Insights Success

Jon Zimmerman: Combining Technology and Innovation to Streamline Healthcare

D-e_v@IS — Fri, 22 Oct 2021 17:49:12 +0000

Value-based care is here to stay. Many healthcare organizations are now migrating from a fee-for-service to a value-based care model. This transition requires leaders who can bring strategies to life while keeping an eye on the competition and ready to lead the change.
Jon Zimmerman, the CEO of Holon Solutions, is one such strategic leader who has a successful track record for helping healthcare organizations accelerate their transition to value-based care.
An industry veteran, Jon is recognized for his expertise and commitment to advancing health outcomes by delivering the most precise health information to the right stakeholders at the right time with the help of technology. He is committed to overcoming the hurdles to effective health information sharing with the help of technology.
As CEO, Zimmerman is responsible for setting the strategic direction for Holon while enabling, empowering and encouraging the Team to deliver for and with the Customers.
Delivering Exceptional Value to Customers and Partners
Jon became the CEO of Holon Solutions in October of 2019. Since then, Holon Solutions has solidified and expanded its technology platform, including getting two major patents awarded; built a team of highly scaled cross-functional leaders with a shared vision and passion for serving customers and improving healthcare; signed and implemented several strategic distributors, customers, and partners; and built its strategic growth plan to deliver exponential value to its customers and partners.
Providing Comprehensive Technology Platform
Holon is on a mission to improve health for everyone through precision information delivery that maximizes clinical and financial outcomes with sustainable engagment. Its technology platform incorporates:

Contextual, Workflow-Driven, Personalized Experiences for Each User
Delivering multiple desired Knowledge Sources Simultaneously
Designed and Built to Complement and Extend Sponsors and Customers Current Systems
With complementary adoption services and operational analytics for a virtuous cycle of continuous improvement

So, Holon’s sponsors and users can reduce burden to:

Close Care Gaps to Meet Measures
Create Accurate Risk Scores
Improve Network Integrity
Coordinate Community Resources
Improve Lab Order Coding
Automate Authorizations
Enable patients to engage in practices

Implement Value-based Care
According to Jon, the pandemic has permanently changed healthcare and the healthcare industry. Telehealth has accelerated 5-10 years. Health equity disparities have become much more evident. Personal responsibilities and choices have become part of the national dialogue. The challenges of unsustainable burden while implementing value-based care in a data-fragmented environment have risen to the surface as an area that must be addressed immediately.
Making Healthcare Better for Everyone
The leadership team at Holon Solutions has seen extraordinary advancements in the use of analytics and analytic support tools to help them better understand what the best action is to take for anyone anywhere. It has also seen great advancements in patient engagement, remote access, such as telehealth, and remote patient monitoring to enable more care to go to people versus more people having to go to care.
Jon mentions that they are starting to realize the critical importance of “whole-person care” via the rising recognition of the factors of Social Determinants of Health to enable people to achieve better health via more comprehensive support. Yet, these advancements will underachieve their potential if they are not organized and implemented in a coordinated fashion to facilitate broad adoption and maximize value for the care teams and their patients.
Delivering High-impact Knowledge and Collaborative Functionality
In Jon’s opinion, our healthcare ecosystem is highly fragmented, difficult to navigate, and increasingly complex.
Through patented technology, Holon first senses what a user is trying to accomplish for and/or with whom. The software then determines and delivers additional information or adjunct capability that helps them accomplish the right task with less work and better outcomes.
Holon Solutions is continually expanding its sensing, content/function-sourcing, and information logistics capabilities so it can deliver high-impact knowledge and collaborative functionality to more users so they can focus on the tasks, not navigating an impossibly snarled ecosystem. Jon states that machines can and should simplify navigation so people can do their best and most important work with minimal disruptions.
Having Inspired and Shared Purpose
Talking about the significance of positive work culture, Jon mentions that it is a must-have to ensure any winning business. Holon’s positive work culture stems from having an inspired and shared purpose of delivering customer value with respect and support for all individuals on the team built upon a foundation and practice of collaboration with transparency. The Holon team enjoys enabling, empowering and encouraging each other to do our best together for our customers every day.
It’s about Prioritizing Needs of Stakeholders and Meeting them
We asked Jon which is the best way to meet today’s and tomorrow’s challenges for urgent needs coming our way, to which he answers, “Developing empathetic understanding is key. Identify and engage stakeholders thoughtfully to understand their goals, barriers, and accelerators to achieve them. Align the stakeholders objectives with those of their co-dependent colleagues. Carefully prioritize their needs. Ensure adoption and integrate the desired capabilities into the user’s workflows in a way that helps them. And continuously measure, extend, and improve the impact over time”
A Note to Aspiring Leaders
In his advice to emerging healthcare leaders, Jon says, “Build a foundation of operational understanding of healthcare. Always start with understanding a Stakeholder’s “Why” they need a solution. Focus on real, tangible, achievable, and measurable impacts.”
He also adds, “Look broadly at the technology landscape to develop the art of the possible and practical. Listen smart, work fast, design for adoption, enable, and measure customer achievements.”

The post Jon Zimmerman: Combining Technology and Innovation to Streamline Healthcare appeared first on Insights Success.

