TECH IN ENABLING SCIENCE, HEALTH, & THE ECONOMY

Professor Gino Martini, CEO of the Precision Health Technologies Accelerator

Gino has a well-established background in life sciences, with a pharmaceutical background seeing him as Chief Scientist of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society during the COVID-19 pandemic. He is a big believer in tech’s role in letting people across the world communicate seamlessly, it is instrumental to research & development particularly during the pandemic. He claims that great ideas come from people colliding & collaborating. Now, living in Birmingham, he is putting this into action with the PHTA and the Birmingham Health Innovation Campus.

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Transcription
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Dom: Hello, I'm Dom Wetherall. I'm the host of the F5 podcast brought to you by Intercity. Today I'm extremely excited to be joined by Professor Gino Martini.

Gino is the CEO of the Precision Health Technologies Accelerator at the University of Birmingham. Welcome Gino.

Gino: Welcome Dominic and again, exotic Italian surname, Gino Martini. And I'm from Liverpool! Birkenhead actually. So I hope if you're expecting sophisticated Italian baron, tough luck, I'm from Birkenhead.

Dom: Fantastic, thank you Gino. I'm sure we'll achieve sophisticated regardless.

Gino: Absolutely.

Dom: Gino, let's get started. I'd love to hear about yourself, your journey.

Gino: Well, okay. So let's take it from the very beginning. My dad was an Italian economic migrant and was looking for work, post-war Italy.So he came over in the 60s. My mother, actually the family's Maltese, but they were, she was born in Egypt because my mother's family were in the war with obviously Maltese, fighting the Italians funnily enough.

My dad, dad obviously passed away recently. They were great, still good supporters of education, education, education, education. And my dad was very keen for me to go into sciences as well as my mum. And so long story short, I was good at chemistry, good in biology. And so I wanted to become a pharmacist. So it was something that I felt I could do. It was clinical facing.

So I trained as a community pharmacist, and then did a PhD in drug delivery at University of Manchester. Then I embarked in the career industry for about 20 years.

So I was in the end a senior guy at Glaxosmithkline, maybe call it a midlife crisis, whatever it was that happened to me. I decided I'd go into academia, was King's College for about four years. And then I became Chief Scientist for the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, where I basically, you know, did not follow work, particularly during the pandemic.

And then I was asked to take this role on and I have to say, when they said to me, would you like to run the Accelerator in Birmingham, to my shame, I said, why Birmingham? Why would I want to come to Birmingham for life sciences?

And so essentially, I went for the interview, I have to say, I was completely blown away at the magnificent city, the people, what we're trying to achieve with the Birmingham Health Innovation Campus, and ultimately, with the PhD at the physician health technology accelerator. I was so excited.

I actually remember walking around with a guy called Steve Taylor. I said to Steve, Steve, where do I sign this contract? This is amazing. Absolutely fantastic. And I'm a little bit ashamed about that, because it wasn't some conscious bias. It was conscious bias. Why come to Birmingham for? But actually, when they come here, the people are fantastic. The heritage, the assets you have available, particularly life sciences, believe it or not, we're second to none.

Dom: Adopted Brummie.

Gino: Yeah.

Dom: Brilliant.

Gino: Yeah.

Dom: So we've seen Birmingham change massively over even recent years, you know, I've been working in the city centre for 10 years and to see the evolution, how it's changing and transforming, it's fantastic. And the way it's bringing cultures along with that and the diversity, I think we're still the youngest city in the UK.

Gino: Yeah, well, I think it might even be Europe, actually. I mean, I mean, it's what gets me with Birmingham, it's just the scale, 6 million people, 40% diversity, ethnicity, 40% below the age of 15. It's just huge. I mean, you look at Queen Elizabeth Birmingham Hospital, it's massive. You look at the university, it's massive. And you've actually got some fantastic universities there. You've got University of Birmingham, you've got Aston, UCB, BCU, all really top notch university. So it's just the scale of what goes on. Of course, Birmingham is the second largest city in the United Kingdom. We forget that sometimes.

