Tell us about your background and journey to joining Oracle Life Sciences?
I'm a physician by training and initially worked as an ER doctor. Later, I pursued an MBA and transitioned into the business world. I ventured into consulting, where I focused on life sciences, including biotech and pharma, working on various strategy-related and product roles. I had the opportunity to expand my career in Europe and eventually joined McKesson, where I played a strategic leadership role in growing their specialty business in oncology. I led the business case and product strategy for oncology technology and data focused NewCo, which became Ontada. After leaving McKesson, I joined Mirati Therapeutics, an oncology-focused biotech in San Diego, where I focused on leveraging data and technology to accelerate clinical trials and commercialization efforts.
How did you come to work at Mirati Therapeutics?
After my time at McKesson, I wanted to work in the health tech industry, ideally focusing on technology that intersected with real-world data and clinical trials, areas that I am passionate about. However, I came across Mirati Therapeutics, which was looking for innovative ways to use technology and analytics to accelerate various aspects of their operations, from clinical trials to commercialization. I was very intrigued as that would allow me to implement within pharma what I’d been advising them for the last decade. So, I joined Mirati and headed a variety of roles from WW Commercialization to Digital Innovation. Most recently, I served as VP of Real-World Evidence and Digital Engagement at Mirati, and I was focused on bringing in technology and RWD solutions for patient recruitment, clinical trial optimization, regulatory submissions, and market development.
What motivated you to join Oracle?
My career development conversations, even at Mirati, were always centered upon leading innovation / product strategy at a health tech company. When Oracle approached me, their vision and the opportunity were too compelling to ignore. Oracle is aiming to build something similar to the innovative work I did at McKesson only on a much bigger, global scale and across all specialties, given the extensive reach of Cerner and Oracle. Together, their combination of technology, data, and scientific and research consultation are unparalleled. There is no other company with the assets and vision to transform healthcare and life sciences. Hearing Larry’s vision and the team he is putting together, like Seema Verma, it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
How do you view healthcare and life sciences aligning better for the patient?
The patient is always the North Star, whether it is for the healthcare system or the life sciences industry. Both are trying to improve upon patient outcomes and care delivery. Healthcare and life sciences, while closely intertwined, remain distinct realms with unique user bases and technology requirements. The rapid vaccine development showcased to the world their interconnection, yet recognizing their individuality is vital for tailoring technology solutions to meet the specific needs of both sectors. By working separately yet connected, we can bridge the gaps between clinical research and clinical care, fostering innovation and improving patient outcomes. This collaborative approach is exemplified by Oracle Health and Oracle Life Sciences, where we enable our respective customer bases to improve their operations and efficiencies, and delivery better business and health outcomes.
How impactful will AI be for Life Sciences?
AI's impact on Life Sciences is already profound and poised to grow significantly, especially with advances in generative AI. AI’s influence is multidimensional, encompassing drug discovery, precision medicine, and operational improvements, with generative AI representing a particularly promising avenue for innovation and efficiency gains. Researchers and scientists are already accessing previously elusive insights and addressing historically resource-intensive challenges. Discovering novel molecular structures, forecasting drug-target interactions, and accelerating in silico drug discovery and molecular design, resulting in significant reductions in time and cost. AI efficiently sifts through large datasets, automates processes, fosters collaboration among teams, and can help to identify diverse patient populations for clinical trials, optimize trial designs, predict patient outcomes, and accelerate recruitment. The opportunities are limitless and will accelerate efficiencies and success rates of clinical research.
Talk about the promise of real-world data (RWD) and real-world evidence (RWE)?
As you know, RWD—like EHR, claims data, patient-reported outcomes, and more—serves as the foundation for generating RWE, which is used to understand natural history of disease and how healthcare interventions and treatments perform in real-world clinical practice. These are invaluable data sets that enhance clinical trial execution through better patient recruitment and trial design, generate drug safety and efficacy evidence, identify unmet needs and support drug reimbursement and more. Oracle is one of the world's largest EHR providers and has a deidentified proprietary real-world dataset with more than 100 million patient records and growing, one of the largest global patient-derived PRO databases, and a team of consultative experts. This represents incredible untapped potential for our customers and partners.
What excites you the most about Oracle?
The most exciting aspect of Oracle is our potential to connect disparate data sources and create a single, longitudinal patient record. Our goal is to provide a comprehensive and aggregated patient dataset that can be accessed across provider institutions and life sciences, all while maintaining de-identified data for privacy. The insights from this will revolutionize care delivery by allowing providers to prescribe what’s working best for their patients, allow life sciences to bring forth the best innovations that solve for the greatest unmet needs, and enable payer decisions on covering these life-saving therapies. With Oracle, I get to do what I love, which is building upon new ideas that accelerate clinical research and improve patient care. And I get to do it in a blue-sky approach that expands into uncharted, global territories. And all of this backed by a tech company. A leading tech company, not just a health tech company, a tech company.
What is your Oracle elevator pitch for Life Sciences?
With Oracle's acquisition of Cerner, we've created a powerhouse of technology, data, and expertise, which unlocks boundless innovation opportunities for our partners and customers. Our unmatched resources allow us to provide an end-to-end solution for drug and therapeutic development lifecycles—from discovery to clinical trials to commercialization. We can create a stronger bridge between clinical research and clinical care to deliver better patient outcomes. With our unwavering commitment to patient-centricity and our profound expertise spanning healthcare, clinical research, data, and cutting-edge cloud technology, we aim for transformative, collective global impact. Join us in leading this transformation.
What is something surprising that people might not know about you?
I’m an amateur photographer, with a penchant for landscapes. Lately though it’s been replaced by portraits of my kids.
About Lamisa Parkar
Lamisa Parkar, MD, is GVP of Strategy and Research Services for Oracle Life Sciences. A physician by training, she is passionate about cutting-edge technologies that enhance patient access, care delivery, and health outcomes. Lamisa has worked across provider and biopharma services in a variety of roles including corporate strategy, product and portfolio strategy, technology and data strategy, and is also a Limited Partner at Neythri Futures Fund, an historic first fund with a mission to increase the diversity quotient in the venture capital ecosystem. Most recently, Lamisa was VP of Real-World Evidence and Digital Engagement at Mirati Therapeutics, an oncology biotech based in San Diego, where she led digital innovation and evidence generation efforts to accelerate time to market and drive market development.
She earned her medical degree in India from Maharashtra University of Health Sciences and her MBA from The Fuqua School of Business, Duke University. A former Bay Area native, Lamisa recently moved to the greater Atlanta area where she lives with her husband, two kids and dog.