Medidata Solutions has launched Acorn AI, designed to provide actionable insights for decision-making by leveraging data across the entire lifecycle, from R&D to commercialization, and to help address the most complex diseases.
 
Leveraging one of the largest regulatory-grade clinical data repositories and built on Medidata’s platform, Acorn AI with work with clients to help solve complex scientific and commercial challenges, offering new products such as a Value Discovery Engine to make better go/no-go decisions; Intelligent Trials to improve study success and speed; Integrated Evidence to help demonstrate value to regulators, payors, providers and patients; and Connected Devices to integrate the new generation of medical devices within the digital healthcare ecosystem.
 
The Acorn AI team is led by Sastry Chilukuri, who recently joined Medidata, is now the president of Acorn AI. Rachel Sherman, M.D., former principal deputy commissioner of FDA, joins as chief scientific and medical advisor. Kathy McGroddy-Goetz, Ph.D., who joined Medidata from IBM Watson Health, drives strategy and alliances. Rama Kondru, leads technology development for Acorn AI, in addition to handling his broader responsibilities as the newly appointed CIO of Medidata.
  
Additionally, Medidata has appointed Rama Kondru as its first-ever chief information officer, to enable customers’ digital transformation with a purpose-built platform and scalable data.  He is now leading the company’s enterprise data strategy, architecture and future platform development for Medidata’s product portfolio. With his expertise, Medidata aims to accelerate the creation of leading-edge technologies, such as AI and IoT capabilities, for broad use in healthcare. Rama Kondru is now part of Medidata’s senior leadership team.
 
Mr. Kondru  previously served as chief information officer of Janssen Americas. He brings more than 20 years of experience in diverse roles in pharma, medical devices, data science, and academia.