Jim Bob Ward: Empowering Clinical Teams with Innovative and End User Friendly Solutions

D-e_v@IS — Fri, 22 Oct 2021 17:46:54 +0000

The healthcare industry has been experiencing a bout of turbulence in the past year and a half but has been on the upswing. Many organizations were dealt the arduous task to meet the growing demands for powerful performance analytics to manage clinical trials. It was also essential for them to find a way to eliminate the need for a lengthy, complex implementation process. With the help of technological advancements, industry experts came up with solutions that were as straightforward as possible. Jim Bob Ward, the CEO and President of Datatrak International, Inc. founded a successful solution to make clinical trials flexible by enhancing its applications to virtually engage patients and staff.
Jim Bob is an investment activist, passionate entrepreneur, and pioneer responsible for developing one of the Internet’s first cloud-based development platforms in 1994. He is the original inventor of the Datatrak SaaS Cloud platform. His 30 years of experience has created cloud-based technologies and businesses within the Life Science, Market Investment, Insurance, Mortgage, Real Estate, and Agricultural industries.
In an interview with Insights Success, Jim Bob shares his entrepreneurial journey and his contribution to the healthcare industry through Datatrak.
Below are the highlights of the interview:
Give us a brief overview of your position at Datatrak International and your journey since the inception of the company.
Datatrak was the first clinical research electronic data capture (EDC) company established back in 1991. By the mid-2000s, the software had reached the end of its life cycle as the industry migrated to the ‘Net for global software service’ delivery. In 2006, Datatrak acquired my company Clickfind as their cloud-based standard. Technically, Clickfind eClinical was a single login, multitenant and multi-lingual, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform for clinical research. With my IP, we were the only company to defeat Datasci’s industry-wide litigation. We were revolutionaries defining early CTMS and EDC, complete with a visual designer, randomization, medical coding, supply management, and remote ECG and image capture. I left the company in 2008 to raise four boys backpacking the world. In 2015, I met Alex Tabatabai, whose fund was heavily invested in Datatrak. Mutual frustration and excitement for the future led to a proxy challenge and the two of us taking on Datatrak in 2016. After replacing the board and leadership, we refocused the company on innovation, which brought us to profitability and NextGen solutions for a post-pandemic world.
Please list the popular services that make your company stand out from the competition.
The one and only Datatrak difference is our enterprise platform that unifies team collaboration with vertical integration across applications to prevent service delivery gaps that delay clinical trials. With the centralization of clinical trial data, our system provides an enhanced experience for all parties involved, from decision-making to site satisfaction.
As the CEO, what is your opinion on the impact of the current pandemic on the Computer Software Industry?
COVID-19 created the largest recession since the 1930’s depression. The nature of social isolation brought about cultural disorder and inequity that pitted individual rights against public safety needs. Pandemic fears stopped patient site visits, disrupting 70% of global clinical trials across 194 countries. The economic results would have been devastating without the FDA’s guidance that opened the door to emerging smart technology for remote patient data capture. Today, their guidance had advanced the industry to adopt team collaboration platforms with AI predictive analytics for modern “hybrid” data capture from sites, labs, and remote patients.
What is your thought on the necessity of a positive work culture? In what ways do you implement it at your organization?
People are the number one asset to an organization. A corporate-owned culture requires equity and transparency without unnecessary barriers to communications. Datatrak adopted a remote workforce model early on to provide flexibility for our employees. However, the fear of isolation encouraged us to put in place employee programs with incentives and recognition.
What is your thought on the necessity for businesses to align their offerings with newer technological developments, especially when it comes to creating digital software for clinical trials?
I truly believe “innovate or die” is still the rule in today’s competitive global economy. Technology for clinical trials must be self-configurable with unlimited scalability to meet the changing needs of organizations working from the cloud. The result must be focused on enabling global team collaboration for the benefit of patient advocacy.
In what ways have you contributed to the community? If given a chance, what change would you bring into making eClinical Solutions Simple?
We simplify the complex by streamlining workflows to reduce costly service delivery gaps between clinical applications. There is no longer a need or desire for an array of different systems and integrations when one platform can do it all. One example is that our platform is able to anonymize and import medical images directly into EDC for radiologist assessment, adjudication and even import DICOM data directly into electronic case report forms (eCRFs) for the last mile to FDA submission. Simple things can cut the setup and training time between redundant PAC to EAS by 50%. The same is true for delivering decentralized trials that automatically integrate smart app data with hybrid site and core lab data. Our latest challenge is to invent new AI models that can learn from predictable outcomes to provide intelligent workflows within our eClinical solutions.
If given a chance, what change would you bring in strengthening the progress of the Life Science industry?
Datatrak has provided innovative technology and unmatched services, aiding our customers on their journeys to increase efficiencies and reduce error rates. In addition, our clients can move on to create unmeasurable benefits for people in need with life-changing discoveries. We can strengthen progress by working with pharma, medical device, and biotech leaders as technology partners focused on patient efficacy. Datatrak is constantly innovating and looking to the future to ensure that we are prepared so that our partners and clients can bring breakthrough therapies to market faster.
In your opinion, what could be the future of Clinical Data Management? And how are you strategizing Datatrak International operations for that future?
The COVID-19 pandemic changed everything. Clinical Research and Development will be driven by Big Data Analytics and AI from the historical site, lab, patient, and device-driven data that’s growing exponentially in realtime. The magnitude and scale are beyond perception, requiring a new generation of data scientists and machine learning models to predict patterns and trends, leading to better planning, data analysis, and faster trial results. It’s the future, and with 18 years of structured clinical data, we are developing performance algorithms, dashboards, and design tools to enable our clients to derive data visualizations for forecasting, trends, statistics, and much more.

The post Jim Bob Ward: Empowering Clinical Teams with Innovative and End User Friendly Solutions appeared first on Insights Success.

