Member Spotlight: Tatiana Sorokina
This month's spotlight focuses on Tatiana Sorokina, Associate Director, Digital & Advanced Analytics, Novartis, who is currently serving as a member of the PMSA Marketing Committee.
Tatiana leads Advanced Analytics for Oncology at Novartis and is focused on building scalable technology and driving automation in marketing. Tatiana has been developing machine learning and artificial intelligence solutions for the healthcare industry for more than 5 years. Prior to joining Novartis, she has run Parceed, an AI-based guidance system for medical students. Before starting her own company, Tatiana was a Head of Data Science at Prognos, a healthcare technology company that applies AI to clinical lab diagnostics. Tatiana holds M.Sc. in Advanced Analytics in Marketing from Columbia University and B.Sc. in Economics from Moscow State University. She blogs about data science and entrepreneurship at www.insightmine.com.
PMSA: How many years have you been in the industry?
Tatiana Sorokina: I have been in healthcare for 6 years with the majority of my experience being on the healthcare data and advanced analytics side.
PMSA: What attracted you to the field?
TS: I have always wanted to be in a field that is ripe for innovation. I felt like this would be a great opportunity for me to make a change for the better. That said, I wanted to make a change in the field that could have the biggest impact on people. Healthcare concerns every one of us, and innovation applied in healthcare may lead to big improvements in longevity and quality of life. I am humbled by the thought that I can contribute to this improvement.
PMSA: How did you first hear about PMSA?
TS: Through my former boss and my mentor. He has been in the pharma industry for over 30 years and is a big fan of PMSA. He is the one who introduced me to the PMSA family.
PMSA: How many years have you attended the PMSA conference?
TS: I have been coming to every PMSA conference since 2013. The only year I skipped was 2016, when I ran my own company.
PMSA: Please describe any current projects you are excited about.
TS: I love writing. When I first started in 2014, I mainly wrote about analytics and structured my blogs as hands-on case studies. When I became an entrepreneur I started writing about my startup life, so my blogs became a little bit more business-oriented, though they still focused on analytical themes as my company was a tech startup. Once I joined the pharma world, my blogs became more about building an analytically-driven culture, rather than about specific analytical problems. I am very pleased with the turns my blog took as I’ve progressed in my career. I am also very excited by an opportunity to expand content marketing efforts for PMSA through blogging. PMSA is such an amazing community for data scientists and analytically-minded marketers. There is a lot of great content that comes out of each conference which can be shared more broadly with the analytical community.
PMSA: Do you have any predictions for the future?
TS: I am a big believer in automation and on-demand analytics, especially in healthcare. With the tremendous growth in M&A deals in recent years, I think healthcare will further consolidate, opening an opportunity for key partners to establish common technology and seamless data connection streams, so that pharmaceutical companies don’t need to spend so much time acquiring, storing, cleaning and analyzing the data, but rather invest their efforts in uncovering insights that help their business to dynamically evolve.
PMSA: What do you like to do during your free time?
TS: As I mentioned earlier, I love writing and sharing my stories with others. I also really enjoy conducting various thought experiments, no matter how unrealistic or crazy they might sound. I’m pretty active and enjoy running, biking and hiking. I am also a big fan of road trips. My husband and I try to go on a road trip almost every long weekend.
PMSA: Thank you, Tatiana!