Wellness Reimagined: EY’s Pamela Spence On 5 Things That Should Be Done To Improve and Reform The Health & Wellness Industry

In our world of constant change, and with life moving faster than ever, topics such as mental health, self-care, and prevention have become popular buzzwords. But there are misconceptions about the meaning of self-care and exercise. Many opt for quick solutions — surgery, pills — to dull the problem without adequately addressing the underlying cause. Meanwhile, many parts of the industry are unregulated and oversaturated. People with years of training are competing with people with weekend training. Many providers are overworked, overwhelmed, and underpaid. The general public is not educated about asking the right questions when selecting a wellness provider. In the face of all this, what can be done to correct the status quo? In this interview series, we are seeking to hear from a variety of leaders in the health and wellness industries who agree that the wellness Industry is in need of an overhaul and offer suggestions about what can be done moving forward. As a part of this series, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Pamela Spence.

During the past two years, health, illness and how cutting-edge science can help us improve the former and protect us from the latter has been the central question for governments and populations around the world. The COVID-19 public health emergency caused disruption and dislocation on a global scale not experienced in recent decades, and the world has yet to return fully to its pre-pandemic normal in terms of supply chains, trade and economic relationships.

Yet throughout the pandemic, Health Sciences and Wellness has played a critical role, supplying the vital innovations, from diagnostics to the range of rapidly-developed novel vaccines that have helped to contain and control the impact of the virus. In turn, the industry itself has changed and evolved in response to the crisis. As Pamela Spence, Global Health Sciences and Wellness Industry Leader at EY argues, the way patients are treated is now in the early stages of a complete transformation, in which “analog,” siloed, traditional models of care are becoming gradually more connected and digitalized, and will ultimately lead to the emergence of an “Intelligent Health Ecosystem”. The key to the evolution of the “Intelligent Health Ecosystem” will be unlocking the power of data to enable better personalized outcomes.

In short, the shifts of the past two years towards greater use of telehealth and “hospital at home” approaches may be only the prologue to a more wide-scale transformation of the industry; digital technologies, artificial intelligence and other disruptive breakthroughs are finding increasing adoption by Health Sciences and Wellness companies, and they now have the opportunity to use these tools to rethink health care for the future. I spoke with Pamela Spence to discuss the challenges and the opportunities that now confront the industry, and the ways in which they can progress from the realities of present-day health systems into the “Intelligent Health Ecosystem” in which patients take center stage in care delivery.

Pamela leads EY’s 38,000-strong Global Health Sciences and Wellness Industry team, which focuses across the Life Sciences and Health sectors. She is Ambassador for Outcomes-based performance in Health Sciences and Wellness and an Advocate for Women in business and for Sustainable Futures.

Pamela joined EY in 1998. Prior to her current role, she focused on cross-border transactions, providing deal advisory services which included commercial and risk and governance operating models. She also worked for four years EY Global Accounts Committee and is a qualified chartered accountant as well as having an extensive background in organic chemistry.

Thank you so much for doing this interview. It is an honor. Our readers would love to learn more about you and your personal background. Can you please share your personal backstory? What has brought you to this point in your life?

From an early age I’ve been fascinated by how the human body works, its biochemistry and how amazing and balanced all the various cellular functions interact. It’s truly amazing and nature’s systems are a wonderful thing. Linked to that ‘how’ is a passion that started at school is how modern drugs work and I used to describe chemistry as really just ‘cooking’ and trying new recipes. That led to studying Chemistry at university and a focus on drug discovery and development and with various internships I discovered I also quite liked business strategy. So working those two elements plus my Chartered Accountancy exams brought me to EY 24 years ago where I was able to link both passions together working in a team of interesting people.

What is your “why” behind the work that you do? What fuels you?

Bringing new ways to solve quite difficult challenges, looking at what has worked before and asking “What if we looked at it this way…? is hugely exciting to me; plus bouncing ideas off each other, both with colleagues at EY but also those who work in Health Care and Life Sciences organisations.

It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

When I was an intern at ICI looking at ways to synthesise a new potential game-changing medicine, I took my eye off the ball, so to speak, the experiment exploded and a yellow sticky mess plastered itself all around the lab. There was no hiding from the event, although I didn’t fess up to the fact, I hadn’t watched the pH as instructed. My boss knew that, everyone knew the cause and I just looked stupid as I tried to explain. The lesson for me was there’s no point trying to hide a mistake, you just lose credibility!

Let’s now shift to the core focus of our interview. From where you stand, why are you passionate about the topic of Reimagining the Health and Wellness industries? Can you explain what you mean with a story or an example?

