Jeff Ceitlin, HVH Patient Precision Analytics

For all the hype around Watson Health, pharma continues to inch into the data/analytics/machine-learning era with an abundance of caution. What the business needs, perhaps, is more people like Ceitlin – not only to guide the reluctant holdouts, but also to serve as a sounding board for the early enthusiasts. 

He’s uniquely suited for the role: Prior to his arrival at HVH, a joint venture between Havas Health and defense-department-grade analytics firm Vencore, Ceitlin spent more than a decade at Pfizer, working in a range of commercial roles across several therapeutic categories. He also has considerable agency- and consulting-world experience on his resume, with Havas Health and Deloitte, among others. As someone who knows the science, understands the commercial challenges associated with it and excels in communicating its nuances, then, Ceitlin might have the ideal skill set for anyone attempting to bill him or herself (and his/her organizations) as a capable, trustworthy steward for pharma companies still working out the analytics kinks. 

Clearly he knows what he’s up against: Asked earlier this year by MM&M about the challenges that come with communicating the details of HVH’s offering to the industry, Ceitlin noted that “‘vector-machine-learning’ doesn’t roll off the tongue real easily.”