CIO Exchange Podcast

Digital Medicine: The Human Factor - Guest: Stéphane Bancel, CEO, Moderna

Episode Summary

How do you fight for your own life along with the lives of billions of others in the world? While technology was able to dramatically accelerate the development of the COVID-19 vaccine, even with distributed teams, that speed pushed the people on those vaccine teams to their limits. This episode aired live from the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMMS) conference on August 11th, 2021, about a month after the Delta variant had become the dominant form of the coronavirus in the US. It is a conversation with Moderna's CEO Stéphane Bancel and VMware President Sumit Dhawan. Bancel talks about the daily reality of developing the vaccine, as well as all the technology that went into it. The conversation covers advanced AI modeling, genetic mapping, and cloud-native computing. In addition, Bancel discusses the human element that made these advancements attainable, and what it means for the quality of life that can be possible for everyone as we learn to live with this new virus in the years to come.

Episode Notes

How do you fight for your own life along with the lives of billions of others in the world? While technology was able to dramatically accelerate the development of the COVID-19 vaccine, even with distributed teams, that speed pushed the people on those vaccine teams to their limits. This episode aired live from the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMMS) conference on August 11th, 2021, about a month after the Delta variant had become the dominant form of the coronavirus in the US. It is a conversation with Moderna's CEO Stéphane Bancel and VMware President Sumit Dhawan. Bancel talks about the daily reality of developing the vaccine, as well as all the technology that went into it. The conversation covers advanced AI modeling, genetic mapping, and cloud-native computing. In addition, Bancel discusses the human element that made these advancements attainable, and what it means for the quality of life that can be possible for everyone as we learn to live with this new virus in the years to come.

Episode Notes:

Stéphane Bancel on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sbancel

Sumit Dhawan on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sumit_dhawan

CIO Exchange on Twitter: https://twitter.com/vmwcioexchange

Yadin Porter de León on Twitter: https://twitter.com/porterdeleon 

 

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Episode Transcription


[00:00:00] Stéphane: I believe the biggest revolution we're going to see in the next five to 10 years in healthcare is a massive increase of quality of care because we have data and we're able to act on data.  
 

[00:00:16] Yadin: Welcome to the CIO exchange podcast, where we talk about what's working. What's not, and what's next. 
 

[00:00:20] I'm Yadin Porter de Leon . How do you fight for your own life? Along with the life of billions of others in the world?,While technology was able to dramatically accelerate the development of the COVID-19 vaccine, even with distributed teams that speed push the people on those teams to their limits. This episode, which aired live from the healthcare information and management systems, society or HIMSS conference on August 11th, 2021 about a month after the Delta variant had become the dominant form of the coronavirus in the U S we hear a conversation with moderna's CEO, Stéphane Bancel , and VMware's president Sumit Dhawan, Bancel talks about the daily realities of developing the vaccine, as well as all the technology that went into it. 
 

[00:01:01] Covering advanced AI modeling, genetic mapping and cloud native. Along with the human element that made these advancements possible and what that means for the quality of life that can be possible for everyone. As we learn to live with this new virus in the years to come,  
 

[00:01:17] Sumit: uh, Stéphane . Good to see you again. 
 

[00:01:19] Uh, it seems like we always get to see each other on zoom, but, uh, it's been great hearing your story and honored to have be here with you and share the story with the audience, both here in the room, as well as thousands of people watching.  
 

[00:01:32] Stéphane: Thank you so much for having me It's a pleasure to see you. 
 

[00:01:35] again Sumit 
 

[00:01:36] Sumit: maybe just, can you share any latest updates before we go into the technology on the outlook for the variant and then we'll connect it back to the technology?  
 

[00:01:45] Stéphane: Sure. Also, maybe just a couple of highlights. And if you want more you tell me but I'm trying to be crisp, the virus is never going to go away from a planet is what we believe the virus is going to still. 
 

[00:01:56] mutating a lot. I would guess until the summer to the end of 2022. I think there's another good 12 to 18 months of a lot of mutations coming. I worry deeply right now because you've seen the number of people infected with Delta is very, very high. It's a very, very infectious virus compared to the original virus. 
 

[00:02:18] It transmits, it's very easily, especially in places of a world where we don't have enough vaccination. It's spreading that crazy. And we should not forget that in the Southern hemisphere, because there's a lot of immunocompromised people, people, for example, HIV or TB or disease, this is actually very fertile ground for a virus to mutate even faster, which is not surprising why we have the Brazilian mutation, the south africa mutation, the Indian mutation. To all the, the infectious disease docs. 
 