Dom: Gino, could you tell us about how significant technology has been across the science and health sectors that you've worked in?

Gino: Well, I mean, clearly, it's been incredibly important.

Ever since we were able to sequence, well, identifying sequence DNA, I think we've realised that the one size fits all approach for medicine is basically, is dead and buried now effectively.

You know, just to give listeners a bit of understanding, when we develop a new drug, we would effectively choose maybe three or four strengths or dosages for a particular medicine. And that was standardised. That was basically what you're going to get for the 6 billion people, or the 7 billion people that live around the world. That clearly is not correct.

And when we now realise that we need to have the right dose, the right drug, the right treatment for the right patients, is what we call personalised medicine or actually position medicine. Okay. Now, I've taken it one step further. Well, that's why the Precision Health Technology Accelerator was created.

My belief is that actually, that the right patient gets the right therapy, or the right treatment, that could be a medicine, it could be new medical device, it could be an app that helps you retrain your brain and cognitive behaviours. When it comes to, say, maybe addiction to a particular safe alcohol. What we've now understood that one size fits all is not correct. We now understand every patient is different.

And we saw that during the pandemic, in particular, how ethnicity can change and have an impact. It's called patient stratification, segmenting patients into populations of people who can respond effectively to the right treatment. But with the rapid response that COVID-19 vaccines had to deliver, obviously, that data would have been taken into account. But the testing time was so drastically reduced. So, not only has technology and innovation helped us make sure patients get the right treatment, based on your genetic makeup. But also the speed, like you rightly said, IT automation allows us to collect the data, allows us to disseminate the data extremely quickly, you know, everything's now on your phone.

I even use my phone now to measure my steps. But what I'm saying is, the information is there, it's in real time, really important.

Dom: We just touched on COVID-19 there. And as chief scientist at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, how was tech leverage to help scale up research and development during the pandemic?

Gino: Well, clearly, I can use three words, communication, communication, communication.

Think about what IT did. You're intercity, after all. And the reality is, without IT and communications, it would have been a completely difficult, more challenging environment than it was or has been. Clearly, being able to use things hybrid, virtual, was very important. And obviously, the use of comms was very important. So for me, it was really fast paced.

We were able to galvanize teams all over the world into effectively virtual teams, and be able to produce data, record times and speed. We were able to do things in parallel rather than sequential, so therefore cut out the time. There's a belief that, you know, we cut coal as well. Not really, most of these vaccines were in development. And what we were able to do is coordinate all the various interested bodies, i.e. government, the regulators, the drug companies, you know, the research scientists to work together in a coherent mass with a common aim. That could only be made possible by IT.

However, there was converse to that. There was a force for good in terms of helping people work more effectively together and quicker. Also, we have problems with misinformation. And that was challenging, you know, to have that kind of discipline to say, okay, let's look at the work, let's look at the data, what does the evidence actually say this is or is not. So there was up to different treatments for COVID. And obviously, some of them found not to be effective. And a lot of that was played through the media and through the press and through online.

Dom: And distracting, right?

Gino: Distracting, yeah. And it would actually divert resources away. So for example, there are 50,000 pharmacists, that was the chief science of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society. Every day that came from the society, we had a team that was collating harvest all the snippets that we got, put reports on them, and then we'd review them. And effectively, I had the final say scientifically was the right thing to do.

And also, you know, with IT comes great responsibility. You don't be saying things that scare people. What you're trying to do is give information. And it was up to me to say scientifically, we're happy with that. And we disseminate out. And dealing with people like anti-vaxxers and all the misinformation that was out there.

So clearly, the classic one was when Trump, and I think he was misquoted a little bit as well, about let's all drink disinfectant. And he just got mixed up. He just said things off the cuff. And before you know it, it's everywhere. So that's what we saw.

But overall, without IT, without communication, it would have been in dire state. So think about what we achieved, you know, all those organisations around the world working coherent together with common aim. My only concern is we've now started to dismember that and go back to the old ways of working. And I really feel we should actually keep some of that good stuff, you know, of working in parallel with like-minded individuals and really for the common good. If that makes sense.

