BioTechnology

When Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) were introduced in the early 1970s the vision was clear: digitizing patient records would make healthcare more efficient, and better for the patient and provider. Fast forward to today—we’ve come a long way towards the goal of a better system, but we aren’t quite there. We’ve identified the industry’s pain points, and laid the groundwork for solutions. Widespread adoption of the three healthcare tech ideas below will be crucial to building a healthcare system that is better for patients and the clinicians alike. In 2018, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) renamed “Meaningful Use” to “Promoting Interoperability”, which is a good indicator that we are inching closer to greater efficiency in healthcare. Essentially, interoperability means the ability for health information systems and software apps to communicate, exchange data and use the data they’ve shared.

The allerguard device is the first airborne detection system that scans your entire plate of food, identifying an allergen in the parts per billion, down the safest allowable amount. Current technologies are limited and difficult. People don’t want additional hassle. For allergy sufferers, every social gathering, school trip, or even just to have a pizza with friends is a complex operation that involves detailed preparations from checking that the EpiPen is ready to use to quizzing the waitstaff about ingredients and food preparation. In addition, AR and VR will take a dramatic role in this transformation. In the not-so-distant future we will see, literally, 3D reconstructions of organs in motion and Alzheimer’s patients will be able to retrieve memories by returning them to a time, experience, or sound that was important to them in the past. I predict that in addition to AR and VR, AI technologies with the ability to process big amounts of data, together with constantly improving image recognition functions, will be utilized to enhance diagnostics,

As a visionary and a strategic leader, Dr. Waqas Ahmed (a Nephrologist based in Jacksonville, Florida) takes his mission very seriously. Paving a way for a patient-focused connected care, Dr. Ahmed focuses on improving the lives of millions of patients. Combining his healthcare expertise and passion for immersive technology, he along with his co-founders, founded American TelePhysicians Group of Companies (ATP), a digital healthcare organization led by physicians, to help both patients and healthcare providers.  “In a highly fragmented and regulated industry like healthcare, high cost, lack of price transparency, poor patient access as well as education and ineffective integration of healthcare services are some of the major challenges that exist,” points out Dr. Ahmed. ATP utilizes technology to focus on integration of healthcare services to address their key issues, which are Access, Affordability and Awareness (the 3As).

“Data is not an asset that companies should have the right to own, health data is personal and should be accessible to the person it matters most to, the individual”, says Kristen Valdes, Founder & CEO, b.well. In the health care world, each company like providers, payers, point solutions, employers have their portal and they try to engage consumers in that individual aspect of their health care experience. It is then up to the customer to browse through numerous apps and find relevant information. As a health care expert, Kristen Valdes observed that lack of transparency of data between the stakeholders has made it difficult for the individuals to manage their health care needs. She was a health care consumer that struggled as her daughter, Bailey, endured a seven year long journey of misdiagnose, expensive procedures, and a near-fatal incident due to non-availability of collated data before Kristen was able to advocate and find her diagnosis.

“The older I get, the more I realize how much I have to learn,” says Gerry Miller, Founder & CEO, Cloudticity. He keeps an open mind, listens and surrounds himself with people who he can learn from. Miller is a responsible person who understands what is important and beautifully manages every aspect of his life in the right way. He gives his team the right amount of support, his family enough time and his company generous amounts of care. According to Miller, self-awareness and good decision making are inevitable to success. “I know the buck stops with me, so I work hard to present a clear vision and make the hard decisions as quickly as possible,” he says. The inquisitive leader also gives his team the freedom of decision making with the right blend of support. In the initial stages, he takes the responsibility of setting up the team for success and ensures everyone is equipped enough to work towards the mission.

