On this episode of Health Explorers, Dr. John Martin and Michael Kisch speak with Vicky Demas, Founder and CEO of identifeye HEALTH, a company using AI and automation to transform retinal imaging, preventing vision loss and unlocking powerful health insights at the point of care.

Before launching identifeye, Vicky helped bring GRAIL’s multi-cancer detection test, Galleri, to life and was a founding member of Google Life Sciences, which later spun out to become Verily.

We explore Vicky’s journey building cutting-edge health tech, her passion for translating science into scalable solutions, and why she believes the eyes might be a literal window into your health—and your soul.

On the latest episode of Health Explorers, we speak with Sari Kaganoff, the Chief Commercial Officer of Rock Health.  At Rock Health, Sari leads the consulting and insights membership team, supporting companies on strategy and achieving a deeper understanding of digital health trends. She is also a venture advisor to Rock Health Capital and an angel investor. Before Rock Health, she worked at McKinsey, advising clients on harnessing the power of digital, data, and analytics to improve patient care. Sari brings a unique perspective, which is informed by the research she and her team conduct and their many interactions with big and small companies.  This makes her a distinctive voice in the digital health ecosystem and someone who can often see where the industry is going before almost everyone else. In this episode, we learn where the following emerging growth opportunities may be, the hard questions that founders need to ask themselves, and what Sari would do if she waved a magic wand and made one change to the US healthcare system.

New episode of Health Explorers w/Renee Ryan, former CEO of Cala Health.

On the latest episode of Health Explorers, I speak with Renee Ryan, the former CEO of bioelectronic medicine pioneer Cala Health. 

Renee brings a unique perspective, having spent time as a start-up CEO and a healthcare investor.  Before running Cala Health, she was an investment banker at  Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, Jefferies & Co, and Robert Baird.   Renee then joined J&J's ventures team where she invested in over 15 companies.  While at J&J she played a central role in incubating several start-ups and joint ventures including Verb Surgical in partnership with Verily.

In this episode, we discuss Renee's experience on both sides of the investor-operator relationship.  What she thinks each doesn't fully grasp about the other, the key trait she looks for in leadership hires, and the advice she provides to early-stage founders.

On the latest episode of Health Explorers, Jay Shah and I speak with Dr. Dan Azagury, Director of the Stanford Biodesign Innovation Fellowship Program, a 10-month experience that equips aspiring innovators with a proven, repeatable process to identify important health-related needs, invent novel health technologies to address them and prepare to implement those products into patient care. Since its inception in 2001 over 50 companies have been founded out of the program including Shockwave Medical, iRythym, Viz.ai, and Cala Health.

Dan grew up and started his medical career in Europe, but migrated to the United States, eventually landing in Silicon Valley, where he became a BioDesign Fellow himself. His time in the program eventually led to his co-founding of Ciel Medical. In addition to his faculty role, Dan is also the Section Chief of Minimally Invasive and Bariatric Surgery at Stanford.

In this episode, we discuss what attracted Dan to Silicon Valley, the roller coaster ride of entrepreneurship, and how to teach people the process of healthcare innovation.

Dr. Jay Shah and I speak with Dr. James Min, the Founder, and CEO of Cleerly, a pioneer in the application of Artificial Intelligence to better identify patients at risk for heart disease. Based on over a decade of foundational research, Cleerly represents the natural progression of the pioneering work that Dr. Min and his team performed at The Dalio Institute of Cardiovascular Imaging at New York Presbyterian Hospital.

James is a former Professor of Radiology and Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College. He is a board-certified cardiologist with a clinical focus on cardiovascular disease prevention and imaging. In total, Dr. Min has published more than 500 peer-reviewed manuscripts and served as Principal Investigator on numerous landmark clinical trials and registries. James received his BA from the University of Chicago and his medical degree from Temple University. He completed his residency and fellowship at the University of Chicago Hospitals.

In this episode, we discuss Dr. Min's transition from academic medicine into building an innovative start-up and the lessons he's learned along the way.