There are significant opportunities for transformation and underlying factors that make change really necessary. Everyone recognizes, for example, the growing burden of chronic disease worldwide as the global population ages, and the costs that imposes on health care in every country. At the same time, rapid advances in technology are opening new possibilities for how we diagnose and treat disease; there are so many transformative technologies coming through from artificial intelligence and machine learning, to blockchain, nanotechnologies, advances in robotics and automation, and so on that will all feed into the emergence of the “Intelligent Health Ecosystem”. The convergence of these technologies –with the science and research base of the traditional Health Sciences and Wellness industry has the opportunity to revolutionize how every individual gets treated.

When I talk about Reimagining the Wellness industry, I am talking about reimagining it from the perspective of the providers as well as from the perspective of the recipients and patients. Can you share a few reasons why the status quo is not working for both providers and patients?

Patients really need and demand better care than they get now, and it’s not surprising. If you think of the way that companies like Amazon, AirBnB, Netflix, Uber have succeeded in their own markets, you realize the overarching factor is what they’ve been able to offer consumers. They give their customers convenience, high levels of choice, and transparency. They all offer a seamless trading exchange that can provide personalized, predictive choices for the individual user. That’s what Health Sciences and Wellness companies need to be aiming at for patients. If we can unlock the power of data we can change that — and give patients a level of personalized care they’ve never known before.

Right now, providers can’t necessarily focus on delivering that because care systems are overstretched, there’s so much pressure on the workforce, and so on. But here again, I think data, and the AI data analytics tools we can use to turn that data into insights, can begin to make a difference. It’s a huge subject, but just consider the rising use of AI to help clinical decision support: triaging patients remotely, helping optimize physicians’ workflows by automating routine bureaucratic tasks, and a whole range of other operations across the value chain. AI won’t replace humans in delivering medicine, but as it rapidly grows in power and potential, it’s going to become an increasingly necessary supplement to human intelligence in enabling us to use data, and it will give providers more chance to focus on high-value tasks and put the human at the center.

Why do you think there is a good opportunity now to improve and reform the health and wellness industry?

There are big incentives to change the industry because the current model has structural issues, there is patient demand for change, and the technologies to deliver it. But above all, I would focus on the power of data, key to an “Intelligent Health Ecosystem”. There are unprecedented amounts of data available now, and according to some estimates health data is growing faster than data in almost any other sector. There are believed to be perhaps a trillion sensors in the world already, and increasingly these sensors will be extracting more and more data. We will have sensors on and even inside our bodies, from wearables, smart clothing, bio-tattoos to ingestible smart pills and even technologies like nanobots in the near future; then we’ll have another layer of sensors around us, in our embedded across our homes and vehicles, and in the future across the entire built environment, as smart cities become ever more a reality.

We need to get from simply amassing data to turning it into usable insights. AI is really beginning to deliver the power to interpret data. We are seeing AI begin to prove its worth in all kinds of areas of Health Sciences and Wellness, from computer-driven in silico drug discovery and development, through the use of AI to analyze radiological and other imaging data, which is already well-advanced, with more algorithms being approved for use in real-world settings every month.

Can you please share your “5 Things That Should Be Done To Improve and Reform The Health & Wellness Industry”? Please share an example or story for each if you can.

First and foremost, there needs to be a relentless focus on the individual patient. For me, the central point is always going to be patient needs and the personalized health experience, and if organizations keep that as their “north star” they have the chance to position themselves for success in the future.

Secondly, we need to use the data we are gathering effectively, which means not just using AI but building a better culture of data sharing within the industry. Right now, all the data sits in silos. Organizations are incredibly protective of their proprietary data, often viewing it as trade secrets that can’t be shared without harm to their own business. But ultimately, this data is not getting used because it is staying in these silos — overall, it simply has less value, to all stakeholders across the ecosystem, than it would do if it were better connected up. Indeed, I’d argue that companies will eventually see data more as a storage cost than as an asset per se; what matters is not owning the data, but being able to access and use it, and enabling wider access is what will unlock the data’s value. To make that happen, organizations need to work together.

Thirdly, we need to focus on value. It’s vital to ensure that companies get fair value for innovations that can help patients, and that payers get improved outcomes for their investment. We know that health systems find it hard to meet existing health care costs, and that costly new innovations like cell and gene therapy will enter the market in bulk in the near future. We need to be able to deliver and demonstrate the value of new innovations, and to this end the EY Health Outcomes Platform provides a simple, collaborative solution allowing biopharma companies and payers to rapidly create and conveniently track value-based contracts, meeting a key need for the industry.

Fourthly, access and affordability have to be a priority. There is sometimes a perception that personalized health approaches are an unaffordable luxury, but the truth is that a huge amount of current health care spending is wasted, because we aren’t getting the right treatments to the right people. Personalization can actually help health care spending become far more efficient and sustainable. This is part of the commitment to sustainability the industry is increasingly making, which includes focusing on affordability and access as well as ensuring that R&D addresses the real unmet needs of populations worldwide; for example, making clinical trials more reflective of real-world patient populations so underserved ethnic groups and other minorities are not left out of new personalized health innovations.