Jerry Lepore: Changing Healthcare, One Life at a Time

D-e_v@IS — Fri, 22 Oct 2021 17:43:39 +0000

As CEO of MobileSmith Health, Jerry Lepore is driving the healthcare mobile app development company to change healthcare, one life at a time.
“We want to bring the patient in the healthcare ecosystem to the center of the care circle using two approaches,” says Lepore, who joined the MobileSmith Board of Directors in 2018 before being named CEO in January 2020. Lepore is a serial entrepreneur who has founded, managed, and sold more than a half-dozen companies.
“First, we want to engage patients in every aspect of their health through technology and applications that are necessary for them to be involved and manage their care better,” Lepore says. “Second, we want to accumulate and aggregate the data that a patient has to aid physicians and other providers in driving better outcomes for that patient and for patient populations while reducing overall costs.”
Upending the Traditional Patient Encounter
Founded in 2013, MobileSmith has targeted the key healthcare delivery segments where patients struggle, such as surgical procedure and adherence with pre-and post-operative instruction compliance, and health literacy. The company also provides innovative digital patient experiences like indoor navigation and clinic “check-ins” that directly improve patient satisfaction.
Everyone is familiar with the traditional patient experience, where the patient often feels like an afterthought to the clinician and the technology. How much time during a patient visit is taken up by paperwork and ticking electronic boxes on an electronic health records (EHR) system? How much actual time does a clinician spend listening to the patient?
“The usual patient visit is very one-sided, and lacks the necessary collaboration to achieve better outcomes for patients,” Lepore says. “So how do we flip it around? MobileSmith provides a software solution that runs on a platform that everyone has access to – a mobile device. MobileSmith provides the means to engage with the patient through mobile apps that save time, increase patient adherence, and get them more involved in their own care.”
Engaging Patients in Their Own Health
The MobileSmith PeriOp Patient Adherence app benefits both patients and providers, giving patients the tools to manage their own pre-and post-surgical tasks while reducing the administrative burden on practices. Surgeries account for 60% of total hospital revenues, and a last-minute cancellation can cost a hospital or ambulatory surgical center more than $5,200 in lost revenue. In addition, 60% of all same-day cancellations are deemed preventable, caused by patients neglecting to fast, take/stop certain medications, or show up on time.
By “prescribing” the PeriOp Patient Adherence app, patients receive instructions through the app, with notifications that pop up until each is ticked off a list. Time to quit warfarin? Check. Has the patient reviewed the pre-surgical instructions? Check. Remember the pre-surgical hospital visit today? Check. The MobileSmith app interacts with provider EHR systems, so staff can monitor adherence and manage exceptions, rather than calling every patient at every step of the pre-surgery process.
Following surgery, the app contains the discharge and after-care instructions in a readily available format, instead of printed instructions that can be misplaced or tossed out. Scheduled the follow-up visit? Check. Changed the surgical dressing today? Check. Ready for the first physical therapy session? Check.
“Our perioperative applications are a set of alerts, management capabilities, and instructions that can be adhered to by the patient on a daily basis or even hourly basis, with responses captured and presented to the clinical staff so that they can monitor what’s taking place throughout the preparation period, the day of, and the post-op period to ensure a better outcome for the patient,” Lepore says.
MobileSmith Health apps also can integrate patient-reported data from fitness trackers, blood monitoring systems and more into EMRs so providers can review that information. The company is in the final development stages of apps that help patients monitor and manage such chronic conditions as diabetes and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), with a rollout expected in early 2022.
‘Pick Something You Love’
Healthcare’s move to value-based care and improving the outcomes of patient populations play well to MobileSmith’s strengths as a healthcare mobile app developer. People of all ages are accustomed to banking, shopping, browsing, and more on their mobile devices, so managing their healthcare is a natural progression.
In leading MobileSmith Health, Lepore has discovered a personal and professional sweet spot. “Two-thirds of my career has been more entrepreneurial in nature, and I decided to focus in areas that really excite me, such as education, child services, and healthcare,” Lepore says. “In finding a career, you absolutely have to pick something you love. If you don’t, then you’re not going to work at it every minute of every day with a passion that you need to, and that’s what an entrepreneur needs to do.”
“I’ve always felt that if I was focusing on things that were important to me and important to others, versus focusing on a job and a career, then I would be happier and more productive,” Lepore says. “MobileSmith Health is smack dab in the middle of the healthcare space at a great time, so it’s a fantastic fit.”

The post Jerry Lepore: Changing Healthcare, One Life at a Time appeared first on Insights Success.

