Bringing the Magic and Wonder Back to Health
“The vision for Novartis is going to be to build an inspired, empowered company that wants to re-imagine medicine,” said Vas Narasimhan…
“The vision for Novartis is going to be to build an inspired, empowered company that wants to re-imagine medicine,” said Vas Narasimhan, MD, CEO of Novartis. “And, as I mentioned, I think one of the big parts of that is having a sense of wonder about what we do as Novartis, but what all of you do as well.”
Vas and I had a chance to catch up and talk about his newly-appointed role as CEO of Novartis as well as his plans for the future at the StartUp Health Festival in San Francisco, CA. We also got to touch on an important point for Health Transformers to take note of — the role he sees entrepreneurs playing in solving the puzzle of drug discovery.
“Most of human biology is still not understood,” explained Vas. “And so, what I wonder as the first big moonshot I see happening around me in this room, is can artificial intelligence, can a series of very bright startups, start to change the possibilities of how we understand human biology and unlock what are probably another million targets that are out there but we don’t understand?”
Novartis and other companies are part of an enterprise that is working hard to discover new ways of improving and extending people’s lives. Vas Narasimhan applauds entrepreneurs, such as those in the StartUp Health Moonshot Academy, who are pursuing moonshot opportunities to help people live healthier lives.
Says Narasimhan, “At a big company like us, we’re overly centered on innovation that happens in Europe and the U.S. There’s so much potential. So many great ideas that we could actually bring forward if we were to open up the playing field in how we collaborate. And so, I’m quite excited about all of those possibilities.”