The Patient is Not a Document: Foundation Models for Biomedical AI with Standard BioModel
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In this episode of Data in Biotech, host Ross Katz sits down with Kevin Brown, co-founder of Standard BioModel, to explore one of the most ambitious projects in biomedical AI, building a multimodal foundation model that represents the full complexity of a patient across time.
Drawing on a career spanning brain-computer interfaces, computer-aided diagnosis at Siemens Healthineers, and oncology data science at Bristol Myers Squibb, Kevin shares the scientific and philosophical journey that led him to a single conviction: a patient is not a document. Rather than reducing a patient to clinical notes, ICD-10 codes, or isolated test results, Standard BioModel's approach maps every available modality - CT imaging, digital pathology, genomics, EKGs, longitudinal EHR data - into a shared latent space, and models how that patient moves through time.
The result is a framework designed not just for prediction, but for counterfactual reasoning, clinical trial matching, and personalized intervention, with open-source models already being validated across leading academic medical centers.
What you’ll learn in this episode:
>> Why reducing a patient to text - clinical notes, radiology reports, genomic assay summaries - and how mapping multimodal data into a shared latent embedding space preserves information that never makes it into the written record
>> How Standard BioModel's temporal architecture models patients as trajectories through an abstract embedding space rather than static snapshots, enabling counterfactual reasoning about the likely impact of interventions on a patient's future health trajectory
>> Why no single foundation model can own every clinical vertical and how building a highly generalizable base model that facilitates downstream fine-tuning is a more defensible and scalable strategy than building narrow, application-specific models
>> How the model handles missing modalities in real-world clinical settings, and why the architecture is designed to function effectively even when not every data type is available for every patient
>> Why Standard BioModel has chosen to open-source its models and why broad, institution-specific validation across diverse patient populations is not just a scientific priority, but a prerequisite for trustworthy clinical AI
Meet our guest:
Kevin Brown is the Founder and CEO of Standard Model Biomedicine, where he builds foundation models for biomedicine. He previously led AI work as Director of Artificial Intelligence at SimBioSys, and held data science and applied ML roles at Bristol Myers Squibb and Siemens Healthineers. With a neuroscience research background from New York University, Kevin’s work spans generative AI and machine learning for biomedical and medical imaging applications.
- Connect with Kevin Brown on LinkedIn
About the host:
Ross Katz is Principal and Data Science Lead at CorrDyn. Ross specializes in building intelligent data systems that empower biotech and healthcare organizations to extract insights and drive innovation.
- Connect with Ross Katz on LinkedIn
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Sponsored by…
This episode is brought to you by CorrDyn, the leader in data-driven solutions for biotech and healthcare. Discover how CorrDyn is helping organizations turn data into breakthroughs at CorrDyn.