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Christopher Boone, Vice President, Global Head of Health Economics and Outcomes Research, AbbVie

Christopher P. Boone’s path to power

Boone is an accomplished global executive, strategist, social scientist, and data technologist with a passion for reinventing and transforming healthcare and life sciences companies utilizing enterprise data & analytics capabilities to drive value creation. Boone has a career-long history as a dynamic, innovative, and transformative data & analytics executive, thought leader and a public voice on the power of real-world evidence, health informatics, and enterprise data & analytics, and its ability to radically transform the global health care system into a learning health care system.

Currently, Boone serves as the vice president, global head of health economics and outcomes research at AbbVie. He is also an adjunct assistant professor of health administration at the New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, an active board member of several influential organizations, and a co-founder of a few start-up companies. Prior to AbbVie, he served in two different roles at Pfizer: (1) the vice president and head of global medical epidemiology and big data analysis, and (2) the vice president and global head of real-world data and analytics.

Boone has been recognized as a inducted member of the Executive Leadership Council (ELC), Top Diverse Leader by the Illinois Diversity and Leadership Council (2021), a Global Top 100 Innovator in Data & Analytics (2020, 2019), an Emerging Pharma Leader by Pharmaceutical Executive (2018), and a Top 40 Under 40 Leaders in Health (2017) by the National Minority Quality Forum (NMQF).

Boone holds appointments to some of the most influential national committees focused on health data and patient centricity, including the Board of Governors for PCORI, the Board of Directors for Global Medical Response, the Board of Directors for Stewards of Change Institute, the Advisory Board of Mango Sciences, the Advisory Board of TrialBee, the American Heart Association’s Clinical Studies Expert Panel, the Global Liver Institute for Liver Health Equity Advisory Board, and the Strategic Advisory Committee for the Texas Biomedical Institute.

Boone has served on other committees over his career, including the Executive Board of Directors for the Patient Advocate Foundation, the Executive Board of Directors for the National Patient Advocate Foundation, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Federal Health IT Policy Committee, the HHS National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics (NCVHS) Working Group on HHS Data Access and Use, the advisory group for American Society of Clinical Oncologists’ (ASCO) CancerLinQ, the Board of Directors for SHARE for Cures, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Data Across Sectors for Health (DASH) Initiative, and the Interoperability Committee for the National Quality Forum.

Boone earned a B.S. in management information systems from the University of Tulsa, a M.S. in healthcare administration from the University of Texas at Arlington, a PhD In public affairs and health policy from the University of Texas at Dallas, and two executive certificates from the Harvard Kennedy School. He is a fellow of the American College of Health Executives and a fellow of the Healthcare Information Management & Systems Society.

What stage has your organization reached on its data maturity journey?

If you’re considering the 5-stage data maturity framework, AbbVie falls somewhere between the learning and developing stages. That said, there is tremendous momentum in building out more robust data capabilities and data governance for the enterprise. Pharmaceuticals is a complex industry and highly regulated, so there are appropriate protocols that must be followed.

Tell us about the data and analytics resources you are responsible for

We have approximately 150 people who are mostly U.S.-based and as a function we sit in the research & development division of the company. Our personnel span the spectrum as it pertains to formal training and skill sets, as we have PhD- and master’s-level trained economists, health services researchers, epidemiologists, biostatisticians, pharmacists, policy analysts, data engineers, AI/ML scientists, and even a few health care providers.

What challenges do you see for data in the year ahead that will have an impact on your organization and on the industry as a whole?

There are several key data challenges that we must address as an industry, including: (1) addressing the issue of data management and scaling, as we spend an inordinate amount of time on data accessibility, maintenance, and linkage; (2) addressing the challenge of effectively exchanging vast amounts of disparate sensitive data from external sources, which is needed for much of the analyses we conduct; and (3) maintaining compliance with any (and all) regulatory mandates, privacy and cybersecurity.

Have you set out a vision for data? If so, what is it aiming for and does it embrace the whole organization or just the data function?

The vision is for the company to be able to execute better, faster, and cheaper than it currently does today. Our particular focus is on generating product value evidence using data and analytics to empower internal and external decision-making, which includes regulators, payers, providers, and patients.

Have you been able to fix the data foundations of your organization, particularly with regard to data quality?

Yes, but I would not state it is 100% resolved. We have many different data types across the organization that are used for entirely different purposes. Some of this data could reside on internal servers, while other data types can live in the cloud powered by an external agency. We are focused on establishing data governance that will enable higher data quality for the data that we use to conduct our business.

Christopher Boone
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