Dom: Yeah, it makes perfect sense. And I'm a firm believer, it's my personal opinion, but that hybrid approach is the best of both worlds. And some of the best things come out of the pandemic from a business perspective was that trust in having home workers that didn't exist in many cultures and companies prior.

Gino: Yeah, it's true. We are hybrid. So the team that I lead, I mean, I think it's important to have the hybrid event. However, it's also important to have face-to-face communication and hands-on, there's this collision. So I'll give you an anecdote. I'll give you one. Now, I know a company was looking at who were the innovators, you know, why was one particular place doing really, really well from an innovation point of view. And when they did proper analysis, they found that actually the coffee machines are situated an intersection to people discussing their coffee machines. Hey, Joe, what are you doing? I'm doing this. Oh, I've got this problem. Actually, I've got a solution for your problem.

And I'll give you a good example for me as well. I was coming out of the hotel and this was just out of the pandemic. Literally, people still working home. As you know, I moved to Birmingham in October 2021. And I came out of the hotel, I slipped into somebody, it was an icy day. And I slipped into this individual and it turns out he was from Liverpool. So what's a Liverpool guy doing here? So we had a conversation. Turns out he was measuring the Wi-Fi signal in the hospital. I said, oh, I may have a problem. I said, I have a problem like this myself, you know, in our building potentially.

It turns out he was developing a brand new technology that will get the Wi-Fi signals boosted so we get signal anywhere. Lo and behold, we trialled at the hotel and we were putting into our building. And that would never have happened if I'd stayed at home. That only happened because I came out of the hotel, physically bumped into the individual and idea started to spark off.

That hybrid way of working and what technology can enable, it's only possible with making sure you've got dedicated resource to it, making sure that there's an understanding of how to utilise the tech to full efficiency and the reliability and the delivery of that IT. It wouldn't exist without any of those things.

Dom: Is that something that you see as imperative to what you do? You know, not only what technology enables, but how it's delivered?

Gino: Yeah, I mean, as I say, it's all about ruthless execution, I'm afraid, because we live in 24/7 society.

And where we are, the PHTA, based next to the QEB in University of Birmingham, is we are creating top of the range, laboratory space, office space for 20 small media enterprises. And the reality is, you know, their lifeline is their data. So if something goes down, yeah, if a laptop breaks down or internet goes down, it needs to be fixed. It needs to be fixed quickly, and as soon as possible.

And that's really important to be an ex-Pharma guy, I understand the importance of having robust, secure internet, IT services, but also, when things do go wrong, having that reactive, and in real time, getting that fixed and getting you back online. And so, you know, to me, obviously, we're going to be in the city, they are going to provide me that 24/7 secure package so that when we got these companies there, and working with me and my team, they have safe knowledge that actually in city can actually respond to their queries.

Things always work well, everyone's happy. It's when things go wrong, is when you need the best team. That's really important point. When things go wrong, that's where the problems are starting to rise. So you need the good and the bad, and the bad, you need to be able to sort that out in real time.

Dom: And just to stay on that technology topic, have you seen research and development change in universities with technology in mind?

Gino: Well, I think what I want to really, I want to fly the flag for our UK universities, you know, we are blessed with some fantastic universities by the way, up and down the United Kingdom. They are all jewels, they're all engines, yeah, but being able to create ideas and disseminate those ideas, I think is really important, what its publications will have you or whether it's using social media.

I'm a great believer, and this has evolved with universities used to be very focused on what blue sky research and pure research, which is still things very well, think is still very important.But what I'm seeing universities do now is looking more towards applied, how we do we convert that idea or research into something that has impact.

And to be fair, the government have actually kind of encouraged this because your university is getting ranked every seven years is called the REF program research access framework. And now a good chunk of the marking the scoring is on impact, what have you done with that research? And the more points you get, like a Premier League, the more funding you get for government. And I've seen a nice change, particularly in the UK where we've seen really good research that match with some really good impact.