With industry 4.0 revolutionizing the automation of healthcare particularly with regards to medical device manufacturing, the segment is seeing a substantial drip in the cost of technology. Andreas Hogg, an experienced medical device technologist and the CEO of Coat-X, opines this to be the right time for biomedical companies to integrate novel fabrication methods into the production to increase effectiveness and quality control of the fabrication processes and to achieve further prices reduction of medical devices and other components. Injecting the very “smart strategy” into Coat-X, Hogg and his team of biomedical experts started to integrate the industry 4.0 concept into their production lines to increase the quality of medical devices. The beginning of Coat-X was a joined collaboration between the company, Johnson & Johnson, and the University of Applied Sciences in Neuchatel. The output of this project was a an innovative encapsulation technology using ultrathin layers to protect against corrosion of devices across industries.

For Benedikt Brueckle, “Know Your Customer” is not just a procedure to assess and monitor customer risk. Simply put, it is to understand the needs of the customers by interacting and building a relationship with them. Brueckle believes knowing your customers and being persistent in doing that are the two core principles of organizational success. Being a technology expert and strategic leader, he embraces this principle to steer CompuGroup Medical US with the mission to improve health and the quality of life. CompuGroup is a global eHealth provider that design a portfolio of cutting-edge IT solutions. The Pain of Interoperability: Brueckle identifies the core issue persisting in the healthcare industry as interoperability. Today’s healthcare providers are constantly challenged with the critical issue of collect data from across the care continuum.

Little did Anne Marie Kirby know that her “one-track mind” would contribute greatly to her entrepreneurial success. With a focused approach, she used “prevention” as an underrated solution to all medical problems. “Prevention could save billions of taxpayer dollars when people take the personal initiative and have the right programs at their disposal to make the best decisions regarding their health. “Our Wellness Platform enables the creation and delivery of preventive health programs,” says Anne Marie, Founder & CEO, CoreHealth Technologies. In an effort to thwart the growth and burden of Non-Communicable Diseases or NCDs, Anne Marie’s company wants to reverse the trend through prevention. “Two-thirds of all deaths in the world can be attributed to NCDs, however, these chronic diseases are highly preventable. Unfortunately, the biggest challenge is that prevention is not very profitable,” notes Anne Marie.

I wrote about a leadership framework that has helped me in a post I called “Shepherds vs. Sheepherders.” While a simple perspective, I think it has profound implications for any kind of leader. What I have learned from leading individuals and teams is that people want to be part of a great cause, they want to work with other people who share their values, and they want to grow and progress based on honest, constructive feedback and stretch opportunities.  The Journey: We shared a belief that healthcare has to be radically transformed and we knew this change was not going to come quickly through the government, provider organizations, or payers. We believed that the self-funded employer was the entity who best understood the urgency to change healthcare and was also in the best position to catalyze the change. We have had the great privilege of being the trusted partner of many of the world’s most progressive self-funded employers — health activists as we call them — that are deeply motivated to redesign the healthcare supply chain.

A born fighter may not realize the power in him until he is sent to the battlefield. So was the case of Naheed Kurji when he was asked to take the reigns as President and CEO of Cyclica—an AI-driven biotechnology and drug discovery company. “Many early prospective investors made it clear that they were looking for someone with a PhD to lead Cyclica without really getting to know me or how the company was set up. Fortunately, my team and many others believed in me, our vision, and the broader team, and have supported us for a long time – I am truly grateful to them.” When he was asked to move from CFO and take the role of CEO in April 2016, he quickly embraced the leader in him and began to take charge. His passion for AI and life sciences served as a transformative success factor for Cyclica. Exploring the “deep how” of his success, Kurji credits his team for investing their time and knowledge in him, and for continuing to believe in his leadership.

“Access and efficiency, stemming from misalignment of interests between Providers and Consumers are two of the biggest challenges that exist in the current healthcare market,” says Shelby Sanderford, Founder of DOCPACE. Providers aim to see more patients and patients would like to be seen on time. “The two interests work against each other, so what DOCPACE is doing is allowing Providers to see X number of patients per a day by providing a platform to notify patients of delays in appointment start time. It’s a win-win.” When working with a Hospital in Dallas, Sanderford came across plenty of patient complaints, hospital struggles, and provider frustrations which made her brain spin with ideas to improve the situation for everyone. She realized that communicating wait times with patients to improve patient satisfaction was necessary and eventually DOCPACE was born.