[00:02:46] This is not a surprise is where you're going to see because big number of the border and a lot of immunocompromised people. Where are you going to see the most mutation? And so as this is the winter down in the south right now, and as you know, there's a lot of cases, a lot of suffering and this very sort of sequencing capability, the community worries deeply about what's happening right now that we might not be aware yet that you might have an Epsilon or 
 

[00:03:12] another letter of the greek alphabet cuz we're not at Omega yet. That is going to show up. And the virus, because evolution is only going one way. As we have seen over become, I look at the original one and then the UK strain, which took over the us, uh, you know, in, in the winter, I mean, uh, two March, April, and then the Delta tasks so quickly becoming the dominant strain. 
 

[00:03:34] So epidemiologist think that some of our strain was probably are going to merge and converge. So one of the physics right now is you're going to see sooner and we dont know if soon as in two weeks or two months, you're going to see yourself, Africa and Delta combined. Permutation on one, two mutation on the evidence and programmatic to a vaccine, you're going to have five mutation in one of ours. 
 

[00:03:55] The good news is The vaccines are working well, the amount of vaccines are working well. They're already doing well, preventing hospitalization and severe disease, but we're not the out of the woods yet. We're all working on a booster shots where we're adapting and tweaking the sequence of a virus, the vaccine to better adapt to the windows that we give to people to boost them. 
 

[00:04:15] So I think the next 12 to 18 monts is still gonna be pretty complicated, but that more forward that's once we get a large number of people vaccinated around the world and are naturally infected, we're going to get to a place that there's less room for a virus to evolve. And so I think the virus mutation is going to start to grow as symptomatic and then more look like a flu where you're going to be. 
 

[00:04:37] Well, two mutation a year when you just get into the cadance of updating the product once a year. We are working on what they, on that to develop a flu vaccine, which is in clinical study now. And our goal is to get you a respiratory vaccine where you get one shot at your local CVS or doc, every, you know, late summer, early fall, you will protect you from the COVID virus of that year. 
 

[00:04:59] The flu virus of that just is not true into a single dose and you spend a nice winter until you do the next thing. We have a new software grade of a money for the next year, and you keep. So, so I think we're going to get into a world where we're going to live with that thing, but I think we still have any, of course, every country's in different space, but I think when it get, uh, another 12 to 18 months that sort of still be complicated. 
 

[00:05:24] So those of you that have not been vaccinated well, please go get vaccinated to protect yourself and to protect your loved ones because the virus is only going to go more and more virile and more and more infectious. And when they're very Stamford boosting something, don't forget. Because your immune system, your antibodies are going down with time. 
 

[00:05:42] And so at some stage you need to get the them backup. And that's what the booster.  
 

[00:05:46] Sumit: So clearly  
 

[00:05:46] this is sort of a little bit of a race, right. That you have. And, uh, because we are still, like you said, 18 months away before it becomes sort of. Just a normal course of life and you sort of just get this annual shot, but until then, there's lot to be done in terms of I'm sure for you hiring people, buying machines, doing partnerships, increasing production from billions 3 billion doses, et cetera, maybe what does that, what does that mean? 
 

[00:06:14] And, um, how are you sort of securely scaling the company and then obviously technology these days is part of the company.  
 

[00:06:23] Stéphane: Sure. So indeed. So this year, you know, we're on track for a billion dose and next year, you know, two to 3 billion, doses. The piece that has really helped us tremendously is really all the technology that we had before. 
 

[00:06:36] And as we see investing growing very, very, very quickly, you know, V enterprise is working on the AWS. Uh, I think we were according to SAP, the first company to use SAP HANA in the cloud, in the pharmaceutical, in the. A few years ago. And we had these visions since the beginning to say, look, we have a chance to have a new company with no legacy system. 
 

[00:06:59] Let's use that as a, as a major benefit, to think forward and to use release states, OVR state-of-the-art systems and integration platforms and technologies. And it has been really amazing how it has helped us care. I mean, one of the example that you could not think about doing in normal tools is we found out we belong that. 
 

[00:07:20] One of the biggest company in the world for contract manufacturing and pharmaceutical, to help us in addition to our plant. And we're able to basically create a new system in that plant by duplicating, you know, all I say, PC stem in the cloud, and basically creating a new virtual plant in about a week or so, which was just crazy. 
 

