on any subject.
So, if you’ll be knowledge and AI-centric, there are few higher areas to advance options with confidence and at scale than oncology. ConcertAI has the most important assortment of research-grade knowledge of anybody on the planet. It consists of a whole bunch of peer-reviewed publications enabled by that knowledge, important proof ensuing from these publications altering how sufferers are handled and assuring essentially the most optimistic potential outcomes, and now AI SaaS applied sciences which can be integral to the processes of care and analysis that convey the facility of that knowledge and proof to bear in any respect factors and for all choices alongside a affected person’s care journey. What is de facto vital right here is that we don’t do that unilaterally. It’s completed transparently with our healthcare supplier and biopharma innovator companions to engender the best confidence and use. So, we’re evolving towards real-time, superior, AI intelligence-enabled determination augmentation.
ConcertAI has develop into a number one participant in real-world proof (RWE) and AI expertise for healthcare. What have been a number of the early challenges you confronted in positioning the corporate as a frontrunner on this area?
It’s a must to be trusted and evolve in the direction of being the reference supply. That’s earned. The belief comes out of your supplier companions, believing that the info you’re accessing is in the most effective pursuits of their sufferers. Belief comes out of your educational and trade companions, who see the proof of and consider that your knowledge is derived as an ideal reflection of the unique affected person information and that the ideas you advance are ‘true’ and reflective of present scientific and scientific follow. You even have to realize a scale that your knowledge options symbolize not solely the whole inhabitants but additionally produce conclusions which can be confidently generalizable again to the complete inhabitants being handled with a specific drugs. Expertise is analogous. Scientists and clinicians are inherently skeptical—as they need to be—and don’t belief black packing containers or algorithms they don’t perceive. So we wanted to determine belief there, too, by way of publications and being open about how our options work.
ConcertAI holds the world’s largest oncology and hematology dataset. What distinctive alternatives does this knowledge create for remodeling most cancers analysis and remedy?
I really like that query. We’re engaged on this day by day! The alternatives to offer worth to suppliers, sufferers and innovators are nearly limitless. In early-phase trials, we’re evolving examine simulation approaches with digital twins that may change the applications we take into scientific trials. Our knowledge and AI optimizations will decrease the time required to go from finalized protocol to finalized submission to regulators by 30 to 40%—which means new medicines get to sufferers quicker. Our determination augmentation AI options will suggest pathways for remedy which can be evidence-based and particularly tailor-made to these pathways, monitor responses according to the expected response, and search for doubtlessly useful scientific trials when response or profit is under expectations. Our imaging scientific interpretation options function on the stage of operational processes, scientific interpretation, and longer-term view of latest interpretations or new interventions that ought to be thought of primarily based on insights and proof sooner or later. Now not is an motion “as soon as and completed” however relatively it turns into “as soon as, after which many times” such that useful reassessments and future choices are an ongoing course of! What’s completely different right here is that the view is the whole affected person journey—this can be a horizontal view versus a sequence of slim, deep, vertical views that must be stitched collectively. That is an innovation enabled by AI and a profound course of change that gives new methods of working to the professional people concerned.
Are you able to clarify how ConcertAI’s Digital Trial Resolution works to match most cancers sufferers with life-saving scientific trials? What impression have you ever seen to this point by way of affected person outcomes?
Medical trials are very advanced and require hours of effort by a variety of extremely professional people. For many organizations, scientific trials are provided as a accountability and dedication to sufferers the place the present customary of care could not symbolize a viable various. Trials have probably not been very out there to sufferers in group remedy facilities, the place 80% of sufferers obtain their care. But, these are the sufferers who will in the end be receiving newly accepted medicines. This creates a double dilemma: nearly all of sufferers who want entry to trials are restricted, and people who are reflective of the final word customary of care inhabitants usually are not within the trial dataset. We set a path to resolve these issues.
The outcomes have been nice—so optimistic that we’re going to be increasing our variety of research underway by 10x in 2025. We revealed this for the final American Society of Medical Oncology conferences and in different areas. Our method is how we predict AI ought to be carried out—as an augmentation of professional people the place there are giant capability and expertise constraints and the place lives are at stake. We have now developed a set of orchestrated and tuned giant language fashions that entry affected person information, synthesize traits, and match sufferers to doubtlessly useful trials, doing precisely what the professional people would do—with a completely documented method to creating suggestions and assessments. Within the websites the place our applied sciences are deployed, we carry out on the stage of essentially the most professional people and accrue sufferers at 5x or extra relative to websites the place our applied sciences usually are not deployed—the analysis groups and biopharma innovators are each happy, and sufferers profit most.
How does ConcertAI’s AI-driven method to trial design and affected person recruitment deal with a number of the present limitations in scientific analysis, resembling affected person range and trial effectivity?
I’m happy with my workforce—they instructed me three to 4 years in the past that attaining range is an obligation and the correct factor to do scientifically. In addition they maintained that it’s arduous to do whether it is handbook however requires zero incremental effort if automated. So, we determined then that each dataset and AI SaaS resolution would combine range and social determinants of well being traits as our customary method. It’s not an choice. It’s simply what we do. Subsequently, our CARAai™ supported scientific trial design and optimization options can assess what ethnic, racial or financial subpopulations could also be most adversely impacted by a illness, combine these issues into the trial design, be sure that these populations usually are not unwittingly excluded, and outline the scientific websites most probably to guarantee participation and representativeness. That is the place AI could be “AI for Good” and the place expertise doesn’t introduce a bias however assures that biases don’t enter the method, the final word design, or the operational processes across the scientific trial.