Javier García: Developing Strategies for Life-Saving Therapeutics

D-e_v@IS — Fri, 22 Oct 2021 17:42:02 +0000

For over the past three decades, gene therapy has consistently tried to improve its method to cure diseases by developing several mechanisms. Industry experts have researched meticulously to allow doctors to treat a disorder by replacing genes. Javier García, the CEO and Co-founder of Viralgen Vector Core, has incorporated new technologies for medical treatments that improve the health and lives of people.
In recent years, Javier García has led the strategy and implementation of several projects that have marked the forefront of the global biotechnology sector. He has become a global reference as a manufacturer of AAVs for gene therapy. This prompted its acquisition by Bayer in 2020 as part of the AskBio acquisition, for $4 billion.
He is also the co-founder of Columbus Venture Partners, a venture capital firm focused on driving the most disruptive early science and its translation into the market. After the success of Viralgen and other projects in the first two funds, he has just launched a third one with 120 million euros.
Social responsibility is a key aspect of his activity. He is the co-founder of Columbus Children’s Foundation that started in Spain in 2017 and expanded into the US in 2018. The Foundation is specifically aimed at accelerating treatments for children with ultra-rare diseases.
We at Insights Success caught up with Javier García to know more about his journey and how Viralgen is meeting the unmet needs for manufacturing gene therapies.
Below are the highlights of the interview:
Brief our audience about your journey as a business leader until your current position at Viralgen. What challenges have you had to overcome to reach where you are today?
My main professional motivation has always been the creation of value and transformation in the healthcare industry. To devise and develop new projects that have a real impact on people’s lives and wellbeing has been a constant. I started my first entrepreneurial experience in 1986.
I end up working for Eli Lilly for 25 years. I developed my career in Information Technology and later in Business Development. In IT, I lead the digital transformation of the company in the R&D and commercial areas. As Vice President of Business Development, I was involved at the core of innovation acquisition and licensing.
In 2012, I became an independent consultant for biotech companies and research centers. It was in those years that I met my partner, Damià Tormo, with whom we decided to create Columbus Venture Partners in 2015. We have now three funds and more than $250M under management.
The main challenge I faced was to ensure that I really could have the freedom to create a vision and execute it outside a pharma company. Pharma companies are great places to work and learn but leaving a pharma company from an executive position and finding a meaningful place to make a difference is not so simple. It requires discipline, a very definitive commitment to learn and adapt to the world without the protection of a large corporation.
Tell us something more about your company and its mission and vision.
Viralgen was born in response to one of the most pressing needs of the gene therapy market. There was a manufacturing bottleneck that Viralgen helped to address with unique technology, a world-class team, and extra production capacity.
Viralgen’s goal is to provide access to AAV gene therapy solutions for people with genetic diseases. To achieve this, its mission is to accompany its customers throughout the entire process, from development to commercial manufacturing, so that they get the best quality product at the right time and on the right scale and price.
Enlighten us on how you have made an impact in the BioTech niche through your expertise in the market?
I believe that the key is to make a correct reading of what is happening in the market, understand where it is heading, anticipate events by assuming the risks that this implies. There is great science in institutions, but there is not so much knowledge in how to bring it to the market. Ensuring people have access to this knowledge and to those who have the experience is the key to success.
In a nutshell, I believe the role I play is to bring traditional capital and intellectual capital to produce real and tangible innovation. Today capital and knowledge need to be brought together in ways never seen before. Smaller organizations can leverage this new model better than the larger ones and produce even greater results.
Describe in detail the values and the work culture that drives your organization.
It is precisely Viralgen’s corporate culture that enabled us to attract highly qualified talent, suppliers, and customers. Our culture is based on four core values: expertise, empathy, humanity, and trust. Patients are at the center of our decisions. That is the reason that quality is at the top of our expectations.
This is manifested in the human approach of the organization, and how we work with the Columbus Children’s Foundation to advance gene therapy programs with no commercial interest through our contribution in manufacturing.
We are the custodian of a potent technology that can transform the lives of many people, and people that work at Viralgen honor that commitment.
The commitment and pride of belonging that drive the corporate culture is synthesized by this idea – inspired by Dr. Jude Samulski (one of the fathers of gene therapy, and founder of Askbio): “people at Viralgen don’t only come to work, but they come to change the world”.
Where do you envision yourself to be in the long run, and what are your future goals for Viralgen?
I will be developing innovative projects that drive a relevant benefit for the wellbeing of people. I feel that this is my vocation, my passion, and my place in the world. Combining for-profit with non-for-profit makes lots of sense, and I believe it is the new model for the pharma industry and biotech.
I also believe we have to transform the world by giving global access to cures. It is almost as wrapping non-for-profit biotech as part of what we do. This is why we value so much the work we are doing with the Columbus Children´s Foundation. It is a reality that if we don´t do anything about neglected diseases and global access nobody will as we are the ones who understand the technology and what we can do with it.
What would be your advice to budding entrepreneurs who aspire to venture into the BioTech sector?
There are four areas that entrepreneurs need to develop: a vision to establish a differential position on what they want to achieve, leadership to ensure they know how to drive toward the vision and face the challenges, courage to overcome the barriers and deal with setbacks, and compassion to be able to understand patient suffering and urgency.
Anybody in this sector needs to be ready to get feedback, network, and listen to perspectives from different angles. Science is not everything; it is necessary but not sufficient. I see many great projects failing because the leader didn’t take the right actions at the right time.
The final advice is that failure is not a negative thing. I know that myself firsthand, and we need to take a different attitude about that. Attrition of projects in biotech is high, and failure is expected, but there will always be a great project waiting, and the accumulated learning from failures is very valuable.

The post Javier García: Developing Strategies for Life-Saving Therapeutics appeared first on Insights Success.

