American biomedical doctor, John Nosta, is defined as an influencer and one of the most admired disruptors in digital health. As for himself, he prefers to be seen as a consigliere — a term immortalized in the film The Godfather. But not the evil type.

John Nosta presents himself as a business consigliere, someone you can trust and who will help you evolve your thinking and guide your market engagement strategy
John Nosta is another success story of 2nd generation, European immigration to the USA. His grandparents emigrated from Eastern Europe, Romania and Poland, and put down roots half an hour from Manhattan, in Perth Amboy (NJ). His father, John T. Nosta, was an electrical engineer and introduced his son to the universe of electrodynamics, instilling in him a curiosity to know how things work. Rose Nosta, a CEO of her own house, chaired the home board of directors that managed all of John and his sister Nancy’s education. Nancy, eight years older than John, became an abstract expressionist painter, teacher, and fine arts educational leader. Creativity seems to be something genetic in the Nostas, but in John’s case it was strongly influenced by his father and the scientific logic that guided his profession.
Nosta also has a facilitator side, a translator of science, medicine and digital. Einstein argued that “you don’t really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.” And Nosta has this ability, he knows how to explain the most complex scientific topics to his grandmother. Even in Spanish, a language he learned while dealing with the heavily populated Puerto Rican community of Perth Amboy.
John T. Nosta’s dream was for his son to be a doctor. At age 16, John attended an advanced summer program at Harvard, then explored the field of mobile medical trauma, becoming a paramedic in his hometown. The foundations were complete to fulfill father Nosta’s desire and son Nosta entered Boston University with a degree in biophysics. John then spent a year doing research at Harvard Medical School and was mentored by several doctors, including the head of cardiology (at that time) Thomas Smith. It was Dr. Smith’s idea for John to pursue a PhD program. “I went to college to study physiology. I always had a great interest in medicine, but I discovered that my interests went well beyond medicine, in areas such as creativity, art, philosophy. And I ended up finding medicine, at that time, a very boring field, ultimately. I had a fantastic opportunity at Harvard to talk to some of the smartest people in this field. Having this luxury, we didn’t talk about medical details, but about issues of geopolitics, love, art.”
But John was interested in exploring a broader reality. So he left Boston and moved to New York, where he became a writer and thinker. Nosta left medical research in cardiovascular physiology to the dismay of his parents, but not before publishing with his mentors, for example, in the American Journal of Cardiology. This was something that taught him important lessons, which ended up being the basis for his desire for digital health.
“I started working in the life sciences industry as a creative and strategic thinker for large pharmaceutical companies. That was the beginning of my transition. It was there that I gained skills that gave me a bit of real experience to shape the way I look at the world and at health and medicine, always very close to medicine and innovation, but looking at it from a different perspective”, says John Nosta.
He deeply believes in the symbiosis between the power of human capacity and the power of technology, in how the alliance between the two can improve our health. And it is with enthusiasm and passion for digital health that he talks to other people about the subject. A passion recognized by his peers, by patients, doctors, the pharmaceutical industry, technology companies, analysts and journalists. He was chosen as one of the 2015 Digital Health Influencers, Top Advocate of the Digital Health Revolution, Leading Digital Health Thinker, Digital Health Futurist and is noted as one of the Top 25 Influencers in Big Pharma. John Sculley, former CEO of Apple Computers and Pepsi, states that “John Nosta provides a comprehensive perspective on the digital health movement. With unique sensibilities for science, consumer engagement and brand marketing, he combines passion with knowledge and delivers more than a speech, he provides an engaged conversation that informs and moves his audience. John’s mastery of medicine, technology and marketing makes him a keen observer of digital health and one of the few able to clearly articulate the importance of this movement in human history.” And Gil Bashe, executive vice president, director of the healthcare practice at Makovsky & Company, agrees with the same speech and believes that “John is a gifted thinker capable of seeing pieces of the puzzle and visualizing the entire puzzle together. John is able to see how healthcare customers, the product journey, and success intersect. In a digital world of convergence, John is an essential on any team. When John has an idea, listen!”
John says he tries to understand trends and data in a basic, fundamental way. Then he tries to interpret it within a social or clinical or digital health context. And he believes that everything he writes comes from a factually based perspective. Even people who read Forbes or watch Bloomberg often do not yet have the knowledge to understand a new or emerging area and their perception is superficial. “I believe my readers want a certain level of analysis and an informed voice that provides deeper insight. I like taking ideas to new and unexpected places. In healthcare, this happens by asking essential questions, looking at the nature of innovation and how that innovation fits with clinical, social and financial needs.”