I’ve always been easily bored, and what bores or annoys me most is when things are done in unnecessarily complicated ways. When I run into something that in my opinion doesn’t work right, I automatically start thinking about why something is done the way it is and how this could be done smarter, better or faster. So, for me everything starts with “why” and this is also why I think helping people to understand “why” is one of the most important things in leadership. Understanding gives everything a purpose and that inspires people and help them align with the goals. The Challenge in Healthcare: Healthcare is lagging behind other sectors in terms of adapting to technical possibilities, i.e., seizing opportunities. There are several good reasons for this; patient safety, information security, and regulations are among the most defendable ones. The future hurts only once but resisting it hurts forever. And if you resist, you are not among the ones shaping the future so resisting leaves you worse off when the future catches up.

John Serri has worn glasses nearly his entire life and has spent an enormous amount of time at check-ups and fittings. Visiting the eye doctor’s office can cause anxiety for some. “I always found all of the big machinery in the eye doctor’s office interesting, but a bit intimidating,” says John Serri, PhD. As someone who has worn eyeglasses from an early age, Serri used to spend an enormous amount of time at the eye doctor’s for check-ups and fittings. One morning while searching for his eyeglasses, as he couldn’t find the time to visit the doctor, he stopped and thought to himself, ‘there has to be an easier way to test my vision and get new glasses’. Not very long after that he met Tibor Laczay, an eye care innovator, and discussed a technology that uses a smartphone to measure refraction error. “We both realized this was a fantastic opportunity that could help millions around the world by combining advanced optical technology with the modern capabilities of smartphones.

When there’s a creative idea lingering in the corner of his mind, Dr. Tsafrir Kolatt has never had a second’s hesitation in transforming it into a reality. Besides being an accomplished entrepreneur, Dr. Tsafrir firmly believes in the power of creativity coupled with having the courage of his convictions to establish and grow a business, which rivals or outmatches the competitors. A Unique Approach to Personalized IVF Treatments: With his landmark achievement in the biosciences/healthcare industry, Dr. Tsafrir set out to put theory into practice. Along with a team of experts, he identified a significant gap in the IVF (In-vitro Fertilization) treatment market, and co-founded Fertigo Medical in 2014. Along with three other co-founders, their mission was clear cut—to increase the success rate of IVF treatments. Fertigo’s proprietary technology provides an evidence-based, personalized approach to calculating the optimal timing for the transfer of the embryo into the uterus.

With over three decades of  experience in the diagnostics business, Larry Cohen believes clear and direct communication is one of his strongest leadership strengths. “Soliciting input and listening carefully to professionals inside and outside the organization helps guide planning and decision-making” says Cohen, CEO of Glycotest Diagnostics. Known as one of the seminal leaders in the  industry, Cohen has a large industry network to tap; he has led several companies in the healthcare arena over his 30-year career. His innovative approach to delivering better patient outcomes utilizing novel clinical testing has helped him steer Glycotest, a private liver disease diagnostics company, to early success. Meeting Challenges: “I believe the healthcare industry must do a better job in educating healthcare professionals and patients on the value delivered by new and innovative products,” says Cohen. When outcomes are measured and the quality of life is included in the equation, innovation can often be shown as a cost-saving tool.

Medical imaging is a key diagnostic tool in the health care industry. Over the years the associated technology has witnessed tremendous growth, making it more affordable and efficient. An acclaimed business leader in the health care industry Cristin A. Dickerson, who is also an MD and the CEO and founder of Green Imaging, has participated in that growth, having spent 28 years in the industry. Her company’s primary aim is to help patients make the most informed decisions about MRIs, CT scans and other imaging procedures. Based out of Houston, Texas, Green Imaging is a full service virtual medical imaging network, offering cash-pay price to all its patients and direct contracting to innovative health plans ensuring they are charged a fair all-inclusive price for imaging procedures (the prices include the radiologist interpretation and any contrast or supply charges).