[00:07:40] And so technology for us is, is a way to do things very differently. I think we're in the, in the age. Being able to move the enterprise fully digital from, you know, uh, the entire kind of value chain across the enterprise is, I mean, I'm seeing things that I've used. So I really, the only way to go going, you know, having a big business process across the enterprise. 
 

[00:08:06] That's I know analog, digital, digital, analog, analog, digital, it's kind of crazy once your information in sort of from that team to make sure you can move it around and keep everything digitally. I think the time is really amazing. And I think the crisis that always has as fast-forward the world, it has scary for modern. 
 

[00:08:24] As I told you, we were supposed to launch a product in 24 and it became end of 2020. So must've acceleration massive validation. You know, when we launch that product, we'll have added no, maybe five, 10 million dose of a first year, not a billion dose so incredible kind of scale up. And I think it's the same thing around working via surely the tools we use. 
 

[00:08:44] And all the things that technology enables. And I think AI enables when a big thing we're doing now, the company is no, we are using AI. Uh, but we have pockets of excellence in AI. everywhere. Use AI veggies that would be alive. We have groups where people are excellent and do amazing things in AI. And there are groups that are company where people have to less about AI. 
 

[00:09:06] And for me, it's the type of change managers. That's how we'll compare to what happened. I think in the nineties around just PCs. And so one of the thing we're doing right now, which I'm very excited about it and I'm kind of driving with a team, but I'm sponsoring is we are launching an AI academy of the company that is basically a partnership with capital university around the U S for us modules. 
 

[00:09:30] We're going to develop in house as well. It's a work program that every employee is going to go through. Every employee is going to be a. The six Sigma thing, you know, different levels of training, uh, ingredient for the executive committee green for myself. Cause I know some things are there, but they're not black belt. 
 

[00:09:48] And the goal is that we have basically a curriculum map for every employee of the company with different types of training. But I want everybody at the company, whether you are scientists and operates also within finance, uh, as a clear whatever, to have a minimum, I think it's like four or five days of training. 
 

[00:10:03] So that you understand the AI so that you're not scared of it. So you see real guys examples. And this is, I think about, of a transformation that we, as leaders in enterprise have to understand that the technology sometime is way ahead of where the human brain is. We are honored to  
 

[00:10:18] Sumit: be part of the technology at Moderna and, uh, the infrastructure, right? 
 

[00:10:23] We are seeing something similar where our goal at VMware has always been in the past. We have always sort of provided this foundation layer for the data. But we gradually expanded to enabling everyone who uses the technology that's running in the data center and now is running in the cloud just to make it as simple as possible, regardless of where they are, what device they're on and whatnot. 
 

[00:10:46] So I completely agree with you. And then, you know, over time, the future is for developers to be able to rapidly develop the new applications through the power of. And making that experience and doing so in the cloud easier. And that's something that we have taken as a mission because customers trust our platform and enabling that easily. 
 

[00:11:07] Uh, now talking a little bit about, uh, about Moderna at the time when you were scaling the company, uh, since February, and then just going through this endeavor of even changing, just the mindset of everyone that when people are saying. Focus the company on to onto this, uh, this situation, maybe just the complexity of working in that environment when that entire Workspot what's. 
 

[00:11:34] It was distributed. And how did you go about doing that as I'm sure you were, you were also scaling and growing the team at the same time. Let me just give us a little bit of that experience. Yeah. I  
 

[00:11:45] Stéphane: mean, I think a few things, like a lot of the companies have people in the audience, you know, the company was already pre digital before COVID hit in term of using, you know, kind of tools like WebEx and zoom and overalls and. 
 

[00:12:01] And distributed systems and so on and so forth. So we have to move pretty quickly. Actually, the company went offline very early because we're in the middle of a virus. That's doing the virus like crazy. And I think it's in early March that we said everybody within those apps will be in the office. You work from home like government executive committee, where we're like, this is crazy. 
 

[00:12:20] We knew that. I mean, we've ever been growing exponentially and we said, we need to play a role to protect our people. Because if you are sick, they're not gonna be able to make the vaccines. That's another good. And so we, we say that we have to be very conservative, everybody home. We don't have to be in the office in the library who clean people with our people, do the minimum work in the lab. 
 

[00:12:38] You do all the reporting and any sort of data at home. And then based on people's preference, some people are morning people, some people like to work in the evening of nights, we will organize them, set up to reduce density in the lab by just priding their working hours. So if we will show up at four in the morning, some people will show up in at 10:00 PM to. 
 

