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Saul Marquez:
Hey everybody! Saul Marquez with the HLTH Matters podcast. I want to welcome you back to another amazing episode. Today I have the outstanding Manny Montalvo on the podcast. He’s currently Senior Vice President and Head of Digital Health and Innovation at Teva Pharmaceuticals and a member of the North American leadership team. Manny is responsible for overseeing the US respiratory business and PNL, the US Commercial Innovation Work, and the US DIGIHALER franchise, including consumer marketing. Manny is also leading the global strategy and rollout of the DIGIHALER platform. Prior to assuming this role in September of ’21, Manny served as the Vice President of Global Digital Health Marketing and Commercial Analytics at Teva Pharmaceuticals. In 2020, Manny’s responsibilities increased to include strategic direction for the Teva Biologic program in digital health marketing. I’m excited to have him here to talk to us about the amazing innovative work that they’re doing. And so with that introduction, welcome to the podcast, Manny.
Manny Montalvo:
Thank you. I’m very excited to be here.
Saul Marquez:
It’s exciting to have you here. So before we kick off our discussion, and there’s so much that Teva Pharmaceuticals does, folks, I had a discussion with Manny before hitting the mic, and I learned so much about Teva. Part of what we’re going to do today is help educate you on what Teva Pharmaceuticals is, if you don’t know. Very likely out of five medicines in your cabinet, two of them are Teva, something to think about. So Manny, we’re going to start this off. Tell us a little bit about you. What is it that inspires your work in healthcare?
Manny Montalvo:
Yeah, so as I mentioned before, I started in healthcare about 25 years ago working for big pharmaceutical companies. And I think what attracted me to Teva was they are not a typical pharmaceutical company. They’re actually very innovative in the way that they approach the market. People always ask me, can you describe the culture at Teva? And I always say it’s the largest entrepreneurial company in the world, and that’s how we approach our business. We’ve been in business for over 100 years, and when you’re in business for that long, you always have to reinvent yourself. And part of that reinvention is about thinking about different markets and the way you go to market with those products. And so that’s one of the things that attracted me to Teva specifically for what I do at Teva today.
Saul Marquez:
So talk to us a little bit more about that. What’s your focus area there?
Manny Montalvo:
So I head up the Digital Health and Innovation group at Teva, and why we’re so excited about that, it’s the first time in the pharmaceutical sector where we’re integrating technology and molecules at the same time. So if you think about that perspective, right, we’re not software, we’re not a typical software company or a molecule company or a device company, we’re actually all of those components. So we’re integrating both a molecule, which is a drug, a device, and how to deliver that product, and software that goes with it so that we can monitor and really provide valuable information to the end user. And that itself is fantastic because, for the pharmaceutical sector, we were one of the first products ever to reach the market.
Saul Marquez:
Wow, that’s fantastic, Manny, and we’ve been having a lot of discussions around episode of care versus the entire journey, and I think this is a prime example of stitching it all together versus just creating a pill or an injection and putting it out there.
Manny Montalvo:
Exactly, so when you think about all those components and all those layers that have to happen, right, our software allows the end user to see for the first time how their medication is actually working for them. So we actually specialize in respiratory care, specifically asthma, and for the first time, a patient can actually see if the medication is actually reaching where it needs to get to, when they took it, how they took it. Most asthmatic patients walk away with two inhalers, so if you think about that from a consumer perspective, you have to think about when you take it. Do I take it in the morning? Which one am I supposed to take? The red one, the blue one, the white one? Our software eliminates all of that, and it provides you that information so that you can have a great conversation with your physician if the medication isn’t working or if it needs to be altered.
Saul Marquez:
That’s fantastic, you know, making the impact of the medication measurable, documenting it in the software to help with that continuous touchpoint with your physician.
Manny Montalvo:
And this is why I love working at Teva. So we always start off with, what’s our mission? Why did we invent this product? And at Teva, we have a group of scientists, medical physicians that are on board, data scientists, software engineers, traditional marketing people, we actually believe that one day we will be able to predict an asthma attack from ever happening again. If you just stop and think about that, right? For every parent that’s out there, for every person that suffers from asthma, if you think about how many times you actually have an asthma attack and you can’t breathe, we believe that our technology one day will enable us to predict that from ever happening again, and that’s the beautiful thing of technology and that’s why we’re excited to be here at HLTH.
Saul Marquez:
That’s fantastic. Well, it’s very exciting, and digital health is rapidly expanding space. So, Manny, what sets Teva apart from other companies working in this area?
Manny Montalvo:
So from a pharmaceutical perspective, right? I think what separates Teva from the others, and we’re all pushing for the same thing, we actually want to see technology infused in pharmaceuticals. If you think about it, we’re the last industry to really adopt technology. We don’t compete with other pharmaceuticals because we actually want us to all move in that direction, but what sets us apart from it is our mindset, because we have actually thought about how we want to approach the market and we do it collaboratively. We actually work with other tech companies and that’s one of the reasons why we’re so excited about being here at HLTH. We announced two technology collaborations here at HLTH with other tech companies that are here today.
Saul Marquez:
Would you like to share with the listeners?
Manny Montalvo:
Yeah, absolutely.
Saul Marquez:
That didn’t have a chance to attend the meeting.