“Be passionate and have 100% belief in your mission. Be persistent, explore the unknown, be optimistic at all times, surround yourself with smarter people and don’t forget your ultimate goal regardless of any distractions along the way, ” says Ali Safavi – Founder & CEO – Grenova. The young entrepreneur is a natural risk-taker who gets uncomfortable with the comfort zone. He is a person who can’t hold back when he finds an opportunity to improve. “I cannot live with “What If,” I have to execute and find out myself, ” says Safavi. The journey : Safavi’s 8 years of experience in healthcare helped him discover a major hole in the market – unsustainable use of plastic consumables. He left his secure and well-paid job to pursue developing a technology to make labs more sustainable by reusing plastic consumables. He focused on pipette tips and after 14 months of hard work, he had a full working prototype and placed it in a clinical lab for testing.

Leadership, for Terry Rowinski, is passion-driven and consistent. His focus is to provide relatable leadership that engages, inspires, and encourages growth within all levels of an organization. Taking a people-centric approach, Terry yields positive bottom-line results by influencing hard-to-control costs such as turnover and productivity. Evidently, his engine of success is in creating a community culture within the organization, at the same time, giving an empathetic ear and voice to the customers that they serve. “The best thing we can provide is ease-of-use to our customers in the digital age, especially in the most complex environment, such as healthcare finance management,” claims Terry, President & CEO, Health Payment Systems (HPS). “The current healthcare landscape is not user friendly. In order to make it easy for people to pay bills, they need to understand what they are paying for and must be made digital.”

“One thing I would change is to make the industry more consumer-centric: people over profits,” says Gil Blander, Founder & Chief Scientific Officer, Inside Tracker. He found the healthcare industry concentrating on profits more than the health of the people. He says their focus is not on targeted prevention but remediation of consequences. Instead of treating the root cause, they treat the symptoms. According to him, “this current ‘sick care’ industry is like a hotel and gym –– trying to fill hospital beds and use diagnostic machines for profit, instead of working to keep people away from those places and things”. As a child, Gil witnessed the death of a relative due to lack of preventive healthcare, and this resulted in his lifelong commitment to bring a change to this scenario. Being passionate about personalized nutrition, longevity research, and artificial intelligence, he tried to integrate these and provide a solution.

With a perfect blend of the right skill set and a passion to learn from real-world clinical experience, Michael Wang set out on a purpose-driven journey. As creative and strong-willed as he is, Wang and his team was seeking for a perfect solution that would help practicing clinicians to deliver the best patient care ever. “Our vision guided us with precision to look for those with experience and expertise to create a technology that the world had never seen before.” According to Wang, CEO of Inspiren, developing a care technology and then trying to backtrack its functionalities into solving real problems does not provide a seamless patient experience. Bridging this critical gap in technology that had resulted in preventable negative patient outcomes, Wang along with the team of Inspiren designed a wall-mounted IoT device called iN that uses computer vision,

Lora Haddock, a self-described ‘anatomy geek’ was always fascinated with the psychological, physiological and anatomical aspects of      orgasms. Drawing on years of research and anatomical data she had gathered from hundreds of women, she founded Lora DiCarlo in 2017, thus, creating a new page in the history of physiologically appropriate women’s health and wellness products. Lora has always been passionate about helping people find their voice and creating     an environment of mutual respect and empowerment. She adds, “Inclusivity and true gender equity interests me. I want to make a positive impact on spaces and industries that have traditionally only been accessible to a select few. I want to find ways to make them more inclusive. With Lora DiCarlo, we have an opportunity to center the topic of women’s health, and by extension, gender equity, in everything we do.”