Helmy Eltoukhy & AmirAli Talasaz: Conquering Cancer with Data

D-e_v@IS — Fri, 22 Oct 2021 17:40:33 +0000

The battle against cancer has been fought for years, and healthcare leaders have continuously tried to come up with new and reliable solutions. Innovative technologies are constantly being developed and improved upon to find feasible ways to detect and treat cancer, including at its earliest stage. Two pioneers in the fight against cancer are Co-Founders and Co-Chief Executive Officers of Guardant Health, Helmy Eltoukhy and AmirAli Talasaz.
Helmy and AmirAli are both serial entrepreneurs in the biotech field and have known each other for about two decades, even working in the same lab in their graduate school at Stanford. They shared the belief that applying ultra-high-scale DNA sequencing to the clinical markets could fundamentally improve the trajectory of patients’ healthcare journeys. They co-founded Guardant Health in 2012.
The dynamic duo of Helmy and AmirAli believes that the key to conquering cancer is to expand efforts to detect the cancers most likely to be cured through early intervention and access to their molecular information throughout all stages of the disease.
The Inception Overview
Cancer being a disease of the genome made it an area where DNA sequencing could make a significant impact if cancer could be found early enough and tracked in real-time through a simple blood-test. This idea became Guardant Ò Health, and its first product, Guardant360 , was launched in 2014. One challenge Helmy and AmirAli have had to overcome is making this new technology, liquid biopsy, accepted in the industry given that tissue biopsy had long been the standard of care. At Guardant Health, their now widely used liquid biopsy tests aim to transform cancer care management across all stages of the disease.
Their Guardant360 CDx test is the first FDA-approved comprehensive liquid biopsy for patients with advanced cancer, and now the company sets its sights on potentially bringing to market the first FDA-approved blood test for cancer screening with the potential to increase the cancer screening.
Since founding the company, Helmy and AmirAli have scaled the company to almost 1,500 employees and launched multiple commercially available products across the cancer care continuum.
The Mission and Vision
Helmy states that the mission of Guardant Health is to conquer cancer with data. Since day one, their vision has been to develop a simple blood test that screens for cancer at its earliest and most treatable stage. To get there, the company has taken a beachhead strategy starting first where the greatest unmet medical need exists – advanced cancer – and where the DNA shed from a tumor into the blood is easier to detect.
Helmy says, “Our company’s blood tests for cancer profiling and monitoring are easier, faster, and less invasive than traditional tissue biopsy-based approaches. Our tests enable physicians to stay one step ahead of a patient’s cancer at all stages of the disease and help identify the latest breakthrough treatments, which are increasingly targeted to the molecular makeup of the tumor and much better tolerated than traditional ‘one size fits all’ chemotherapy.”
AmirAli expresses that they are closer than ever to achieving the goal of providing a simple blood test that screens for cancer at the very earliest stage, among average risk, asymptomatic people.
“We are excited with our progress in our historic ECLIPSE trial with over 10,000 participants, which is evaluating the performance of our blood test to detect the earliest signs of colorectal cancer, and if successful, will support our submission to the FDA. The promise of blood-based cancer screening is quickly becoming a reality, and we see a brighter future for humanity by improving population health and reducing the harms of cancer,” says AmirAli.
A Soaring Impact on Biotechnology
From a technology application standpoint, the company’s significant impact was unlocking the data generated from next-generation sequencing with minimal loss, that is, identifying just a few molecules of mutated tumor DNA from an entire tube of blood or what is known as “a needle in a haystack” problem. Using the collective expertise of Helmy and AmirAli, they solved two challenges to liquid biopsy that were previously unsolved – sensitivity and specificity.
With sensitivity, many technologies for sequencing in the market were losing 95% of DNA before getting to the sequencer. Guardant Health developed new chemistry that successfully converted nearly 90% of the DNA in a tube of blood, i.e., “the haystack”, to search for potentially a single mutated tumor NDA, i.e., “a needle”.
The other problem was that sequencing technologies had a high error rate of 1 in 100, masking with deep signals and noise. The company’s technology lowered the error rate by a thousand-fold. So now, it sees a 1 in 3 million error rate instead of 1 in 100, or in 1000, like other technologies.
Guardant Health continues to update its technology and believes it is the highest performance technology on the market today.
The Significance of Technology
The science of liquid biopsy has been around since the 1950s. Advancements in the last decade have been the tipping point. There’s been a confluence of different genomic technologies, extraction methodologies, and highpowered bioinformatic tools. The affordability of applying next-generation sequencing to routine testing has enabled Guardant Health to get much more sensitive and specific in seeing the trace fragments of either DNA or proteins contained within a tube of blood.
Until the company launched Guardant360 in 2014, off-the shelf DNA sequencing technologies were not only unaffordable but not sensitive enough to see these trace fragments in blood. Now their FDA-approved Guardant360 CDx provides doctors and their patients guideline-complete genomic results with a turnaround time of seven days.
Setting Goals for the Long Run
Guardant Health focuses on what will have the greatest impact on the most patients. AmirAli mentions that too many families are losing loved ones every day to cancer, a disease that remains the second leading cause of death. AmirAli says, “At Guardant Health, our calling is to guard the quality of human life from a debilitating disease and offer patients more time. There are a lot of opportunities to offer value to cancer patients, particularly around increasing cancer screening rates across cancer types and populations by bringing to market a simple blood test for screening that is FDA approved and widely adopted. Even with our test for complete genomic testing in patients with advanced cancer, which informs potentially life-changing treatment, these testing rates remain tragically low. We cannot consider innovation alone success; we must continue to increase adoption of the innovation to truly make an impact on human health.”
Guardant Health’s informatics platform is a machine learning platform, so the more data it gets, the better. “As we continue to test more and more patients with cancer, at all stages, we continue to exponentially increase our knowledge about the disease. This not only fuels profound innovations in the detection and monitoring of cancer, but in treatments that may one day fight the disease before it is even born. Cancer does not sleep, and neither will we until we’ve accomplished our mission of conquering cancer with data,” concludes Helmy.

The post Helmy Eltoukhy & AmirAli Talasaz: Conquering Cancer with Data appeared first on Insights Success.

David H. Mowry: Creating the Future of Medical Aesthetics by aligning company leaders around a singular vision, goals and objectives.

