Christian Born Djurhuus: Rethinking the waterfall approach of drug development

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This week we host Christian Born Djurhuus, who is a physician by training, a self-proclaimed geek and has had an impressive career in life sciences in the intersections between drug development, leadership and technology. 

We speak about how the waterfall mentality is prevalent in life sciences, where specifications are developed by one group and tossed over the fence to the next group. This creates friction and elongates development timelines. 

But there is also a challenge with developing drugs without the necessary feedback from the market - or that the market moves on from the initial dream of how a drug would perform in the market. 

We speak about how no matter how well we plan out drug development, risks will materialize. Planning may give an illusion of control, but the mentality of understanding that a plan is a nice baseline to navigate according to, but not actual reality, is crucial for navigating. 

Christian predicts that our industry will pivot towards developing patient solutions to a higher degree rather than drugs alone. These need to be tailored to the diseases they are targeting - but also patient profiles. 

We dive into how speaking to each other across professional domains is key to creating most possible value. But also that domain knowledge is essential for digitization. 

The life cycles of technology and health are very different. We speak about the example of Chat GPT and drug development lifecycles - but also those of organizations. And that life sciences needs to catch up to the speed of technology. 

Guest:

Christian Born Djurhuus

https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-born-djurhuus-58a4395/ 

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