Cutting Through the Noise: a Q&A with Director of Data Science at Kinetic

An Interview with Bharathi R. , Director of Data Science for Kinetic? at Syneos Health?

Working with big data to solve healthcare problems is a vital part of the work being done at Syneos Health. As part of that effort, it is key to the success of Kinetic, where a team of PhD and Masters’ level data scientists and analysts from around the globe disseminate vast amounts of healthcare data and analyze findings to help life sciences companies reach healthcare providers (HCPs) and improve patient outcomes across the asset lifecycle.

Leading this important data science team is Bharathi Ramachandran, Director of Data Science. With a wealth of knowledge in the healthcare data science space, Bharathi is driven by the mission of meaningful work and by the desire to understand both the micro and macro levels of the industry—what minute data points can teach us about global trends and how we can make business decisions informed from those findings to help improve patient health.

Syneos Health: What makes the Kinetic data science team unique?

Bharathi: The Kinetic team is made up of PhD and Masters’ level scientists, most of whom have healthcare-industry expertise. That’s actually quite unique. Data scientists tend to be generalists who understand the methodologies and core statistical principles of data science and can apply that knowledge to any industry. But because the scientists and analysts at Kinetic, like myself, also understand the healthcare industry, we can translate data more conscientiously, knowing the problems life science companies, HCPs and patients face on a day-to-day basis. That’s an important distinction between our data science team and others.

Syneos Health: Can you talk more specifically about how having life science expertise affects data translation?

Bharathi: Sure. The amount of data in the healthcare industry is incredibly vast, and it keeps growing every day. When data teams are working with that amount of data, their job is to cut through the noise, so to speak, build the right models, ask the right questions, and translate findings into meaningful insights that will help solve business problems. But when you have a team that doesn’t have industry experience, their ability to frame relevant questions and generate meaningful insights in that context is limited. You’ll see that they will translate data in ways that might tell alluring stories but that don’t have much use. In my mind, they haven’t cut through that noise. At Kinetic, our team has the industry experience to look at data from multiple healthcare-industry perspectives that other teams might not be able to do. That’s beneficial because it means we have a greater opportunity to develop more meaningful insights that lead to making better business decisions and products that will, ultimately, serve patients.

Syneos Health: What other expertise defines Kinetic?

Bharathi: We are experts in building scalable AI and ML solutions for various life science problems.

Syneos Health: How does that help life science customers looking to reach business goals?

Bharathi: If you are a life science company, you want a team that can showcase multiple approaches to a question or problem early on and work collaboratively to pick the right solutions that align with your goals and accommodate your business constraints. Applications of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) can enable faster and more agile solutioning to help answer these critical questions that can drive ROI and bring life-saving therapies to market faster.

Syneos Health: Kinetic defines its work as building relationships with HCPs from lab to life. What specifically does that mean for the data science team?

Bharathi: All our solutions are geared toward reaching and optimizing interactions with those HCPs who have an increased capacity to prescribe in commercial settings, refer in clinical settings, and get educated in medical affairs settings. Specifically, we have developed an audience intelligence capability using AI and machine learning that can locate and leverage these propensities in HCPs using historical and real time behavioral data that pinpoints high-impact audiences for our customers.

The way we build HCP audiences is multidimensional and not solely based on prescribing or treatment behavior or patient volume. Rather, we profile HCPs more holistically based on various data points.

To learn more about Kinetic's capabilities and how our team continues to build lasting relationships with HCPs, visit our Insights Hub here.

The?Syneos Health Insights Hub?generates future-focused, actionable insights to help biopharmaceutical companies better execute and succeed in a constantly evolving environment. Driven by dynamic research, our perspectives are informed by our insights-driven product development model and crafted by subject matter experts focused on real answers to customer challenges to help guide decision making and investment.