In a highly disrupted industry like healthcare, “empowerment” is one of the key success factors to build and sustain a healthy patient-provider relationship. It is, in fact, a necessity not only for patients but for the providers as well. With a passion to impact lives, Carrie Chitsey and her team transformed this very insight into a simple and affordable telehealth platform for healthcare providers to acquire and retain patients in today’s digital landscape. “One Touch Telehealth was created after seeing a need for convenient, simple, affordable, and reliable video patient interactions for practice groups, hospitals, and facilities. We’ve kept both the patient and physician experiences in mind, allowing 2-click simplicity for ease of use on both sides to connect,” says Carrie Chitsey, CEO, and Co-Founder of One Touch Telehealth. Better Connect Made Possible: The team of One Touch Telehealth began their journey by developing mobile applications for video telehealth.

Even if hospitals and physicians do everything right, treatments falter when patients don’t take the prescribed medications. Inability to afford medications is the major reason for non-adherence. Many patients don’t take advantage of prescription discounts just because they don’t know about them. “Billions of dollars in coupons and vouchers from pharmaceutical manufacturers go unused because physicians and patients simply lack knowledge of and access to these offerings.” says William J. Febbo, the CEO of OptimizeRx. This is where OptimizeRx® comes in. OptimizeRx’s platform integrates into EHRs and automatically provides prescription copay information at the point-of-prescribe, thus allowing providers and patients access to available discounts when it matters most. The OptimizeRx platform extends beyond the point-of-care. Its patient engagement module further improves the likelihood of treatment plan follow-through. Despite a complex healthcare ecosystem, the platform enhances connections between pharma, providers, patients, and payers.

“You wouldn’t rely on a doctor to manage your checkbook, why would you rely on a clinical system to manage your revenue cycle?” asks James Dudley – CEO, Parathon. He found that many health care providers were forfeiting millions in compensation because they were relying on their clinical system to manage their RCM. Being a software developer and technologist, he realized that the workflow of engineering clinical systems was not equipped to handle RCM. He resolved to develop the most robust and comprehensive RCM system for healthcare providers. Thus, Parathon was born. Parathon can manage the entire revenue cycle of even the largest providers as a single enterprise using the legacy EMR as a raw data warehouse. Dudley designed Parathon to be a middleware data aggregator that overarches legacy system EMRs. It enables the providers to control their entire financial desktop as a single enterprise even if it is comprised of many disparate facilities operating on multiple legacy EMRs.

After a morning of a productive reading on the latest developments in the healthcare industry, John Steele spends most of his time discovering new initiatives that will help him and his team make a positive impact on people’s lives. As a radical influencer, Steele constantly aims to “unlock the hidden insights in healthcare data” through developing new analytics solutions that treat the root cause of the issues which persist in the healthcare sector. “There is an ever-growing volume and velocity of data in healthcare that lacks standardization, making it difficult for organizations to gain any insight or make data-driven decisions,” opines Steele, CEO of Pareto Intelligence. “Pareto exists to overcome this challenge.” The Powerful Synergy: Creating a powerful synergy of cutting-edge technologies, robust analytics, and deep business expertise, Steele built Pareto Intelligence,

The pursuit of excellence for Luke Kervin began from a real-life experience that triggered his search for an effective healthcare solution. As an expectant father, Kervin was disappointed with the inconvenient long doctor waits, rushed visits, surprise bills, and in their case, an overlooked test result that could have been disastrous for his wife’s pregnancy. “As a father, I was very concerned, but the entrepreneur in me saw an opportunity,” recalls Kervin. He learned the key issue in healthcare is the increasing pressures of running a private practice, which distracts providers from doing  what they do best—caring for patients. “This clearly required a solution that provides convenience, ridiculously good customer service, and incredible value.” From the e-commerce world that Kervin worked in previously, these things were already present.

It’s well known that being a good listener makes a person more successful in any profession. In healthcare, it plays a particularly important role as hearing out patients helps clinicians better understand how to provide truly patient-centered care. Dr. Gregory Makoul strongly believes in the power of listening and aptly tagged ‘We hear you’ for his concept PatientWisdom – a solution that makes it easy for patients to share what matters to them and runs analytics to turn patient perspectives into actionable insights at the N=1 and population levels. The Founder and CEO of PatientWisdom, Inc. sees the practical combination of digital and personal communication as the key for turning transactions into relationships in the age of consumerism and value-based health care.

