When CSL Limited CEO Paul Perreault looks out at the post-pandemic health care landscape, he sees a chance to do things differently.
Digitization – always a priority – is now all encompassing, touching everything, Paul told biopharmaceutical leaders during Thursday’s fireside chat with Bayer Pharmaceuticals CEO Stefan Oelrich at the Longwood Healthcare Leaders Webconference.
For example, a new CSL Plasma app shaves 20 minutes off the amount of time plasma donors spend at the donation center. And that savings has the potential to be multiplied times millions of donors each year, Perreault said, allowing us to process more donors giving plasma to make life-saving and life-enhancing therapies for patients. In March, CSL Plasma announced the progressive launch of the new Rika Plasma Donation System to its centers, further reducing donation time and improving the experience for both donors and employees.
“From an operational perspective, we have to digitize everything we're doing from the time the donor donates at the bedside through the manufacturing process,” he said.
Perreault was among biopharma CEOs, heads of R&D, top academic researchers and health care investors who convened virtually this week for the Longwood Healthcare Leaders Spring 2022 meeting. The Longwood Fund creates and invests in science-based companies that develop novel solutions for important medical problems.
CSL, a leading global biotech company, makes medicines to treat rare and serious diseases and is also a leading provider of influenza vaccines. The company operates a network of plasma centers that collect donated plasma for the sole purpose of making plasma-derived medicines that treat hemophilia, immune system problems and other conditions. Plasma is the clear, straw-colored liquid portion of blood that contains antibodies and other proteins.
Perreault has raised digitization and innovation in recent speaking engagements, saying that some shifts made out of necessity in the height of the pandemic could lead to permanent progress, particularly in the area of clinical trials.
Perreault and Oelrich also discussed leadership. Leadership connects to innovation and innovation can’t happen unless employees feel free to follow their instincts, try and fail and try again, Perreault said.
“If you want to innovate, you need to unleash people and in order to unleash people, you need to make sure they understand how far they can go on their own,” he said.
CSL, driven by its promise to patients and to protect public health, aims to seed innovation throughout the whole of the organization, not just R&D.
“We talk about innovation in every job, whether you work in a plasma center, you are a commercial leader, you are in finance, or I&T, etc. We ask: Where are you going to innovate within your job to make sure that we're moving ahead and bringing ideas forward?”
