BRAVE
NEW WORLD
“We now can create a pathway
to fight cancer to a standstill,”
Soon-Shiong tells me in an interview here. “Not to cure it, per se,
but to make it a survivable feature
of the human condition.”
While he is focusing on cancer
— his specialty — his basic idea
is at once profound and simple:
to map the molecular life of all of
mankind in the service of better
health for each individual. Linking
research, treatment and careful
monitoring is also the only way to
control costs and create accountability in medical care, he says.
The question is whether his
approach is practical, or even possible. Soon-Shiong is out to prove
that it is — and that it is, in fact,
the only way forward.
While the most powerful man
in Washington struggles to expand
health insurance, the richest man
in Los Angeles is methodically
constructing a far more fundamental medical effort: a digitally
enabled, science-driven, personalized health care system.
With Washington distracted by
the insurance issue — and with
federal science and tech research
hampered by “sequester” budget
cuts — privately funded efforts
such as Soon-Shiong’s are all the
HUFFINGTON
12.22.13
more crucial.
President Barack Obama and
Dr. Soon-Shiong share certain affinities, including vaulting ambition, a multicultural background,
a knack for systematic thinking
and an obsession with basketball.
But while Obama grapples with
health care from the outside-in —
from government and politics —
Soon-Shiong works literally from
the inside-out, guided by his own
knowledge of everything from the
“We now can create a pathway
to fight cancer to a standstill.
Not to cure it, per se, but to
make it a survivable feature of
the human condition.”
molecular structure of cancer to
the balance sheets of hospitals
and the computing and fiber-optic
requirements of Big Data.
In a secure warren of office suites
on the west side of Los Angeles,
the surgeon-turned-drug-magnateturned-entrepreneur has laid out
his health care vision in a series of
floor-to-ceiling flowcharts.
The proprietary charts, and the
money and medical experience
behind them, are the road map
that Soon-Shiong has refined over
a decade on his way to courtside
Lakers seats and a net worth of $7
billion from the drug companies
and patents he’s sold.