52 - David Lindsay - Founding Oncora Medical and Leveraging RWE to Improve the Treatment of Cancer

Summary: Today’s episode is a conversation I had with David Lindsay, who is an MD/PhD student at Penn. He is also the Co-Founder and CEO of Oncora Medical, which is a Philadelphia based company developing of a digital health platform intended to improve the way oncologists access, organize and learn from past radiation treatment data. The company's platform uses predictive analytics to unify data on radiation oncology, enabling oncologists to analyze the side effects, success and failure of past treatments and offer better treatment to cancer patients. In the episode we talk about how he became interested in medicine, computer science, and entrepreneurship, and how he leveraged the Penn community to help found Oncora Medical. We talk more about what Oncora does, why he wanted to innovate in the cancer space, what it is like balancing being a student and a CEO, and some of the lessons David has learned as a leader. We also talk about important mentors of his, the challenges of electronic health records and interoperability, and a number of key decisions he and his team had to make as the company has grown. We wrap up with a discussion of some recent partnerships that Oncora has entered into, and what the future holds. - Ryan O'Keefe Footnotes David’s LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/wdlindsay/ Oncora Medical's Website https://oncoramedical.com/ Stephen Hahn (one of David’s early Mentors) https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/fda-organization/stephen-hahn Oncora and Varian Partnership https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/varian-and-oncora-partner-to-accelerate-precision-medicine-in-radiation-oncology-300917662.html