Having conquered the business world, today, women leaders are making huge tech waves from multiple corners of the globe. Though the journey is riddled with full of hurdles, women entrepreneurs, like Eesha Sheikh, are becoming the transformative force in the technology world with the right blend of passion, persistence and expertise. Eesha’s zeal for innovation, her faith in herself and the universe, and her tenacious persistence to change the world has turned her vision of consolidating a health and fitness global technology platform to reality. Blending her scientific expertise with a passion to revolutionize health through technology, Eesha launched a one-stop-solution for better health—Playpal. With a mission to create the complete ecosystem of health, Playpal consolidates data from global IoT devices, apps, and stakeholders all under one banner. By using the power of Artificial Intelligence, Playpal transforms the influx of information into a comprehensive yet simple set of recommendations for users.

Equipped with the true grit and the right skills to succeed, Daniel Etra has always believed in the power of encouraging and inspiring others to achieve their goals. As a strategic leader and a business expert, he makes it a point to connect with his own team as well as his customers to improve care delivery and drive better patient outcomes. Etra’s innovative approach has in fact helped him to gain valuable insights and create the perfect solution for one of the most challenging issues in behavioral health today.  “In the recent times, we’ve been seeing an explosion in the number of children diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder—latest CDC statistics are 1 in 59 children, making it more common than pediatric AIDS, diabetes and cancer combined,” points out Etra, CEO of Rethink. However, there is a significant dearth of trained professionals to deliver clinical best practice treatment.

“I overcome fear [of loss, regret, etc.] by simply acknowledge the existence of failure. Fear is packaged into everything single thing in life, so the only rational thing to do is to accept it. And if you couple fear with a bit of reason, resilience and good luck [which only comes from persistent hard-work], anything is possible”, says Yasir Ali, CEO & Co-Founder, Rivews. The company leverages two-way SMS surveys to enable healthcare organizations in collecting real-time patient feedback immediately after check-out. Driven by self-conviction, perseverance, vision and belief, Yasir follows an interestingly productive routine. He starts his day with 15-minutes of self-reflection, followed by journaling along with setting up OKRs for the day. He then jumps into the most challenging and thought-provoking projects early in the day when his mind is in a flow-state.

“An organization will only be as great as the people you partner with,” says Benjamine Liu, CEO & Co-Founder, TrialSpark – a technology company that runs clinical trials for pharma and biotech companies. Ben believes in hiring the best talent, setting clear goals, and then empowering people with the autonomy they need to achieve these goals. The best organizations encourage people to partner with others from diverse backgrounds so they can assemble teams with different perspectives and insights. At the same time, it’s important that these teams are united by a common mission and values. For TrialSpark, the mission is to bring new treatments to patients faster and more efficiently by reimagining clinical trials. Passion taking the plunge: Ben’s work with Sir Simon Lovestone’s lab at Oxford helped him realize that long timelines and exuberant costs, which can add up to hundreds of millions of dollars per trial, are a huge bottleneck in bringing new treatments to patients.

Having the foresight to see what’s doable and what’s not before investing time, the know-how and the track record of building phenomenal teams that can implement innovative ideas at a very high level, Oren Goldshtein, Vectorious CEO, proves to be a strategic leader in the making. The quality of a business depends on the choices you make and this is especially true when choosing your team. Goldshtein puts a lot of work into hiring the right people. A crucial part of his hiring strategy is to identify and map a prospective team member’s strengths and weaknesses. When the strength and weaknesses of the team members complement each other, the team would grow cohesively. Goldstein enjoys various interests outside of work to maintain a good work-life balance. Besides being a technology innovator, he enjoys reading novels, enjoys listening to classical music, and always up for fishing.

