BC Platforms Announces Appointment of New Chairman, Alex Dickinson

Serial entrepreneur and precision medicine technologist to drive strategic agenda at BC Platforms

Zurich, Switzerland – 3 July 2024 – BC Platforms, a global leader in real world data, healthcare data management, and analytics, today announces the appointment of a new Chairman of the Board.

Alex is a seasoned executive with deep experience at the intersection of healthcare, life sciences, and information technology. He currently sits on the boards of two California-based companies he co-founded: Ryght (applying generative AI to clinical trials) and Chromacode (a cloud-based molecular diagnostics company). Alex also sits on the board of Gencove, an NGS analytics software platform provider based in New York. From 2017 to its acquisition in 2021 for $12B, Alex sat on the board of PRA Health Sciences, a 20,000-employee NASDAQ-listed Clinical Research Organization (CRO) that operated in over 80 countries.

From 2010 to 2017, Alex was SVP Strategic Initiatives at Illumina where he led the  company’s nation-scale precision medicine program and its cloud computing efforts, developing one of the world’s most widely used bioinformatics platforms, BaseSpace. Alex came to Illumina through its acquisition of Helixis, a life sciences instrument company that he co-founded in 2007 and led as CEO.  

From 2001 to 2007 he co-founded, and was CEO of, Luxtera, a leading silicon photonics company that was later acquired by Cisco Systems for $660M. Originally from Adelaide, Australia, Alex has a PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Adelaide, and an MBA from the Columbia Business School in New York.

BC Platforms’ new Chairman of the Board, Alex Dickinson, said, “I’m looking forward to driving BC Platforms’ strategic agenda, working with the remarkable team of industry visionaries committed to making the company a global leader, and trusted partner, in life sciences and healthcare. BC Platforms' unique combination of a federated data network and support for multimodal data types makes it the ideal platform to enable insights from health data and the rapidly growing applications from training data sets for AI-driven drug development to integration of multiomic data into clinical workflows. BC Platforms’ proven technology enables faster and more cost-effective drug development and precision matching of treatments to patient needs.”

"Alex’s deep experience in M&A and his track record as a precision medicine evangelist will reinforce and accelerate BC Platforms’ strategy as a global technology enabler for real world data,” said Laurent Samama who has been acting Chairman of the Board.

 About BC Platforms

BC Platforms provides its international life sciences and healthcare clients with tools, enabling valuable insights across the entire spectrum of research and development, from target identification to fulfilling post-marketing requirements. As a real world data (RWD) solutions company, powered by its leading technology platform, the company is on a mission to deliver personalized medicines using RWD and analytics. The company’s acquisitions of Medexprim, in December 2023, and 4Pharma Ltd, in June 2023, have significantly expanded its ability to provide global biopharma partners with fast and secure access to real world clinical and imaging data assets across Europe, as well as new clinical research services for accelerating the translation of innovations into clinical practice. Taken together, these capabilities provide its customers with actionable insights to advance precision healthcare and conduct research and development more efficiently, thereby helping patients receive better treatments and care.

With our innovative technology we are creating a patient-centric infinity loop between the life sciences and healthcare sectors. Data we generate, harmonize, and manage, from diverse biobanks and healthcare institutions, is made accessible for pharmaceutical and biotech companies to enhance their core strengths in research and development. In parallel, we enable stratification of patients towards targeted therapies, delivering on the promise of more personalized healthcare.

Founded in 1997 from a MIT Whitehead project spinoff, we have a strong scientific heritage underpinned by over 25 years of working in close collaboration with a network of leading researchers, developers, and industry partners. We have global operations with our headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland, R&D in Espoo, Finland, and Singapore, as well as a presence in London, UK, Lund, Sweden, Toulouse, France and Boston, USA. For more information, visit our website and follow us on LinkedIn.