Down the Rabbit Hole: One Year of Transforming Healthcare Data at Cornerstone AI
One year ago, I took a leap of faith and joined Cornerstone AI. Over the years, I’ve found myself going deeper and deeper into the healthcare data space—like Alice in Wonderland, each step takes me down a rabbit hole of surprising challenges and discoveries. While the topic of healthcare data came up in my consulting days, my first real experience was at COTA, where we were focused on getting unstructured data out of cancer patients various EMRs to drive cancer drug research, then later at Ontada (McKesson), where we managed an EMR for community oncology providers and enabled biopharma research and commercialization with data and solutions. These experiences taught me how pivotal quality data can be in driving better healthcare outcomes (but also how much pain exists in the absence of it) and drew me to Cornerstone AI, a company dedicated to raising the bar on healthcare data quality.
Soon after I joined Cornerstone AI last year I shared my initial perspectives, “Clearing the Path: How Cornerstone AI Is Reshaping Data Dynamics in Life Sciences”. A year in, I want to share my reflections on how and where we will drive real change in healthcare data quality, including why a demo pales in comparison to the real “aha’ moment, lab data - an area we are seeing big lift in value to our partners, and why biopharma needs a unified and consistent quality engine.
Turning Proof-of-Concept Into Proof-of-Value
I’ve seen firsthand how transformative our platform can be when it’s applied to real, messy, imperfect data, but also how the transformation in theoretical terms is not as compelling. In my customer conversations over the past year, we often start with demos with synthetic data - which are great for illustrating a concept, and gaining initial buy-in. However, the real “aha” moment happens when prospective partners see their own data cleansed, harmonized, and made far more valuable than they ever imagined. Suddenly, it’s not just a theoretical exercise: it’s about meaningful insights in their world.
Raising the Bar for Lab Data: Partnerships That Deliver Results
This past year, we’ve concentrated on lab standardization: assigning LOINC codes, standardizing units and ranges, and improving lab data fidelity across the board. We’ve announced partnerships with Komodo and Diaceutics, with more on the way. While lab data might sound niche, it has a growing impact on clinical decisions. Small inconsistencies can have outsized effects on patient access to medications and outcomes. We are extending our capabilities in this area, offering customers reliable reporting and helping them and downstream customers drive better, data-informed results - check out our new lab page to learn more or feel free to reach out to me.
A unified and consistent quality engine
While life science companies are increasingly utilizing real world evidence, a step that takes too long is confirming that you are getting what you are buying (this is applicable to existing and new data purchases). Typically this is done by technical resources (in-house or consulting companies) and can be many weeks. One of our lighthouse big pharma customers is leveraging our software to take the time down for these steps considerably. But more importantly for them, we’ve provided a unified and consistent quality framework for evaluation. Our software provides non-technical and technical users a point and click solution - you can achieve more with less manpower and bring feedback back to the data sources to improve the underlying data quality.
What’s Next: Sharpening Our Focus
We do what we do to enable healthcare data to have a greater impact on patients - through saving significant time on core job functions and tangibly improving data quality, a necessity for clinical research. As I head into year two, we’re doubling down on what works: refining our lab data capabilities, enhancing our data quality assessment tools, and building out new areas such as a cohort builder, harmonization and schema design solutions. Each evolution of our products helps our partners transform raw, inconsistent data into the kind of trustworthy insights that improve patient outcomes while creating economic value, saving time, and increasing productivity.
Delivering on the Promise
A year ago, Cornerstone’s vision got me excited. Now, I’m convinced it’s not just possible but inevitable because of our team, culture, and focus on execution. I’ve got a deep passion for competing and building - and I believe in our team over any other. My first year has been a rewarding journey with some big milestones, and I can’t wait to see what we’ll achieve next.
