Business is boring: John Macaskill-Smith

Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand, with the interview available as both audio and a transcribed excerpt. This week he talks to John Macaskill-Smith, CEO and Director of Disruption at Ventures.

People aren’t standard, yet best medical practice often has to be. Treatments for conditions, and prescriptions for ailments are most often based off studies where by design they found the average need and effective dosage. But we know people are not the average. There are distinct ways different bodies metabolise for example - which mean for some the average dose will never work because they metabolise it too fast, and others as they do so too slowly. Which is part of why now there is an emerging filed of pharmacology that uses gene sequencing to understand how an individual’s body works and then equip them and their doctors with that info and understanding to help ensure the correct prescriptions are given.

It’s just one of the exciting ways to put power in patients’ hands that have been pioneered out of the Pinnacle group of not for profit companies. They are a huge force in the midlands, Its members manage the health care of nearly half a million people enrolled with over 80 practices in Gisborne, Taranaki, Taupo-Turangi, Thames-Coromandel and the Waikato. The CEO that has driven their growth, first for the whole family of companies and very recently for their ventures arm, is John Macaskill-Smith, who is here today to talk about using business to change health, introducing this pharmacogenomics and how you can find out more about how your body is likely to react to drugs.

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