On this episode of Health Explorers, we chat with Adrian James, the Co-Founder of Omada Health.

Born as a research project at IDEO, Adrian and his co-founder Sean Duffy pioneered a new way to deliver care to people with chronic conditions like diabetes, hypertension and MSK. 

A member of the first batch of companies that came out of Rock Health Accelerator, Omada Health has had a formative impact on the digital health industry. From improving the quality of life of more than 1 million people to creating the "digital therapeutics" category and introducing the world to the concept of a "health coach", Omada paved the way for hundreds of companies tackling a broad range of medical conditions.

In this episode, we learn what drew Adrian to Health Tech, his fervent belief in the need to be "evidence" based and why Paul Graham's essays were an inspiration during some of the most difficult days building Omada.

Highlights from this episode:

✓ The importance of focus. Why it's critical to get good at saying "No"

✓Evolving the company from a family culture to a world-class team

✓Aligning your company vision with your business model.

✓Beware of bad advice, but be inspired by skepticism

✓The importance of staying true to your long term vision and not taking shortcuts

✓His new mission to reform the food system.

On this episode of Health Explorers, Dr. Jay Shah and Michael Kisch speak with Dr. Naomi Fisher,  the Founder and Director of The Brigham and Women’s Hospital Remote Hypertension Service which is internationally recognized as a center of excellence.  Dr. Fisher has been engaged in almost three decades of clinical research at Harvard University, focusing on cardiovascular endocrinology with specific interests in renal denervation and cuffless blood pressure measurement.   She is a graduate of Princeton University, received her medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania, followed by a fellowship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. 

In this episode we challenge the common belief that innovation only comes from the outside, disrupting the status quo and forcing incumbents to change.   Dr. Fisher’s career is a great example of how innovation can, and often does originate from within.   Informed by a deep understanding of patient needs and the business of healthcare. In addition to her clinical role we discuss her approach to partnering with start-ups focused on advancing the diagnosis and treatment of patients suffering from chronic disease.

On this episode of Health Explorers, we talk with Raphael Michel. Raphael is a 2x Health Tech Founder and CEO. His first company, Eargo,  is a pioneer in direct to consumer hearing aids. He led the company from inception through commercialization raising over $70M in financing. Eargo went public in 2020.  He then co-founded Onera Health where he led an international team that  brought the sleep lab into the home. Raphael grew up in France, but has called Silicon Valley his home for over 20 years. He is a graduate of Stanford and the University of California - Berkley. Most recently, he worked at Google X where he led the transition of breakthrough technical projects into commercial companies. 

Highlights from this episode:

✓ Being intentional in your career choices in order to train to be an entrepreneur.

✓Understanding the difference between a great idea and a great business.

✓The necessity for a start-up to have an unfair competitive advantage to be successful.

✓Thinking about distribution from Day 1.

✓Front-loading the biggest risks to validate your business as early as possible.

✓In the age of AI, there is still a need for the human touch.

✓Focus on the customers job to be done, not on the competition.

Shireen Yates is an accomplished entrepreneur and CEO who is passionate about connected hardware and consumer health products.  She is a Silicon Valley start-up veteran and a University of Pennsylvania and MIT graduate.  Currently, she is a product leader at Meta. In 2013, Shireen co-founded Nima Labs, leading the company until its exit in 2020.   Nima's mission was to help people with food allergies know what exactly is in their food.  She and her team built an elegant solution that enabled real-time, convenient testing of allergens at mealtime, specifically gluten and peanuts.  Time Magazine and Popular Science recognized Nima as one of the year's best inventions.  In this episode, Shireen shares her founding journey, including her and her new husband moving in with her parents three days after incorporating Nima. Shireen introduces us to the concept of a Nature Bath (it does NOT involve getting wet). She shares her experiences as a female founder and CEO who also started a family while running Nima. Finally, she shares her wisdom on how to shift the power dynamic between investors and founders and the need to focus early on distribution as much as product.