[00:12:56] And that was fine. And as soon as you're done with your experiments in the lab, you go and you do the rest from home, the factory where something very scary because people have to be in the factory to make products. We have not yet find a way to make products. We've only robots, we, but a lot of robots, but not only robots. 
 

[00:13:12] And so a lot of, you know, PPS very early on testing. We started testing in March, everybody, every there at the factory, you know, putting apps on the iPhones for everybody so that we go tracing. If somebody in case . So exactly who was who was in contact that person and so on. So we deploy that very quickly. 
 

[00:13:32] The piece that, that just a lot, I think because, you know, sometimes people describe to me from other industries a bit more from a tick experience to kind of go remote or whatever. There was so much need to save every hour on the development of a vaccine that I think our job working remote as a management team was easier than a lot of colleagues, you know, Because we are fighting for our lives and the lives of millions, of billions of people. 
 

[00:13:59] And so the team had no choice. I mean, we work no stops, you know, literally seven days a week, sometime we suffer in the morning and somebody will cigarette. Which day is it today? Because it's before we just kept working every day. And one of the things that we spent a lot of time with the HR team is worrying about burnout because I could even feed myself and I will get the 
 

[00:14:23] Gora and come back, take a shower, come here. My wife will bring me breakfast. This desk here, I'm doing this from home tonight. And, uh, and at 10 o'clock I will go one floor up in old town house and I would just not die in bed and do it again the next day. And he was like, you know, this crazy movie where every day is the same thing. 
 

[00:14:42] And you say your sanity starts to go crazy, which is why actually, as soon as I could, like in the July, August, September, I went back to the office and sometime I was the only one on. But just for my own sanity walking 30 minutes in the morning, seeing the river, you know, as sapiens who used to be in the forest a long time ago, not in buildings all day long, uh, and just seeing the river walking out, you know, and I think this transition from work to my house was much more healthy than just being non-stop. 
 

[00:15:13] Totally. Yeah. I  
 

[00:15:13] Sumit: agree. Totally agree with that. You know, uh, we, I remember when everyone sort of, again, became virtual at the time. Within VMware, we got tons of, sort of these asks in the health care where, you know, our customers wanted to set up a pop-up emergency sort of response tends to pop up testing centers, to mass vaccination sites. 
 

[00:15:37] And, uh, you know, we feel honored that we played a role in just enabling everyone in the industry to be able to serve the citizens of the country. And obviously in many places of the. We had other customers of ours, including the brassica medicine who very innovative views, they use their technology to do virtual care via bedside tablets, where, you know, the sort of physicians were able to help the patients using the technology in a virtual way. 
 

[00:16:08] And, uh, we also had, you know, uh, so this big, large CT scans and MRIs that were. On our technology actually from some of the networks that we never ever thought would be possible, but it happened. And it happened very successfully, which shows the power of the technology. And like you said, usually it's ahead in terms of how it can be utilized. 
 

[00:16:30] So that's great. It was great to see maybe, uh, let's pivot to the future a bit in the last 10, 15 minutes. You've talked about the past how you've done it and, uh, just, uh, talk a little bit about. Kind of what you see, you know, uh, just some of the future impacts that you see on some of the changes in telemedicine and some of which potentially this pandemic has brought in. 
 

[00:16:55] And then potentially just how, you know, just in general healthcare  
 

[00:17:00] Stéphane: could have been savvy. What is interesting for me is already pre pandemic. There was a lot of convergence of technology. You see sequencing technology, they are ready to. You know, genetic instruction of humans, of viruses or bacteria. We have a cost dropping faster than moores law. 
 

[00:17:20] So you have these, these trials, then you have the ability to use no machine learning the cloud. And then, so that's kind of in the enabling technology to accelerate, you know, diagnostic tools like testing or medicines to provide new, innovative solution that transform care in a very profound. If you think about it, you know, he cancer, for example, we share with, he's always very interested about, for obvious reasons, you know, in cancer, I would say in the last five, 10 years, we started to see medicines emerge that when they work, this is immuno-oncology, you can start, goes away. 
 

[00:18:00] So it's like a miracle you might've made test as these, you know, all over your body. And if a drug works for you, the cancer goes away like an American, unfortunately, There work depends on cancer type, you know, in 20, 30, 40, 60% of people. So we see, I would also look to find ways to tweak those things and add different compliance. 
 

[00:18:20] So I think on the tool set, that's available to the clinician. There's this incredible tailwind. We are discovering more and more functions of DNA of. We can read DNA because a lot of the genes in the DNA, we don't know, worry what to do. And so every time we asked a more of a breaks, then we can turn this into testing and or drugs. 
 

