Litmus Health Announces Advisory Board as Real-Life Data Gain Traction in Clinical Trials
AUSTIN, TX (PRWEB) July 20, 2017 -- Litmus Health, a clinical data science platform focused on health-related quality of life, today announced its full advisory board. The board comprises leaders spanning business, technology, academia, and pharmaceutical research. The company also announced the promotion of James Crooks, PhD, former VP of Engineering, to Chief Technology Officer. Crooks will lead strategy and development of the Litmus platform.
With advances in remote monitoring devices such as wearables and other home sensors, individuals are creating more data at the point of experience than ever before. The challenge is successfully capturing and using it. Far too often in today’s clinical trials, researchers draw conclusions without data on what’s happening outside the controlled setting of the clinic.
The Litmus Health advisory board will offer expert guidance in helping Litmus realize the power of real-life data to improve trial endpoints and create better results through faster, more efficient research and development pipelines.
“The industry is under increasing pressure to get drugs to market faster and demonstrate more value. It’s imperative now more than ever to bring together top minds from multiple disciplines to help shape the future of clinical trials,” said Daphne Kis, CEO of Litmus Health. “We’re proud to have brought together such an impressive group of individuals who are committed to helping Litmus make the greatest impact possible.”
Since its public launch in October 2016, Litmus Health has continued to build out its data science platform to help bring real-life data and health-related quality-of-life information to the forefront of clinical research. The company is helping researchers realize the full value of their work from observational studies, therapeutic trials, and post-market research by uncovering fundamentally new insights from patient data.
“Medical research, like health care broadly, needs to start paying attention to what happens outside its own walls,” said Esther Dyson, Litmus Health advisory board member and executive founder of Way to Wellville. “Specifically, people’s behavior and environment have a huge influence on their health and on their response to disease agents, whether chronic or infectious. We will soon wonder how we could have conducted research without assessing external factors – just as a farmer might consider the weather. I’m delighted to be working with Daphne and her team in a company that is leading the way.”
The company also announced the promotion of James Crooks, PhD, from VP of Engineering to Chief Technology Officer. His unique contributions to product management and product development since the beginning have been paramount in creating the foundation for the Litmus platform. Prior to Litmus, Crooks trained at the University of Chicago as a computational biophysicist and data scientist dedicated to developing tools that improve biomedical research. Now, he will lead Litmus’s technical organization.
“The ability to span both disciplines of data science and life science is paramount for clinical research,” said Dr. Sam Volchenboum, Chief Medical Officer of Litmus Health. “James brings to the table the full spectrum, and has helped build our platform from the ground up. He is a huge asset both technologically and strategically, and we’re lucky to have him.”
The Litmus platform is currently being piloted at the University of Chicago in a clinical trial run by gastroenterologist Dr. David Rubin on the effects of activity, sleep, and diet on patients with Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD).
About Litmus Health’s Advisory Board:
The Litmus Health advisory board is made up of thought leaders dedicated to the power of real-life data collected at the point of experience to create faster, more efficient research and development pipelines.
Esther Dyson is executive founder of the Way to Wellville and chairman of EDventure Holdings, and a prolific angel investor. She is a long-time collaborator with Litmus co-founder Daphne Kis, as they spent 18 years working together on PC Forum and Release 1.0. Esther brings to Litmus decades of experience in advising and managing startups in health and digital technology.
Dr. Rebecca Kush is the founder and former CEO of CDISC (the Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium) and now the Scientific Innovation officer of Elligo Health Research. Becky has dedicated more than 20 years of her life to understanding and improving the science of clinical trials.
Dr. Sam Blackman is a pediatric oncologist and Vice President of Silverback Therapeutics. Sam has worked at Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, and Juno Pharmaceuticals and brings to Litmus a wealth of knowledge of how pharmaceutical companies design and run clinical trials.
Dr. David Rubin is an internationally recognized gastroenterologist specializing in inflammatory bowel disease. At the University of Chicago, he runs a research group focused on bettering our understanding and treatment of Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. He is Co-Director of the University of Chicago Digestive Diseases Center.
Richard Schwartz has spent his career building and leading technology companies to commercial success and acquisition by some of the biggest names in the industry. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from UCLA and has served as a senior computer scientist at Stanford Research Institute (SRI International), prior to founding his first company.
Professor Ian Foster was the long-time Director of the Computation Institute at the University of Chicago and is a distinguished fellow and senior scientist in the Mathematics and Computer Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory, and a professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Chicago. Dr. Foster led the development of the field of grid computing, which ultimately paved the way for the emergence of cloud computing.
To learn more about the new Litmus Health Advisory Board, please visit The Litmus Papers.
For more about Litmus Health, please visit: http://www.litmushealth.com
About Litmus Health:
Litmus is a clinical data science platform focused on health-related quality of life.
We use data collected at the point of experience from wearables, smart devices, and home sensors to guide management and to inform trial endpoints. Continuously measuring outcomes in multiple dimensions leads to faster, more efficient pipelines.
The answers we need are all around us. Learn more at http://www.litmushealth.com
Alexa Ball, Jones-Dilworth, Inc., +1 2179531638, [email protected]
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