Dr. Anthony Yanni, a veteran healthcare professional and pharma executive, is a transformative leader known for advocating and executing patient centricity in global healthcare practices. As the Senior Vice President and Global Head of Patient Centricity at Astellas Pharma, Anthony has been pivotal in integrating patient perspectives and real-world needs into pharmaceutical innovation, development, and delivery.

A medical practitioner for 15 years, he held crucial roles such as Chief Medical Officer and Chief of Internal Medicine in a Northeastern US health system. His clinical experience led him to recognize the significance of focusing on the patient, not just the disease, resulting in truly meaningful innovations. In his previous role at Sanofi, Anthony served as Head of Patient Insights, Solutions and Outcomes, creating an industry-first process for incorporating patient and clinician perspectives into research portfolio decisions. His work brought clinical researchers closer to clinical practice by integrating the patient, their perspectives and their journey into the laboratory.

Anthony’s current role at Astellas underscores his commitment to integrating patient insights across all functional areas, fostering a patient-centric corporate culture and operating model that spans from early research to product utilization. His leadership is set to revolutionize healthcare, foregrounding the person behind the patient at every stage of medical care.

In 2024, Anthony published his first book, A Bandana and A Bluebird – The Path to a Patient Centric Healthcare System in which he details, through patient vignettes and programmatic examples, the progress made toward achieving a more patient focused system of care as well as the challenges that remain.

Anthony was selected as one of 2021’s 100 Most Inspiring People in the life-sciences industry by PharmaVoice Magazine and most recently was recognized with the 2022 Reuters Pharma Europe Patient Champion Award for having “real impact on patients, carers and international health systems”.

He currently serves on the Board of Trustees of The University of Scranton and the Board of Directors for the Astellas Global Health Foundation.

Dr. Yanni holds an MD degree from Drexel University/Hahnemann School of Medicine, an MBA from the University of Massachusetts and a BS from the University of Scranton.