Name: Here's how Johnson & Johnson's CEO is using AI to end cancer
Uploaded: 2023-10-03
Duration: 13 min 44 s
Description: Alyson Shontell sits down with Johnson & Johnson CEO Joaquin Duato to discuss how AI is being used in cancer cell therapy to attack the cells and turn the cancer into a chronic illness. The company's also using robotics technology to assist surgeons to significantly improve the average outcome of the surgeries.

Alyson Shontell sits down with Johnson & Johnson CEO Joaquin Duato to discuss how AI is being used in cancer cell therapy to attack the cells and turn the cancer into a chronic illness. The company's also using robotics technology to assist surgeons to significantly improve the average outcome of the surgeries.

Here's how Johnson & Johnson's CEO is using AI to end cancer

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Alyson Shontell sits down with Johnson & Johnson CEO Joaquin Duato to discuss how AI is being used in cancer cell therapy to attack the cells and turn the cancer into a chronic illness.

Here's How Johnson & Johnson's CEO Is Using AI To End Cancer

First, I should note Johnson and Johnson has been one of 49 companies to be in the Fortune 500 List every single year since we've made it since 1955. This year, they clocked in at number 40. As Alan said, the health care and pharma markets have been booming. Um And you've been in the job for two years, but you've been at the company for 34. So you've seen quite a bit um two years in what's your primary focus and biggest surprise since becoming CEO? Thank you. And um it's, I'm proud to be uh the CEO of Johnson and Johnson in our, 100 and 38 years of history. We have had only eight CEO S uh and I am the first one who is not born in the US. And I'm proud to represent that. And uh certainly it's a great legacy that we have had during this period. So in becoming CEO of Johnson and Johnson, uh I have a dual purpose. One is to uh remain a company that is true to our mission of addressing uh difficult to treat diseases. Um And the other one, it's to be able to continue to be a company which is principal based people based and maintains the reputation that we have had during such a long period of time. Now, is it true that you didn't get the job at first? I mean, not the CEO job, but you initially, when you were interviewing 34 years ago, they said, no, it's true. I, when I finished graduate school, I interviewed with Johnson and Johnson and I didn't make it to the second interview. So um then I, I joined another company, a pharmaceutical company and eventually found my way back to uh Johnson and Johnson and I've been here for 34 years and I'm really a product of the development opportunities that Johnson and Johnson provided me working in different geographies in different sectors, in different functions. So I'm here. Really thanks to the opportunities that Johnson and Johnson provided me. I mean, the longevity of your career there, I think is telling and the attrition rate is shockingly low at Johnson and Johnson. Right. Yeah, it's, it's very low. Uh it's lower than the industry and our pr companies. And I think there's a number of reasons for having low attrition. One is the size of the company that enables people to work in different sectors and have careers within Johnson and Johnson. Sometimes I say Johnson and Johnson has its internal job market. The other one is that people simply like to work for Johnson and Johnson. Uh Our engagement levels are high. People like to work for a company with a purpose in health care. Uh And we are a company that pays a lot of attention to our people, their development. We just had yesterday, for example, we had a, a global learning day. So we gave all employees a full day to develop a learning mission and to get acquainted with the learning resources that they want to use. We are a company that pays a lot of attention to inclusion. So everybody feels good when they come to work. And certainly we like to believe that we are a caring company that we care, not only for the patients, but we also care for each other. So we, we try to have a strong health and wellness offering for our employees. So overall people like working in Johnson and Johnson and stay longer in Johnson and Johnson, our average tenure, for example, in the US is more than a decade so people can do careers and, and we are happy of that. We, we, we are glad that people like to stay at Johnson and Johnson longer. So when you became CEO and even in your memo to become CEO, you said, I think we should spin out the consumer business. Um You know, Johnson and Johnson can compete with l'oreal there, but should it? And so could you speak a little bit about KVI, which is the company that you spun out just earlier this year, it's now publicly traded. Um How you, why you did that? Um why is return to focus important for Johnson Johnson versus diversification of business? Yeah. So is our consumer company. So when you think about the Johnson and Johnson and the brands that you know about Johnson and Johnson Band Aid Tylenol or Baby shampoo? Now, they are all in KVI. Why did we decided to separate KVI and create a global consumer champion with? Because we thought that uh focusing on the consumer market and focusing on health care was going to deliver better results for consumers and for patients. Uh for us, it was very complex to be able to compete with l'oreal, as you mentioned in skin care. And at the same time, competing biologics with biopharmaceutical companies and in surgical robotics with medical technology companies. So we thought there was a benefit for Johnson and Johnson to be exclusively focused on health care, on research and development on innovation. And that was going to create a better platform for us to be true to our mission, not only in the next two or three years or post IPO, but during a long period of time. Um and what's your advice been to the new CEO? And how did you make sure that they were set up with a good culture and you maintained yours? I am, I am very proud of the, of the management team of the entire management team of including the new CEO come from Johnson and Johnson. They are also the product like me of the development opportunities of Johnson and Johnson. And uh I told him, uh you know, be patient and put perspective on things, learn how to listen more. And I gave him confidence that they were going to do great. So I put my emphasis in providing confidence to the management team and to give him some advice about uh be patient and put in perspective in the job of CEO, you have to be patient, you have to put perspective on things and I'm helped myself by being a Mediterranean. And uh I take things with certain perspective and I wanted to transmit that wisdom to him. Um Well, this conversation is short and so I want to make sure we hit on a number of things we've talked about that spin off for a long time. But one thing I do want to make sure I hit on is um R and D is a huge part of Johnson and Johnson. Um What are you seeing in the face? You said that this