Manny Montalvo:
Yeah, it’s very fantastic. We announced a partnership with Rimidi as well as HealthSnap where we can integrate that data, because as you know, collecting data but doing nothing with that data doesn’t improve outcomes. So we wanted to make sure that we partner with the right partners in order for us to have that data be used in order for us to fulfill our mission.
Saul Marquez:
Well, congratulations. I mean, that’s huge.
Manny Montalvo:
It is huge, and that’s why we cannot do it alone. So if we really want to change the way medicine is viewed by, and update pharmaceuticals and more into the technology world, we have to do it together as a collaborative effort.
Saul Marquez:
That’s great, you know, one of the other things that we discussed is the difference between a pipeline business and a platform business, and a platform business being one that actually has that feedback loop with customers. Talk to us about how you guys come up with your innovations.
Manny Montalvo:
Again, from a pharmaceutical perspective, right, we would just launch a product, right? That’s pipeline, right? As you know, in the tech world, we do two updates a year and those updates are based on customer feedback on what’s working with the platform, what enhancements we need to do to the platform, what other features and benefits need to be added. So we’re constantly getting feedback from our customers on what we need to do. So right now the platform is in two languages, it supports both English and Spanish, and we have plans to launch it in our international markets as well as the European markets, which is a host of other languages. That’s just an example of what we do, right? One day the end user, the customer, would actually be able to order product directly from the app, avoiding having to call your doctor or having to go to the pharmacy, so all of that will be engineered in the software. So those are the type of enhancements of what we have on the board, as you know, of feedback that we get from our customers.
Saul Marquez:
I love it. Well, Manny, you mentioned Teva’s platform. How does your technology and approach differ to others in this space?
Manny Montalvo:
Yeah, I think what’s unique about our platform is the way that we approach the business. So at Teva, our group is isolated from the larger organization to a large extent because we wanted to make sure that the software, that’s exactly right, that’s where the word digital health and innovation comes from, right? We wanted to make sure we have the legal team’s house together, the regulatory folks, the patient compliance folks, privacy data engineers, right, data scientists wanted to make sure that they were all in and focused on digital health, and I think that’s a very unique model for Teva. And I don’t know any other pharma companies that are operating the way that we do.
Saul Marquez:
That’s differentiated and to know that you have this safe space to create where knee-jerk-nose happen.
Manny Montalvo:
Yeah, you should come visit us at our headquarters. We actually have.
Saul Marquez:
Where is the headquarters?
Manny Montalvo:
It’s in Parsippany, New Jersey. We actually have an innovation room because we need to whiteboard, right? We need to create and have space where we can put things on the board. Does it work? Does it not work? How do we operationalize this? What type of coding needs to happen? What kind of API needs to be written? So you have to have that collaborative space and you have to have management supporting that space and that freedom to operate.
Saul Marquez:
Well, kudos to you for leading the team and the leadership team at Teva for recognizing this and making it available, and putting it into play. It’s all about taking action, especially now, right where we’re in a contracted market, and so I believe that now is the time to seize the moment on some major moves. There’s opportunities through partnerships, acquisitions, that may be less costly than maybe they would have been 12 months ago, so I think now as a buyer’s market and the time to innovate. How do you see Teva’s vision for the future of digital health intersecting with other players in healthcare delivery?
Manny Montalvo:
Yeah, so we talked a little bit about this collaborative nature that we have. So these two deals that we have today are not the end-all-be-all, right? We’re actually an open source. We want to actually partner, we want to work with more pharmaceutical companies, we want to work with other tech companies. So we actually want to build an ecosystem that it’s … and service for the customer. From the minute you get prescribed that medication to the minute it gets home, we want to actually deliver a full ecosystem that supports that journey.
Saul Marquez:
Well, that’s great vision. It’s following that, the entire lifecycle of your product.
Manny Montalvo:
Exactly, the other thing that’s also unique about Teva is that about 40% of our folks that are working in digital space today did not come from traditional pharma.
Saul Marquez:
Really?
Manny Montalvo:
Yeah, they come from all other walks of life. Most of them have never been in a pharmaceutical world, and I think that brings new life to the organization as well.
Saul Marquez:
Well, that’s fantastic. And so you shared your announcement, working with these two new partners, at HLTH Conference. What do you expect to be the biggest impact of this expansion?
Manny Montalvo:
Reaching more patients, that’s really what’s about for us. As you know, the more patients that go on our platform, the better the technology gets, and that technology allows us to fulfill our mission of one day being able to predict an asthma attack from happening.
Saul Marquez:
That’s a fantastic vision. What are you most optimistic, Manny, about the future of digital health?
Manny Montalvo:
Well, being here at HLTH today really kind of opened my eyes this week because I now am a strong believer that the pharmaceutical sector will transform. One way or another, it’s going to happen. And I think we’ve been very reluctant to embrace change, real change, right? And just being here at this week, you can just feel it in the room, it’s happening.
Saul Marquez:
I feel it too, and I love your energy as well, Manny. I know that the work that you’re doing there and that the team’s doing there is going to make an impact for the better. What closing thought would you leave the listeners with today?
Manny Montalvo:
That’s a great question. Check us out. Check out Teva Pharmaceuticals, check out DIGIHALER, learn more about our business. We’re always looking to bring folks on board and we’re not your traditional typical pharmaceutical company.
Saul Marquez:
That’s fantastic, Manny, really appreciate it, and I thank you for your time.
Manny Montalvo:
Thank you very much. It’s a pleasure to be here.
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