Catalyzing Innovation to Improve Healthcare in Low Resource Settings

Monday, May 6, 2024

2:30 PM-3:30 PM

Joint BIOMED-Coulter Seminar
Dr. Jeffrey S. Barrett '86 Endowed Annual Lecture

Title:
Catalyzing Innovation To Improve Healthcare in Low Resource Settings
 
Speaker:
Steven E. Kern, PhD
Executive Director, Global Health (GH) Labs

Details:
Global Health Labs (www.ghlabs.org) innovates to co-create solutions that reduce health disparities, especially in low- and middle-income countries. As a nonprofit innovation lab fully funded by Gates Ventures (the private office of Bill Gates), we partner with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and other cross-sector leaders to help develop health technology solutions with the people who need them most. Critical to success in this effort is a strong appreciation for the context into which the innovation is intended to work and constraints (technical, financial, cultural) that will affect its impact.

I will discuss how we develop an appreciation for this context and understand these constraints to bring ideas forward for addressing healthcare challenges in low resource settings using examples from our current portfolio of work that includes novel diagnostic tests and AI innovations.  

Biosketch:
To the role of Executive Director of Global Health Labs (GH Labs), Steve Kern brings a passion for global health technology innovation and nearly 40 years of cross-sector experience in pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic modeling, clinical pharmacology, control systems engineering for drug delivery, and medical device development.  

Prior to GH Labs, Steve led the Quantitative Sciences Team at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, providing quantitative analyses that shaped program strategies and therapeutic product development efforts in global health for nearly a decade. Before that, Steve was Global Head of Pharmacology Modeling at Novartis Pharma AG based in Basel, Switzerland, where his team provided model-based drug development support to therapeutics initiatives that spanned a range of disease conditions and all stages of product development. Earlier in his career, Steve also served as Associate Professor of Pharmaceutics, Anesthesiology, and Bioengineering at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, where he also served as co-investigator for their NIH funded Pediatric Pharmacology Research Unit.  

Steve earned his PhD in Bioengineering from the University of Utah, MS in Bioengineering from Penn State University, and BS in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University.

Contact Information

Amy Campbell
akc32@drexel.edu