Fifthly, the industry needs to think about the big long-term picture. Health care in the future could and should look very different. As digital technologies increasingly link stakeholders together and allow greater data sharing and collaboration, as I mentioned earlier the ultimate progression as I see it will be the eventual emergence of an “Intelligent Health Ecosystem”. This will allow rapid, comprehensive and seamless interconnectivity across the sector, and enable data to be connected, combined and turned into usable insights at massive scale. As this ecosystem evolves, the patient always has to remain the central focus; we need all of this data and technology to be brought to bear on delivering a better personalized health experience for the individual. That’s the endpoint, and I believe, given the exponential pace of change, that it will arrive faster than we imagine; organizations need to start thinking in those terms now.

What do you think are the biggest roadblocks to reforming the industry? What can be done to address those hurdles?

There are a number of factors in play. While companies and organizations in general recognize the importance of rising consumer demands, of the impact of new technologies and of the inadequacy of traditional business models to deliver the future we need to see in health care, the process of adaptation has been pretty gradual to date. In part it’s a question of the scale of investment — a lot of companies are investing in pilots and small-scale experiments with new technologies and data, but ultimately they need to have the conviction to place bigger, bolder bets if they are going to be at the forefront of the change. In particular, while companies are investing in specific technologies, the bigger vision of connecting up the ecosystem — and in particular collaborating to unlock the power of data to deliver personalized care — remains a bigger challenge for them, and that’s what we need to see next.

I’m very passionate about the topic of proactive versus reactive self-care and healthcare. What do you think can be done to shift the industries towards a proactive healthcare approach? How can we shift the self-care mindset for consumers and providers alike?

The current explosion of data means it is simply possible to know so much more about the individual patient — some estimates say that every single human on the planet now generates an average of fifty terabytes of data per year. By turning that data into a deeper dynamic understanding of an individual’s biology, behavior, and background (social, economic and demographic factors are also critical determinants of health outcomes) we can understand so much more about a patient’s health as well as the risk of diseases they may develop. At once you have that information, you can focus on sustaining health. Care today is usually reactive rather than pro-active, and that’s largely because we don’t have — or rather, are not yet set up to use — personalized real-time data so that we can give patients and providers the tools to predict and prevent illness.

Thank you for all that great insight! Let’s start wrapping up. Can you share your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Why does that resonate with you so much?

It definitely is a quote from an amazing lady I heard speak 17 years ago, about how she (approximately six stone in weight) rowed across the Atlantic by herself once her husband, an Olympic rower, became so seasick he had to be airlifted from the race (he had only ever rowed on flat calm lakes). She had a sticker on the tiny boat in front of her that she looked at every day when she was rowing that said “Choose your attitude” and she made the finish line which is even more amazing given her size and she was on her own! We are all in control of the attitude we show up each day with no matter what life has thrown at us. I often reflect on that — and have pulled myself up on it many a times.

I’d also add — seeing displays of incredible mental strength enable us to all to attempt seemingly impossible things. Seeing my mother at 68 get to the top of Kilimanjaro was a memory and shared experience with her I will cherish for ever!

We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we both tag them. I appreciate your time and valuable contribution.

Rather than a big name celebrity, I actually think I’d love to meet some of the ICU nurses that work in our hospitals in very challenging conditions and learn from them how they manage themselves to keep going… I think again that determination and tenacity is a quality we might all learn from.

One last question, how can people reach or follow you?

I blog regularly on LinkedIn, and our latest thought leadership and insights are published frequently on ey.com.

Thank you for these really excellent insights, and we greatly appreciate the time you spent with this. We wish you continued success.

About The Interviewer: Maria Angelova, MBA is a disruptor, author, motivational speaker, body-mind expert, Pilates teacher and founder and CEO of Rebellious Intl. As a disruptor, Maria is on a mission to change the face of the wellness industry by shifting the self-care mindset for consumers and providers alike. As a mind-body coach, Maria’s superpower is alignment which helps clients create a strong body and a calm mind so they can live a life of freedom, happiness and fulfillment. Prior to founding Rebellious Intl, Maria was a Finance Director and a professional with 17+ years of progressive corporate experience in the Telecommunications, Finance, and Insurance industries. Born in Bulgaria, Maria moved to the United States in 1992. She graduated summa cum laude from both Georgia State University (MBA, Finance) and the University of Georgia (BBA, Finance). Maria’s favorite job is being a mom. Maria enjoys learning, coaching, creating authentic connections, working out, Latin dancing, traveling, and spending time with her tribe. To contact Maria, email her at angelova@rebellious-intl.com. To schedule a free consultation, click here.