Thought Leaders in Big Data: Charlie Lougheed, Co-Founder and President of Explorys (Part 1)

In our review of various Big Data players working on vertical apps, this time, we bring you a Healthcare IT story.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with some introductions. Please talk a little bit about yourself as well as Explorys.

Charlie Lougheed: Explorys is my third company. I was in my mid-teens when I started my first one. I was always driven to technology and entrepreneurship. I have this strange hybrid of experience in that I’ve spent a good amount of my career in large corporations as well. I’ve spent a good amount of time in the financial services sector, primarily around extending their online channel. I was responsible for both the technology as well as the business side. It was an interesting exposure. To some degree, it has given me some insight as opposed to being just a pure entrepreneur. I’ve had an opportunity to see what it’s like when you’re part of an organization with big moving parts.

In every company that I’ve been with and helped form, data has been at the forefront of it. Understanding the data around you has become more and more critical. As healthcare organizations take on more risks and value-based contracts where they get paid for the outcome as opposed to being just paid for the service, it is very important to understand their customer base, the patterns and the market related to those patterns, and risk.

It’s also critical in other areas within the healthcare sector specifically around life sciences where pharmaceutical companies continue to do the traditional research that they have in the past. With all the medical data that’s beginning to accumulate around us, it’s going to help provide them some good perspective into where their gaps are that go beyond just the molecules or the drug. Things like how that drug is used, to what degree it’s adhered to, and what behaviors, scenarios, and support structures make it the most effective.

If you look at the healthcare space that we’re in now, there’s this massive explosion of data particularly as more and more of these medical records go electronic. The other co-founder of the company Stephen McHale and I didn’t always think about healthcare. Having done a Big Data company in telecommunication and broadband, we looked at what the next thing we were going to do. Healthcare was just a great opportunity to apply some cool technology and more importantly to actually do something meaningful in the world as it relates to not only improving care but also improving the way that care is delivered. For that matter, how efficiently that care is delivered because at 18% GDP, something had to change. We found ourselves at the crossroads.

This segment is part 1 in the series : Thought Leaders in Big Data: Charlie Lougheed, Co-Founder and President of Explorys
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