“I consider myself to be a pitbull that just won’t quit,” says Maximillian Jaffe, Co-Founder & COO WeRecover. The company provides a transparent search engine service for addiction treatment resources. Flaunting a blend of curiosity, tenacity, and stamina in the right proportions, Jaffe is a strategic leader in the making. Jaffe’s attitude towards leadership is profoundly inspiring as he believes in surrounding oneself with the most intelligent people who have the intense potential to breathe life into their ideas. He believes in paying equal attention to speed and direction as speed in the wrong direction is a killer for any early stage company. Nudged by personal dismay : WeRecover was born due to a visceral personal experience Jaffe had when he was trying to get his sister into rehab. “The process to get her admitted into the appropriate care was one of the most tumultuous nightmares of my life,” says Jaffe.

There are numerous healthcare portals giving information on all types of illness. However, most patients lack personalized resources, as each patient is different. “If I could change one thing within preexisting companies I would help beneficiaries by giving health system’s care delivery a personalization aspect”, says Amanda Zaremski, CEO, WinutRx. She believes an efficient healthcare platform is one which can give patient specific information. She personally felt the need for one as her grandmother Sueanne Coon or better known as “grams” had suffered from multiple diseases. Grams was always concerned whether the ingredients in her food was safe for consumption due to her medication’s dietary restrictions. Inspite of many precautions, her health status depleted mainly due to a lack of information with constantly changing medications resulting in adverse drug events.

“At Workpath, all of our values deal with being open, transparent and direct. This allows us to build trust within our team and also allows collaboration as we can all contribute and help move the company forward,” says Eddie Peloke, CEO, Workpath. According to Peloke, openness is a key trait of becoming a strategic leader. Also, it is important to do some self-reflection now and then and be strongly aware of both your strengths and weaknesses. Besides surrounding yourself with talented people, it is crucial to support them and help them give their best which would eventually contribute to the growth of the organization. “I like to surround myself with incredibly smart people and it’s my job to remove the hurdles and get out of their way,” says Peloke. His interests outside of work are inspiring too.

A 67-year-old female was treated at the Nova Scotia Health Authority for mycosis fungoides of the forehead, eyelid, and nose with mycosis fungoides involving the upper face. As a part of her treatment plan, the application of bolus for Modulated Electron Radiation Therapy (MERT) was necessary to deliver the prescribed dose to the skin surface to treat her disease with two separate electron fields. This is where Adaptiiv’s 3D printing software solution proved phenomenal in creating a highly conformal bolus for MERT for the superior field, allowing modulation of the electron fluence to spare distal structures (Figures 1 and 2). The technology’s accuracy and high resolution made it best suited for MERT bolus and obtained 90 isodose to 92.5 percent of planning target volume (PTV). The treatment plan achieved relative sparing of all the organs at risk distal to the target volume.

Medical errors are as fatal as terminal diseases. Often numerous patients die due to the recurring medical errors in the healthcare systems. The modern healthcare sector is continuously challenged with this festering issue as they strive to deliver safe and higher quality care. “From approximately 7.5 billion human genomes, each one of them responds differently to drugs. As a result, incorrect medications are prescribed, leading to inefficient treatment and medicine side effects,” points out Dr. Josef Scheiber, Managing Director and Founder of BioVariance GmbH. This is especially true in the case of complex diseases, where patients experience difficulty to understand and follow the complicated medical instructions suggested by the physicians, thereby causing severe health issues. The need of the hour is to have a holistic approach to handle and manage large volumes of data and gain actionable insight out of it to remedy medical errors, improve patient health, and minimize medical cost.

Despite the upheaval that AI has created in the healthcare space, the lack of well-annotated data has been the biggest challenge in the development of disease detection AI engines. It slows the process and is very expensive. Moreover, annotation and labeling demand a heavy workload from medical doctors in the development stage of medical AI engines. Applying his extensive experience in objective recognition for medical image-based diagnosis using AI deep learning, Jacob Lee found the perfect solution to reduce the burden from this data annotation and labeling process. “Generating a revolutionary unsupervised learning idea and implementing an advanced annotation system, our deep learning packaged platform, m: Studio gets rid of the cumbersome labeling process,” says Lee, Founder and CEO of CAIDE Systems.