AI in Clinical Research: How to Maximize Efficiency and Patient Centricity

Michael Ibara, PharmD, Chief Data Officer, Elligo Health Research®

Michael Ibara has more than 20 years of experience in clinical research and development. Throughout his career, he has sought to improve healthcare by bringing together healthcare data and digital technologies. His interests include regulatory and policy implications for digital healthcare, exploring the factors needed to allow interoperability of healthcare data for all stakeholders involved and implications for the use of big data, machine learning and natural language processing to improve our ability to perform regulated clinical research.

Before joining Elligo, Michael was the Head of Digital Healthcare for the Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium (CDISC). There, he led the FDA eSource project and Healthcare Link efforts with registries, clinical trials and mobile health to enable the use of real-world data from healthcare for regulated research and decision-making. Prior to CDISC, Ibara was Head of Business Development Coordination and Innovation and also Head of Pharmacovigilance Innovation at Pfizer, where he worked for 15 years in various positions, leading implementations of global systems and large-scale.

Paul Della Maggiora, CEO & CTO, Avallano

Paul Della Maggiora leads Avallano, a software company nestled in Greenville, South Carolina, as CEO and CTO. Avallano is breaking new ground in healthcare and life sciences, employing a patented approach that combines patient-centric privacy safeguards with personalized recommendations, trials and content. This strategy enables companies to engage with patients in a uniquely consumer-centric manner and work towards the vision for personalized precision medicine. Della Maggiora began his career with a computer science degree focused on AI and computer vision. His path led him to software companies like IBM, the then “startup” Cisco in 1994, Motorola, Avaya and eventually NCR.

Throughout his career, Della Maggiora carved out a reputation for excellence in a variety of leadership roles, from software architecture and development to big data analysis and technical sales. His strategic foresight and technological acumen have been consistently on display in his design and execution of numerous global platforms, especially surrounding privacy and personalization. He facilitated significant improvements in consumer and patient interactions, the delivery of personalized recommendations and the application of big data for prescriptive analytics. His work can be seen through his engagements with notable global clients in healthcare, government, military, retail and hospitality. His prolific career, patent portfolio, publications and contributions to the technological landscape have all converged in the formation of Avallano.

Enrique Garcia-Rivera, PhD, VP of AI, Bullfrog AI

Enrique is a technical professional at the intersection of computer science and biology, leveraging data science to solve problems in drug discovery and healthcare. He led various high-throughput screening efforts at the Broad Institute, most notably for oncology and modulators of protein degradation. At inference, he worked on combining orthogonal data types (-omics, literature, claims, EHR) for use in analytical challenges across the drug development cycle, from early-stage discovery and target identification to post-launch life cycle management. Most recently he was at ROME Therapeutics, where he developed a cloud-based platform for the quantification of genomic repeats in clinical sequencing data, with a focus on oncology and autoimmune disease. He holds a PhD from Harvard University in Biological and Biomedical Sciences.