D-e_v@IS — Fri, 22 Oct 2021 17:40:05 +0000

It is nearly impossible for organizations to sustain great results without alignment among leaders. To achieve alignment, leaders of successful organizations willingly put company and team goals ahead of their own. Aligning leaders and helping them achieve a singular focus is one of the most crucial responsibilities of any chief executive. This focus is what accelerates the path forward to organizational efficiency, effectiveness, and excellence. A common trait among pioneering leaders is the ability to transform the culture of their organization by remaining true to top priorities, which in turn enriches employees, delights customers, and creates value for shareholders.
David H. Mowry is one such pioneering healthcare leader who likes to create a culture where the team is aligned to a singular shared set of goals and objectives. David is the CEO of Cutera and is a seasoned executive with history of success in the Medical Device space and a proven track record of execution and transformational results.
In an interview with Insights Success, David shared about his journey and about his contribution through Cutera.
Below are the highlights of the interview:
Please brief our readers about the composition of the leadership team at Cutera.
Cutera is a story about execution, and the most critical indicator of execution is having the right leadership team in place. So, my highest and most urgent priority upon joining was the installation of a reliable and unified leadership team committed to a singular value creation game-plan.
The incumbent leadership structure lacked two main ingredients; 1) technical excellence in several critical functions and 2) leaders aligned and committed to subordinating their personal goals for the benefit of the company’s goals. Since my arrival in the summer of 2019, we have turned over nearly 85% of the senior leadership team. Our focus in recruiting new leaders was first on functional competence and subsequently on collaboration and teamwork. The result of the process has given Cutera an amazing group of committed senior leaders who have earned one another’s respect and who provide commitment and support.
Describe the company, its innovative medical aesthetics products, how it is differentiated in energy-based aesthetics, and how Cutera meets the needs of the customer.
Cutera was founded by veteran laser engineers and the spirit of innovation continues to drive the business. Somewhere along the way, our approach to innovation shifted to that of a fast follower, where our devices brought increased capabilities, but also greater complexities and costs. To correct this, we have made two fundament shifts: first, we innovate to great value – either “better outcomes at same costs,” or “same outcomes at lower cost,” or, most appealing, the homerun of “better outcomes at lower costs.” Our second shift is that we are moving away from over-engineered, fast-follower devices to being first to market for unmet clinical needs.
What were the challenges you came across since joining the organization?
There have been both micro and macro challenges. Certainly there is the obvious macro challenge presented by the COVID-19 Pandemic. Cutera, like others, needed to take significant and immediate action to survive, which we did. Looking back, I am very pleased with our efforts during this time as we not only survived the challenge, but we also emerged leaner, better aligned and more focused on our customers. We strengthened our balance sheet while also upgrading our commercial talent. As for micro challenges, we had weak supply chain and high costs which have been significantly improved through our margin expansion programs, improving profitability and enabling great reinvestment into our business to fuel longer term growth.
How would you describe your leadership style and how is that impacting the people at Cutera?
I spent some time in the Army after getting my undergraduate degree and I learned two things very quickly: first, that it is possible to learn something from everyone. Humility is a catalyst for open exchange of ideas and almost always surfaces the best solution to a problem. The second take-away for me was the value of people. People are and will always be the most critical resource. We should always respect our teams and employees, which includes sharing the data, actively communicating, empowering them, and allowing them to fail from time to time. Some other related leadership style tidbits that guide my style include the idea that you only fail when you stop trying. I also believe leaders should take the time to recognize effort and whenever possible, publicly reward results. Another belief I hold dear is that perfect is often the enemy of good, and that we must take our gains now and keep moving forward.
Describe in detail about the work culture and the values that drive the company
At Cutera, we have adopted a series of what we call Transformative Values with the belief that embracing and incorporating these values into who we are and what we do will accelerate our advance toward our shared goal of “Creating the Future of Medical Aesthetics.” These values are taking hold and helping drive the culture we seek. These values include:

Aligned – Working as a singular team to a shared set of goals/objectives.
Bold – Stretching outreach, expanding our impact.
Data-Driven – Using data versus opinions to settle disputes increases alignment.
Focus – Doing fewer things, better.
Fun – Enjoying the work you’re assigned and the people you’re working with.

What would be your advice for emerging business leaders aspiring to venture into the healthcare industry?
I have found my 30-plus year career in medical devices and healthcare to be enriching because of the ability to participate in some small way within the value stream of improving the quality of life for others. We have all heard the phase, “do what you love, and you will never work a day in your life.” I have found this saying to be true for each of my assignments in the healthcare industry, regardless of sector, business structure (public or private) or company maturity (start-up or large cap strategic company). I can’t imagine leading a company outside healthcare.
How do you sustain in the current unpredictable market and hectic competition?
There is no doubt that this a hectic and competitive environment coming out of COVID-19, but companies and leaders need to stay the course by continuing to listen to customers and employees and providing differentiated offerings that bring value. And sometimes just slowing down and doing what is right can calm the pace, refocus the team, and relieve pressures that are not constructive to the process.
What is future vision for the company? And what would be the best roadmap for getting there?
At Cutera, we have a clearly stated vision, which is to “Create the future of Medical Aesthetics.” This includes being the partner of choice for our core customers, which are dermatologists, plastic surgeons and “med spa” physicians. Doing so ensures we stay focused on the right conditions, we look for first mover opportunities to meet unmet clinical needs, and we provide our offering as a true partner. As we speak, all of Cutera is well along on this journey.

The post David H. Mowry: Creating the Future of Medical Aesthetics by aligning company leaders around a singular vision, goals and objectives. appeared first on Insights Success.