[00:18:39] So there's this incredible tailwind. I mean, as you say, the use of technology to understand information and to integrate and aggregate information in of can never really happened. It's still crazy to me that, to this, these. Your medical record is all over the place. Your family's raised somewhere else. 
 

[00:18:58] Some of the device that's connected, what you eat and social. If you think about all the PCs that impact have the data are either analog or digital or place. If you think about healthcare is about integration because everything is intertwined, but I believe the biggest revolution we're going to see in the next five to 10 years in health. 
 

[00:19:21] Is a massive increase of quality of care because we have data and we're able to act on data that is really individualized and evolves with you and your life. And then I think there's going to be a very strong democratization of healthcare because I believe the pandemic made a lot of people realize that they didn't know much about the health. 
 

[00:19:43] If anybody is a very complex machine, we are living in areas to take care of because that's sort of way. I think there's going to be for this crisis. A lot of people in greens, young generation to realize that there is a possibility to learn much more and to know much more. And I think that there's going to be a lot of opportunities for companies either to build new businesses or to, for new companies to emerge from nowhere, putting all those pieces together because the body is a system. 
 

[00:20:13] Know, we say, it's the immune system. It's a very complex system in your body. It's a sexual never system in the brain. Those things are connected. We now know that what you eat influence, you know, of course, bacteria in your microbiome, in your guts, but we now know that your gut is also linked to your brain. 
 

[00:20:31] So it actually some disease in the, in the brain. And so there's all these things that we seem to understand that are very complex, but now we can model using the cloud machine learning and so on. That's going to start to enable it. To understand how the human body works for all of us, but then use a real-time data from biomarker and everything goes to genetic material. 
 

[00:20:53] And so on your microbiome accuracy, a world where, you know, down the road, when you go do your annual checkup, you so do you know, uh, feces samples to have a microbiome done on it. So it's just not a piece of data. So I think we're already going to a world where the ability to understand and to give you very actionable advice, that's customized to you. 
 

[00:21:14] And where you are in your life right now is going to be something like we've never seen before. I  
 

[00:21:20] Sumit: totally agree. I think the telemedicine has tons of potential and we are truly excited about the emergence of 5g. We are excited about that. We are investing and tons of R and D uh, working with all of the telco providers as they build out their 5g. 
 

[00:21:37] Any closing thoughts for the audience and perhaps a message of positivity admits much of the uncertainty that still exists today.  
 

[00:21:45] Stéphane: Yeah. Show maybe first thanking you for the invitation. Uh, I already enjoyed the dialogue and thanking you and your teams for the tools we have built and all the other companies that have helped us because we clearly could not have done it alone. 
 

[00:21:59] I think again, the good news is we have shown that, you know, science can help us get this under control. We need to do a little bit more work because there was no billions of Emani capacity sitting either waiting. And so as we in Pfizer, kind of ramping up manufacturing, the output is, is getting bigger by the mall by the week. 
 

[00:22:20] And so we're going to get this thing under control. Uh, I have no doubt we're going to go back to our normal lives. I have no doubt. I think for all of you, you know, we have parents and love spouse and path nails, and. Uh, we always want them to be healthy and to enjoy their life and to be protected. I think the next 5, 10, 15 years, I want to see incredible sense, speak innovation in additions with technology innovation that keep pushing everywhere. 
 

[00:22:50] And I think the quality of life we're going to be able to enjoy as we leave. I think we will be healthier lives as we reversed disease and some mechanism like aging and so on. I think there's going to be a really interesting. To see this with our bare eyes and to benefit ourselves into cities, into our friends, parents, brothers, and sisters, and children. 
 

[00:23:10] So I think it's a very exciting, exciting time to be alive, even though it's a very challenging followers. What I say GMOs, I think it's really an amazing time to be able to contribute for science and technology to make the world a bit.  
 

[00:23:22] Sumit: I certainly feel it that way. Thank you so much, Stéphane, for your time. 
 

[00:23:26] Always fun hearing the story. I've heard it a few times, but I've enjoyed it every time. Thank you so much for sharing the story and thank you for what you've done.  
 

[00:23:35] Stéphane : Thank you so much for having me and thank you everybody for your help, you provide us directly or indirectly you think. Well, thank you so much. 
 

[00:23:44] Yadin: Thank you for listening to this latest episode, please consider subscribing to the show on apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And for more insights from technology leaders, as well as global research on key topics. Visit vmware.com/cio