What position does ConcertAI play in decreasing the burden on healthcare suppliers and optimizing web site choice in scientific trials?
We combine the work burden into all elements of our scientific trial options. First, there’s a burden on the affected person. This may be the place the location is situated, the variety of visits required for a examine versus the usual of care, or the scientific depth of a examine versus the usual of care, as within the case of extra biopsies. These items can decide whether or not the affected person—or the affected person in session with their supplier—can afford to take part or tolerate and full participation.
There may be additionally a burden on the supplier. If we will automate the identification of sufferers for scientific trial eligibility, decrease false positives that create work, and supply what we name “AI leverage” to the work of the Medical Analysis Related, Examine Nurses, and Physicians, then the burden is lowered. The identical is true of our AI Automation Resolution, which permits the analysis workforce to keep away from doing handbook knowledge entry—usually 2 to 4 hours on the finish of the day, and infrequently accomplished at dwelling. Early on we regarded on the knowledge within the EMR—digital—being manually entered right into a portal for the sponsor’s EDC. So digital knowledge is being learn after which rekeyed to develop into digital knowledge once more! Right here, too, we’re utilizing our multi-tuned giant language fashions—this was an actual focus of the NVIDIA partnership from the start. We’re at 55% full automation at this time, with a really quick path to over 80% within the coming few months. As these components come collectively, we’ll get the employees time right down to 10% of legacy necessities and make these research extra accessible to extra sufferers.
Precision drugs is a key space the place AI is making important strides. How does ConcertAI’s expertise contribute to extra exact and customized most cancers remedies?
We’ve not mentioned this an excessive amount of since final yr. In December 2023, we assumed accountability for the American Society of Medical Oncology’s (ASCO) CancerLinQ program. It’s the world’s largest clever well being community, comprising educational facilities, regional hospital methods and group suppliers. A key a part of this community is implementing the ASCO Licensed® high quality and scientific pathway options. Since CancerLinQ is a ConcertAI initiative, we’ve got been rising the community, automating precision oncology pathways, creating new digital twin approaches for augmenting remedy choice for the suppliers, figuring out and messaging vital diagnostic assessments that might inform remedy choices, and doing the identical for newly accepted medicines that symbolize one other or higher remedy various. All of that is underpinned by our CARAai™ structure, once more a set of imaginative and prescient LLM and tuned oncology LLMs completed in collaboration with NVIDIA. It’s wonderful to see the progress being made, and we’re enthusiastic about what we’ll be publishing and presenting at subsequent yr’s ASCO 2025.
How do you see AI imaging options benefiting fields like oncology and radiology, particularly as these fields face clinician shortages?
Nice query! It’s true that each the variety of new oncologists and radiologists getting into the sphere is lower than the quantity retiring. Nonetheless, affected person demand is ever-increasing. So, it’s the supreme space for offering AI SaaS options that assist doctor and allied care professionals in each workflow optimization and scientific determination augmentation. Radiologists and oncologists will each cite the significance of those new clever options coming into their fields particularly. Imaging is an excellent space for AI, and its efficiency is outstanding. Non-inferiority research replicate that AI fashions could be near or akin to professional people in slim areas. Orchestrated workflows can convey this all collectively. The identical is true in oncology, the place we’re bringing collectively molecular take a look at outcomes with immune response knowledge, predictive algorithms for resistance and different components that may all inform the remedy determination and allow response monitoring. I’ve been within the subject for years and on completely different sides of latest improvements—what we will do now could be properly past something we have been ever capable of do earlier than, and the tempo of change is wonderful.
As an skilled chief in healthcare expertise, what recommendation would you provide to new corporations trying to make a significant impression in healthcare by way of AI?
You possibly can’t be an AI firm with out entry to knowledge at scale. Knowledge is the substrate for constructing coaching and monitoring fashions. Additionally, constructing AI options is a workforce sport. You want area information at an distinctive depth matched with a brand new era of AI mannequin improvement capabilities that acknowledges the behaviors of various courses of AI options and may convey them to bear in opposition to slim aims, particularly tuned for human or above efficiency. Then, these approaches could be orchestrated in varied methods to symbolize a brand new system for working—that’s the place the modifications happen, and the worth will get delivered. Apply “AI Humility” as the whole lot is wonderful and displays issues we couldn’t do even six months earlier than. But, ‘wonderful’ is just not essentially a product or a brand new manner of working—it’s simply that, expertise doing one thing new. It’s the accountability of the AI firm to make it a brand new manner of working and a brand new method for delivering an astonishing stage of worth that was by no means accessible earlier than. Lastly, assume it’s essential to show belief in enterprise practices, AI fashions, and resolution transparency. We’re nonetheless early in our societal journey, and we’re those who must earn the belief to convey concerning the modifications we’re able to delivering.
Thanks for the nice interview, readers who want to be taught extra ought to go to ConcertAI.
