How Data Is Transforming the Fight Against Pandemics
Christal Bemont is the Chief Executive Officer of Talend. She is a seasoned executive with a demonstrated track record in defining and leading sales and go-to-market strategies to significantly scale cloud businesses. Previously, she spent 15 years at SAP Concur, most recently leading its $2B business organization as Chief Revenue Officer. Prior to her CRO appointment, Christal was Senior Vice President and General Manager of SAP Concur’s Small, Midsized and Nationals (SMN) business unit. Early in her career, Christal served in a number of capacities focused on operational and technical roles at Motorola, Extensity, and Clarify.
The more time I spend working with data, and watching how our customers work with data, the more convinced I am of two things: 1) the power to do extraordinary things is embedded within data and 2) all of us working or dealing with data have a role to play in using our knowhow and technology to apply data to benefit humanity and tackle some of the biggest challenges of our lifetime – the environment, equality, education, health and safety.
Right now, we live in uncertain times and face challenges that we haven’t had to deal with in many decades. I believe in the power of human ingenuity to win the fight against the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. And I believe that data has the power to enable people to reach their full potential in uncertain environments. The answers to complicated questions are all there in the data — we just have to find them, and we have to do so while respecting the privacy, security, and dignity of patients and healthcare workers.
It’s an enormous responsibility. And I’m excited and fascinated by the work of so many companies and public service organizations who are taking on this challenge of fighting this pandemic with information.
One of the hallmarks of trying to solve a viral pandemic is that it is a fight against time as well as a virus. We are always struggling to keep up against the curve of infection, and we start out behind. That’s why understanding data is so critical to fighting this virus — being able to comprehend its structure, its spread, and effective treatments gives us the advantage of time as scientists work to get it under control. The faster we understand the virus, the faster we can treat patients and develop vaccines.
What’s fascinating to me about the medical and biotech community’s fight against COVID-19 is that the advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning are giving us an enormous advantage against this virus. We are able to crunch massive amounts of data in order to find the information we need. Fighting pandemics has always depended on careful observation of behavior and meticulous attention to documenting events. But now, instead of depending on a small number of observations, we can use huge datasets to give us an advantage in the war against both time and the virus.