He agreed to join the Google Health advisory board and says that his expectations were open. “I think we always expect surprises from Google. In fact, personally it was an opportunity to sit in a room with really smart people and talk about what’s going on in the world and have these people share their wisdom with me.”
In Nosta’s opinion, technology companies will facilitate major advances in health without even knowing it. Companies like Google and Microsoft are operating in the healthcare space because there is a unique convergence of multiple facts. “First, there is an urgent need, second, there is the technological opportunity to execute. Thirdly, there is a sense of wonder in society, technology is a fundamental part of our lives and we embrace it in new and exciting ways. There is also a moral imperative that leads us to do so. We live in a time where opportunity and technology are meeting.”
Ogivly was his home for ten years, he was chief strategic officer and chief creative officer, which was a unique combination. Often strategists are analytical and look at the world in a very factual way, while a creative is more eclectic, looking at the world with a totally different view. “For me it was an exceptional opportunity to look at the healthcare sector and filter information through a brain that is tuned to a creative frequency.” See the pharmaceutical industry as an industry that changes our lives and, literally, saves lives. “It is extraordinarily interesting to work in this area as a creative, as it is also extraordinarily regulated. Every sentence that comes out of this industry is reviewed less and less by creatives, and more and more by people in legal and regulatory departments.” It’s a challenge, but John laughs and says that we do things, not because they are easy, but because they are difficult, because they are attractive and because they can change our lives.
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“The toothpaste is already out of the tube and won’t go back in.” In healthcare, some people get nervous, people who don’t think patients should comment on the quality of the hospital or the clinical competence of a doctor. Nosta believes that the collective intelligence of patients is as intelligent or more intelligent than that of the doctor. “Let’s assume a couple has a child with cancer. These parents have extraordinary knowledge of their child’s health condition, cancer research, and their child’s particular cancer issues. When this knowledge is shared with other parents who share both the intellectual power and the emotional experience, what we obtain is an important, powerful and profound result that can add something to the intervention that would traditionally be offered by the pharmaceutical and clinical community to address the problem. of health. It’s not trivial, it’s a transformative aspect of healthcare.” The patient is already redefining healthcare and medicine as we know it. And medical schools are training doctors to be less intimidating to patients.
An important driver of change when we talk about the digital health movement is telemedicine. “It is, increasingly, the first line of defense,” says Nosta. Representing the possibility of interacting with a doctor immediately and quickly at the first signs of illness or discomfort, it can help put the patient on the path to a more efficient, more economical and more clinically powerful therapy. “It is an opportunity to provide fundamental disruptive changes in healthcare, especially in points of urgent need, such as certain developing countries, where people do not have any access to healthcare, where telemedicine can provide fundamental changes.”
NostaLab — Advances in technology are disruptive, challenging, and empowering a new “social collective” that will change medicine at its core. Therefore, the think tank NostaLab proposes the creation of a new medical society. The premise of NostaLab is to empower innovation through effective strategic and creative thinking. Nosta uses an interesting comparison: “Sometimes when you have a great idea it’s like blinking in the dark. You know it’s blinking, but no one else does. It is important to communicate ideas effectively to create a market strategy. For example, people often say ‘if I build it, interested parties will come’. And that’s not true. If you build a digital health device or technology, you need to engage a community of your own, whether it’s the hospital community, doctors, to get validation, or connect with consumers or patients and drive innovation their way. It’s not something where you have to choose one or the other, sometimes it’s a combination. And we think about ways to create marketing and advertising to help communicate that in the most effective and most efficient way. It is worth remembering that many digital companies do not have large budgets and even large companies that have larger budgets limit the amounts available to test these ideas.
Enter NostaLab, a group of consultants who help provide fundamental thinking around digital health innovation and also provide second opinions to pharmaceutical companies, advertising agencies and PR firms, allowing them to re-evaluate their thinking. point of view of someone who has an insider’s view.
Business consigliere — NostaLab is not an angel, as it does not finance. It is not even a cupid, as it does not cause passion between projects and investors. Nosta found the most correct definition for her role in the film Godfather. He is a business consigliere, someone you can trust and who will help you evolve your thinking and guide your market engagement strategy.
Nosta wants to make digital health a practical reality for him, the healthcare sector needs collaboration platforms to allow doctors to work around processes such as research, clinical practice, continuing education, digital health and digital medicine. More than AI, or artificial intelligence, we are witnessing, thanks to technology, the emergence of AI, an increase in intelligence.
To be a thinker, creative, philosopher, counselor, Nosta analyzes his role as a patient who aspires to interact with medicine that improves the human experience and brings more value to life. Medicine cannot just be a means of solving health problems. Nosta believes that digital has everything it takes to make the patient’s relationship with medicine completely different. For the best.
(Originally published in Diagnóstico magazine, in Portuguese)