Enabling a Digital Trust Ecosystem in Healthcare with PharmaLedger

How can we build a healthcare system that fosters trust, transparency, and collaboration between diverse stakeholders? In this episode of The (un)Trustables, host Darrell O'Donnell sits down with Daniel Fritz, Executive Director, and Marco Cuomo, Chief Technology Officer of the PharmaLedger Association.

PharmaLedger is pioneering a digital trust ecosystem in healthcare, leveraging blockchain. But with players as varied as pharmaceutical giants, patient advocacy groups, NGOs, and technology vendors, how do you align interests and drive consensus?

Guests:

Daniel Fritz: Dan is the Executive Director of the PharmaLedger Association, a not-for-profit based in Switzerland with the purpose of enabling and fostering a Digital Trust Ecosystem (DTE) in healthcare. The Association is the result of a 3-year, 30-member public-private PharmaLedger consortium where Dan served as the Industry Project Leader. Dan worked at Novartis in Switzerland and Germany for 20 years in supply chain, manufacturing, and systems architecture. He has over 30 years of leadership and supply chain IT experience in the US Army, financial, and pharma industries. He holds a B.S. from the United States Military Academy at West Point and an MBA from Duke’s Fuqua School of Business.

Marco Cuomo: Marco is the Chief Technology Officer of the PharmaLedger Association, responsible for defining the platform technology for a Digital Trust Ecosystem in healthcare to bring the benefits of blockchain to patients and partners. He was previously with Novartis in Switzerland for more than 17 years, where he served as the Director of Tech Products & Innovation, responsible for exploring, engineering, and implementing emerging technologies, with a focus on blockchain and its application in the healthcare industry. He began his career as a programmer in software development in the financial industry and has had roles in engineering, operations, service management, solution design and digital strategy.

In this conversation, Daniel and Marco discuss:

• The challenges of uniting competitors around a shared vision
• Overcoming resistance to new paradigms and decentralized models
• Using real-world use cases to illustrate blockchain's transformative potential
• Designing governance to represent all stakeholders' voices
• The imperative shift from "ownership" to "influence" in ecosystem thinking

Tune in for a candid look at the triumphs and growing pains of catalyzing change across an industry often set in its ways. You'll gain a deeper appreciation for the rewards of cross-sector collaboration in tackling healthcare's most complex problems.

Key Insights

• PharmaLedger brings together pharmaceutical companies, technology vendors, patient groups, and other healthcare stakeholders to build shared digital solutions based on blockchain and decentralized architectures
• The vision is to create a digital trust ecosystem that enables transparency, security, and efficient information exchange across the healthcare value chain
• Achieving consensus among diverse members with competing interests is an ongoing challenge that requires compromise, long-term vision, and inclusive governance
• Focusing on clear value propositions for each stakeholder, rather than evangelizing specific technologies, generates more buy-in
• Transitioning from centralized, "ownership" mindsets to collaborative "influencing" is a paradigm shift essential for ecosystem success

Strategies

• Developing proofs-of-concept using tangible, high-impact use cases (like digital product information tracking)
• Structuring the association with varied membership classes and equitable board representation
• Creating an  innovation lab to explore and iterate on new ideas in a low-risk environment
• Remaining technology-agnostic and focusing communications on solving core business needs
• Designing projects for ecosystem-wide mutual benefit rather than competitive advantage

Process

• Transitioning PharmaLedger from an EU-funded initiative to an independent Swiss Association
• Evolving the association's governance model to empower individual project's autonomy
• Introducing new stakeholder groups gradually as shared understanding matures
• Pivoting messaging from "blockchain-enabled healthcare" to "digital trust ecosystems"