Arnaud Mascarell: Trailblazing the Effective and Innovative Technology in Healthcare

D-e_v@IS — Fri, 22 Oct 2021 17:37:13 +0000

Heart failure is one of the major diseases the current world faces. To avoid such mishaps, people nowadays are becoming more and more health-centric. The saying goes, “With a healthy heart, the beat goes on.” However, heart failure can lead to various dreadful consequences, and the treatment process is even more complex. To address the ongoing need for innovation, Medtech companies continue to develop devices to improve the heart’s pumping capacity. However, most options risk internal damage to the heart. FineHeart has developed an innovative device that provides temporary and permanent support for this crisis to prevent internal damage.
One of the brains behind FineHeart is Arnaud Mascarell, the Co-founder & Chief Executive Officer. Arnaud leads with a charge and has defined groundbreaking strategies to make FineHeart a well-known and esteemed organization in healthcare. He utilizes his immense experience to ensure the clinical development plans are on track to fulfill the FDA requirements and other competent authorities.
A Fine Journey to the Heart
When Arnaud received his Biomedical Engineer degree from UTC (Technological University of Compiègne, France), he started as a research engineer at Air Liquide Santé. After serving a brief period, he later joined Medtronic as a Field Clinical Engineer. He quickly realized that he would also have to explore the business side of medical operations to expand his skills. Arnaud went on to pursue an MBA from IAE Paris in 2000. His decision came to fruition as the degree reoriented his career, and he began to focus on sales and marketing. After a decade, he jumped into his entrepreneurial journey and co-founded FineHeart in 2010.
Utilizing Technology for Competitive Lead
According to the World Health Organization, heart disease has remained the leading cause of death globally for the past 20 years. Arnaud mentions that the second leading cause of death in the United States and Europe is heart failure. It has become a global pandemic affecting an estimated 64.3 million people worldwide[1], with a steadily rising incidence (over one million new cases in G8 countries). Heart Failure is a degenerative disease where the heartbeat weakens over time, becoming more and more severe. This results in reduced quality of life, frequent, costly hospitalizations, and early mortality. A quarter of problems are electrical, which can be treated with pacemakers. The other two-thirds are muscular, which can ultimately only be resolved with a heart transplant.
The shortage of donors limits heart transplants, so a device called an Left Ventricle Assist Device (LVAD) is implanted to improve the pumping capacity of the left ventricle. Despite the urgent need, current LVADs are bulky, which causes significant myocardial damage. They are associated with a risk of infection, bleeding, and thrombosis, which is why they are almost exclusively implanted on very severe patients with short life expectancy. In the event of a cardiogenic shock, it is often necessary to wait to decide whether to implant an LVAD and force physicians to resort to temporary circulatory assist solutions.
FineHeart has invented a breakthrough device called the ICOMS FLOWMAKER®. This device can provide both temporary support (with no time limit and preserving the patient’s mobility) and permanent support if the patient does not recover sufficiently from the shock, which constitutes a paradigm shift in how severe Heart Failure patients will be treated.
The ICOMS FLOWMAKER® is like an electric bicycle, as it increases the blood flow and is synchronized to the natural heartbeat.
The entire ICOMS FLOWMAKER® system is fully implanted in the left ventricle. It is powered by a miniaturized internal battery that is rechargeable by transcutaneous energy transfer (TET). It eliminates the risk of driveline infection, a significant determinant of post-VAD morbidity and mortality. Maintaining trans-aortic flow supports increases left ventricle unloading, improving myocardial recovery chances and faster device weaning possibilities. The wireless device is programmable, like a pacemaker, and the operating modes can be customized for individual hemodynamic requirements, which preserves pump efficiency in case of increased cardiac demand.
According to the patient’s point of view, ICOMS FLOWMAKER is designed to deliver improved quality of life by providing untethered freedom and supporting the patients’ return to daily activities.
Overcoming Severe Challenges
One of the biggest challenges that doctors face is the lack of long-term treatments for heart failure patients, especially those who have progressed to the most severe stage of the disease. These patients bear the brunt of the economic burden, but most treatments do too little to help them.
FineHeart is determined to disrupt the deadly cycle of heart failure and address the unmet needs of patients. ICOMS FLOWMAKER is the only device that will preserve the heart’s natural pumping function, as it synchronizes with the heartbeat to augment blood flow.
Stepping Up in Tough Times
Discussing the impact of the COVID pandemic, Arnaud expresses that the issue with the pandemic is that it has monopolized the health community. However, with heart failure being a degenerative disease, patients’ treatment delays have worsened the condition.
Fortunatey, FineHeart has been able to continue developing its device through pre-clinical trials and has not been overly impacted. His concern with the pandemic is that numerous patients have suffered heart problems with severe forms of COVID-19, which could lead to a higher risk of severe heart failure in the future.
Over The Horizon
Moving ahead and chasing milestones, Arnaud’s efforts have helped FineHeart recently close an $18M series B funding. This financing was accomplished with a pool of industrial and independent investors. The collective action brought together know-how from the world of technological excellence and renowned medical expertise, shown by the substantial contribution from cardiologists, who individually invested. This consortium of shareholders represents a new approach, going beyond the cookie-cutter approach to secure financial support.
It is one example of how FineHeart will continue to push and find innovative ways to deliver the disruptive treatment that the ICOMS FLOWMAKER embodies. The organization now holds all necessary resources to ramp up development and is on track to target First-In-Human clinical trials next year.
Follow Your Heart
FineHeart faces all the challenges of a start-up in the Medtech Industry, from R&D and product trials to the difficulties of raising finance regularly. Arnaud understands the entrepreneurial drive and the challenges, so he advises up-and-coming entrepreneurs to believe in their products.
“If you believe in your product and the potential disruptive treatment it can bring to save patients’ lives, you must keep going and find solutions,” says Arnaud.