is the golden era for your business that there will be more change and more positive movements towards curing disease over the next few years than you've seen in the last number of decades. So, what are you seeing? That's exciting. What are the innovations and, and what are you doing with things like robotics? A I how is that all changing the industry? Yeah. So R and D is the, the, the heart of an innovation based company. Uh Last year we invested $14.6 billion in R and D. And Johnson and Johnson, we are one of the largest, if not the largest investor in R and D in life sciences. Um What we see now is a combination of more knowledge on the biology and genetics of disease with an acceleration of that due to technology, things like artificial intelligence, machine learning and now generative A I. It's helping us accelerate drug discovery and it's helping us also making medical technologies smarter. So that combination is what I believe is going to help us addressing some diseases that are considered incurable or diseases that create a lot of suffering around the world. Two examples. One is in the area of cancer. We are being very successful utilizing different treatment modalities in cancer. For example, now we are using in cancer cell therapy in imma tumors, utilizing your immune system cells to attack the cancer cells and we obtain incredible responses in a way that you could think that some cancers Emma cancers are going to become chronic diseases in the surgical side. Uh surgeons are now able to utilize robotic assisted techniques, better visualization, better sensors. They, those instruments are connected, they can provide them insights and they can significantly improve the average outcome of surgery. So those are things that are going to help accelerating discovery and progressing health care in a way that we have not seen in the last 10 years. And one thing we had a lunch previously and you had mentioned, you imagine knee surgery, but being done by maybe a robot versus a surgeon. I mean, think about the precision needed. I might prefer a robot for something like that than someone with a potentially shaky hands. Absolutely. All our instruments now have some component of intelligent intelligence or connectivity. So our instruments now have sensors that can measure pressure temperate to have visualization capabilities, which at the end of the day is software is digital that give an idea of the surgeon of where are they in, are they going to interfere with a critical structure and all that can be visualized and we can even provide uh guidance to the surgeon in real time or where they have to go. So that's gonna be transformational in the way we do surgery and it's gonna help improving the outcomes of a procedure, which is very common. I'm sure in the audience every one of you have had some type of surgery during your life. So that's important if we can improve the outcomes and the quality of surgery. When I think about what we can do as a company, uh we have the range of technologies to be able to do what no other company can do. We can do cell therapy, but we can do robotic surgery. We can do, we can do genetic or MRN A therapeutics and we can do also smart implants. So there's a lot of things that we can do as a company based on the number of technologies and capabilities that we have. So as the leader of a company, he used to lead in good times and in bad and with a company as large as Johnson and Johnson, there are hard things and there are lawsuits. Um You've had talcum powder lawsuits, opioid crisis to deal with um COVID. Um you know, having your vaccine essentially be dismantled. How do you lead in those hard times? How do you encourage your team to not lose morale? Um Stay focused, stay focused on the mission when there's a lot of hardship around? Yeah, we do it with conviction, a conviction on the principles of our credo that by the way, this year is the 80th anniversary of the credo was written. And uh we do it by having a trajectory of uh more than 100 years in which we have always tried to do the right thing for the patient. When we uh make a mistake, we take responsibility and when the facts, uh the science and the law are on our side, we stand by uh our products and we have been able to manage this um this balance during many years. But the people in the company working at Johnson and Johnson have a genuine passion of doing the right thing. And we don't do it for the recognition. We do it because we have convictions and those convictions normally help an organization to manage change. I'm convinced that purpose driven organizations are much better in managing change. And our organization has a strong tradition of being a purpose driven one. We internally, we say we are the original mission driven company based on the fact that our work was written 80 years ago, 80 years ago, talking about putting the patient first, the employees, the communities. And then if you do the right thing, uh it's gonna be good for the shareholder was and very innovative, very different. So I think that that's part of the energy that people at Johnson and Johnson have in order to navigate the ups and downs that anything in life it's going to present you with. Quick question from the audience. Yes. Right over here. Uh uh I wondered with the new legislation. Um what impact that's gonna have on the ability to do the research you're talking about and whether you think that the advantage in technology, sorry, if you can hear me uh will help take a will help um address the efficiency side. So maybe there will be more resources. I just wondered how you looked at that. We always want to be a constructive actor when it comes to health care. The recent legislation that you are referring to. I'm, I'm I'm assuming you're referring to an Reduction Act, right? And the fact that now, uh, Medicare is going to be fixing prices for some products. Uh, on one hand, uh, we believe that this, um, this legislation is misguided, uh in as much that, uh, there's been a lot of, or a number of challenges constitutionally to the law and there's a number of companies that have present the lawsuits. On the other hand, it's gonna have a chilling effect on innovation without addressing the basic issue that we have when it comes to pharmaceuticals, which is the patient affordability and the patient out of pocket costs. So inevitably, uh this will have an effect on, on, on R and D investments because it would make it more unpredictable and it would be particularly acute, not in the big company, not only in the big companies like Johnson and Johnson, but in the smaller companies that are funded by investors because the return for those investors is going to be more unpredictable. At the same time, it's gonna be shaping the way we invest in R and D. So, you know, on one hand, it doesn't address the issue of patient affordability, which is real. And on the other hand, it, it's going to have a chilling effect on innovation. Um Thank you all so much and thank you so much for being here with us this morning. Thank you.