And that's what the PHTA is about. We're there to harvest that we're there to provide expansion spaces for people who may only need a bench with an idea and then suddenly deciding and they start employing five to 10 people to get the idea to the next stage. And that's what we're trying to do.

Dom: With the PHTA set to contribute 400 million pounds to the West Midlands economy over the next decade, how instrumental is tech in empowering the economy and gaining governmental interest?

Gino: So we are going to be located in the Birmingham Health Innovation Campus, which is a collaboration between University of Birmingham, and Bromford SciTech. And they'll give you six phases.

Phase one, number one B here will have the PHTA. This is a 10 year master plan to create state of the art laboratories and a life sciences hub. And it will be one of the largest if not the largest the United Kingdom based in in Selly Oak. So it's really exciting times potentially create over 10,000 jobs as well. So you know, so we'll play a part in that because we're we'll be an anchor institution on that campus.

What's really important for me is that we actually put something back into the economy as well local economy. And we want to make sure that our young people get the opportunities to get the skills they need to get the jobs we're offering. One thing I will say to you on our in our site, we will have a training centre on the fourth floor that will be open 24/7. And one of the things I want to do is to do outreach programs with some young people in in the region to get the skills, get the digital skills, for example, for some jobs that are going on there. Because we're blessed with a very large population and a very young population. But we do have some health inequalities. And I'm afraid health inequalities are linked to poverty.

So one of the best ways to tackle health inequality is trying to get some more young talent, the right skills, get the right jobs we're offering, why not? So it's 10,000 jobs we're talking about over 10 year period. Let's try and make sure a lot of those jobs go to our local population. What we're trying to do again is to create and have the place be almost like a national is a node for excellence. It's not about Birmingham University, Birmingham alone, it's about any university in the United Kingdom trying to use that space. Right, and that's what we're trying to do. I'm a great believer in what we call super regional clusters. So I suppose the government's been to what levelling up, well, let's be like Nike, let's just do it.

Right. And for me, levelling up is make sure there's a rebalancing of investment from the south to the north, but also to the Midlands, because we're in between. And that's what I'm trying to do. But what I want to start seeing is more regions cooperating and collaborating forming clusters. I was at dinner recently and I had members appear from Oxford and Cambridge there. And actually there was a lot of support for that. In fact, I have to say, I want to give a shout out to Professor Irene Tracy from the Vice Chancellor at Oxford, Professor Chas Bountra from Oxford, Jim Wilkinson, who runs the Oxford Science Enterprises. They've been very keen to see how we can collaborate. Why not? They're an hour away on the M40.

Dom: I've got one last question for you. If you could see someone else on the F5 podcast, maybe someone that's influenced or inspired, inspired you, who would you recommend?

Gino: Well, I'm going to give you two names, if I may. Both were Brumies actually. Okay. So it's really important. While I've just mentioned Professor Chas Bountra of Indian descent is now a Professor of Profile Science and Innovation at Oxford, University of Oxford. My mentor, an incredible human being, I have to say, lovely man, generous time. You've got to get him in because what this guy has done for science at Oxford is amazing and is a Brum and I think he'll do that.

The other guy, Camille, says a little bit controversial, I suppose, is Dr. Clive Dix, D-I-X. Clive Dix. He was one of the co-chairs of the Vaccine Task Force and he's a Brum. But what I like about him is that he's been a very successful entrepreneur. He's been able to re-energize a number of drug portfolios and been able to create companies out of them and then spin them out and develop them. And they can be an acquired and he's done that not just once, not just twice, but three times.

These are individuals who hail from this great region, who've done some great things in life sciences and are actually inspirational people. So I think you should talk to those two.

Dom: Amazing. Thank you. Thank you very much for joining us today. It's been incredible to hear your story, your journey, as well as all the fantastic work you're doing with life sciences in the centre of Birmingham. So thank you very much for joining us today.

Gino: And thank you for inviting me. It's a great privilege to have a conversation with like-minded people and to hopefully impart some of my enthusiasm for the life sciences and what we're trying to do with the Precision Health Technology Accelerator in Selly Oak.

Dom: Brilliant. Thank you very much.