The post Arnaud Mascarell: Trailblazing the Effective and Innovative Technology in Healthcare appeared first on Insights Success.

Ardy Arianpour: Visionary HealthTech Leader Delivering Patient Experience and Transforming Healthcare

D-e_v@IS — Fri, 22 Oct 2021 17:20:09 +0000

In today’s world, data is one of the most critical assets that one can possess to improve and innovate in almost every industry. Leading professionals who understand the value of data have discovered technologies that can flourish over time, and the healthcare industry isn’t an exception. These leaders are developing technologies for organizations to drive accurate and efficient healthcare via data. Ardy Arianpour, the CEO and Co-Founder of Seqster, is one such leader who is on a mission to make patient-centric interoperability a reality and lead the nation with his venture.
We at Insights Success caught up with Ardy Arianpour in our endeavor to find the “Top 10 Pioneering Leaders Redefining Healthcare 2021” and interviewed him to share his expertise and how he is bringing a meaningful difference to the healthcare world.
Below are the highlights of the interview.
Brief our audience about your journey as a business leader until your current position at Seqster. What challenges have you had to face to reach where you are today?
My journey as an immigrant to the USA began at the age of 6 in 1986. Fast forward to the 2000s, when I became a young executive, and then leading to my position as CEO/Founder of Seqster from 2016. I’m used to challenges. I thrive in uncertainty because I have a strong sense of purpose, and the same can be said about my company; Seqster’s mission is centred on breaking down data silos to improve patient lives at scale, which is the biggest healthcare challenge. To do this, we focused on how to create a platform to put the data in the patient’s hands, empowering them to collect, own and share their data on their terms.
Ironically, the first patients we were able to help were my grandmother, who suffered from Alzheimer’s Disease, and my father who was diagnosed with colon cancer. I witnessed firsthand the impact of the Seqster platform for not only the patient but for the entire family’s care journey. Seqster makes health data access seamless and easy to share in a highly private and secure manner.
What is really remarkable is that for most companies, their vision is in a distant future, far, far away. At Seqster, we executed our vision early in 2018, while delivering on our mission by setting the standard for patient-centric interoperability and real-time data access.
Enlighten us on how you have made an impact in the healthcare niche through your expertise in the market?
I knew early on that DNA/genomic data is meaningless unless it is paired with high-quality, high-fidelity medical record data. Health records have been a static snapshot that captures a person’s health profile at one point in time. A dynamic, real-time view of health is critical for better monitoring of health conditions and more timely medical interventions. Seqster has automated the collection of longitudinal health records, and further, we have created the first and only platform that ties together DNA, fitness/wearable, and health records data in one place.
The stars have aligned at the right place and at the right time. There is a massive push towards healthcare consumerization, simplifying the patient experience and improving the patient journey. The focus is increasingly on the patient, from the latest patient access and interoperability guidelines worldwide to how the information is intuitively displayed for the patient, their physician, and the care team to readily understand. My career has always been focused on empowering patients. We are all patients at one time or another.
What people, what books, what life factors have influenced and impacted you?
Steve Jobs inspired me at a very young age as a visionary entrepreneur who made Apple what it is today. I was also inspired by Bill Gates when I met him in 2018 after being asked to deliver a private presentation, in which he suggested that we take Seqster enterprise in order to scale. As far as books go, his monumental book Business @ the Speed of Thought taught me the importance of trusting my instinct and executing quickly. Additionally, both my maternal and paternal grandmothers suffering from Alzheimer’s led me to realize how important multigenerational data is for society.
We have had special requests from patients to use our platform. After granting access, we realized how lifechanging being on the Seqster platform is. When my father was sick with colorectal cancer, I was able to get him diagnosed immediately and in surgery in days instead of weeks by running a tumor board in 6 hours with his health data. These personal stories, as well as remarkable stories from patients who have used the Seqster platform, keep our team working hard every minute of every day.
Describe in detail the values and the work culture that drives Seqster.
Everything we do at Seqster is patient-first, which means we run a culture that is fast-paced, passionate, and engaging. We are a nimble ninja team that is used to executing quickly and effectively. When it comes to either the patient or how I run the company, there is no “Plan B.” We strive for excellence in everything that we do. Failure is not an option because our mission is so critical that I never have a “Plan B.” We only go by “Plan A.”
What is your opinion on the necessity for businesses to align your offerings with newer technological developments?
Seqster aligns well with the newer technologies, such as virtual care, specialty pharmacies, and virtual clinical trials that require a longitudinal 360-degree view of the patient’s health. A static snapshot of a person’s health does not tell a complete story. Seqster provides a real-time, dynamic view that is unique in digital health and healthcare.
Where do you envision yourself to be in the long run, and what are your future goals for Seqster?
In the long run, I could see our technology at Seqster impacting patient lives at scale in the same way that Amazon or Netflix has made it seamless for consumers to order a product or watch a movie. I couldn’t be more excited about what lies ahead. We are just getting started and are in hyper-growth mode.
What would be your advice to budding entrepreneurs who aspire to venture into healthcare?
Entrepreneurship is one of the most challenging and rewarding things that you can do with your life. When you layer in healthcare, on top of how challenging entrepreneurship is, it feels impossible most of the time. The only way that you can get through the tough times is by fully aligning with the mission. My advice is that if you want to venture into healthcare, make sure that you are 100% committed to your mission. If not, I guarantee you will fail. The mission is the soul of the company and is a must-have.

The post Ardy Arianpour: Visionary HealthTech Leader Delivering Patient Experience and Transforming Healthcare appeared first on Insights Success.