Sign Maryland Banking Living Will Later

Industry sign banking maryland living will later

[Music] hello welcome everyone welcome back to the second session today for the uh entrepreneurship and innovation and healthcare session here for hma um for those that were able to join us this morning we had a great conversation with um two individuals one from carefirst and one from lifebridge health talking about their partnership their payer uh provider partnership and uh it was a great way to kick off this session um and right now we have a panel of four uh exciting entrepreneurs here um we'll introduce them here in a second um uh and uh first i'd like to just i guess level set everything here i see we have some participants that are continuing to join um uh so so the reason we got this session together uh for those who weren't able to join us this morning was um there's a lot going on in healthcare right now most of you all are finance professionals that work for um you know hospitals or consulting companies or insurance companies and uh our membership base told us that there wasn't a lot of content around the entrepreneurial work that's happening in the industry and so we thought this was a good way to do something a little bit different talk a little bit about innovation talk to with some entrepreneurs about what they're doing to um change uh delivery and business models within the industry and to deliver innovation here um and so we had a great session this morning um and we're gonna we're gonna bounce around a few different topics here that that hopefully you all um get a little educated about um we will have this uh available for recording for those who um i know colleagues that that that were unable to join but would like to listen in um and so uh without further ado um first i'd like to introduce uh michael kaya who's gonna be moderating the panel with me today um and uh we have four panelists today uh the first is dr uh uh therese canaris um if you can wait hi um she is a physician at uh johns hopkins school of medicine um uh she'll offer some interesting perspectives here on being a physician uh employed physician while trying to start a company um with one of her colleagues the company's called auto photo uh where uh it's a and i'll let her go a little bit more into it but it's a ai driven tool that helps diagnose ear infections for um for children um and she is a pediatric emergency physician uh at the school of medicine so uh welcome uh dr uh canaris and we have uh andrew suggs here he's from life chair health um basketball star in college uh uh shaflin university uh graduated there did some uh was a salesman for a major sports franchise fortune 100 company uh and uh mba as well and uh has co-founded uh life chair health which uh for those who joined us earlier um bridge was talking about their partnership with with live chair health so um focused on uh social determinants and trying to connect with uh uh a very select uh you know patient population so really interested in hearing what you have to say andrew and your perspective on partnering with lifebridge as well as uh the work you're doing in that space that's we have femi i am made show uh sammy good to see you uh former raven uh now turned entrepreneur um really interesting technology with health reel ai powered uh technology he's gonna talk a little bit about um uh how he got that technology which was really a licensing um something that was developed through nasa um that he's taken in a really different direction it's pretty cool um uh so femi welcome also uh nba uh carrick business school um and then lastly we have brian kinsella hey brian um former uh army uh officer um did several different tours through that through that branch of the military i'll let him talk a little bit more about his background um after um his military service went on to start a not-for-profit called stop soldier suicide um in the mental health space also worked for goldman sachs um in investment banking and now has taken on a new venture um in the in the mental health space um in the private sector so um welcome everyone um excited to hear your perspective um and michael um we'll kick it off here um so first question i just want to put out to everyone is you know i gave a little bit about your background um but uh why don't we start with uh dr canarys why don't you give us a little bit more background about you um your company's background and then kind of why you why you took this entrepreneurial route um and what's exciting about it uh sure and thank you for having me marco so as marco said i'm a physician i do pediatric emergency medicine by day and then also by day i am co-founder of odophoto otophoto is a medical device company and we are building an ai otoscope so a smart otoscope that can look inside the ear and automatically detect ear infections in children we're making this for parents who have kids with recurrent ear infections so for the parents that are going to the doctor week after week month after month we're we're making a tool to help them self-diagnose at home and hopefully guide management save them a trip to the doctor or turn that unnecessary uh in-person doctor's visit into a telehealth visit and for me this entrepreneurship has uh grown in part from uh from a lot of my clinical research so i started my in my day job as an academic physician i do clinical research on health technology and how it affects pediatric care and something one of my professors said to me once is research can uh affect the people who are in the study and it might impact the people who read your manuscript or article afterwards but through entrepreneurship you can affect the lives of so many people beyond just a single research study and so through entrepreneurship this is a way that i see new innovation and health technology can come to market and impact so many other people beyond just the confines of clinical research andrew why don't you why don't you go next yeah great uh it's a tough act to follow but yeah my name is andrew sucks co-founder and ceo of live chair health um you know as marco mentioned i was collegiate athlete turned businessman when i realized i was vertically challenged and the nba was not in my future so i built a scheduling booking and payment processing platform primarily for african-american barbers and pivoted the business into health care uh during a time when my father's health began to decline a year or so into the venture i mean unfortunately my father passed away four months ago from congestive heart failure at the age of 56 so this business is a tribute to my father and help and helping others who look like him to live a longer and healthier life and so what we do is we contract with non-clinical resources like barbershops and hair salons to bring engagement access and influence to healthcare organizations like systems and health plans and also government organizations as well thank you andrew it's very cool stuff sammy everybody my name is femi ayan badejo i'm the founder and ceo of health reel andrew i think you and i top months ago do you remember that i i think we have it is yes buried in you know work yeah yeah exactly no worries i'm proud of you man really happy to see what you've done brother good work um yeah i've had an interest in human performance since i was a high school athlete i was a three sport high school athlete two sport collegiate athlete played in the nfl for 11 years and i spent a good chunk of my time hanging out with the doctors and practitioners that kept me on the field you know what i mean um had a really good uh blend of eastern and western medicine philosophy in regards to keeping myself healthy and different things that revolved around recovery supplementation and nutrition and so i knew that when i retired i would pivot into the health and wellness space i didn't know in what capacity but i ended up opening a boutique fitness facility in la jolla california i did my undergrad at san diego state with a va in psychology and so san diego you know basically had become my home i actually grew up in santa cruz california and so when i retired in 2010 i jumped in head first as an entrepreneur into the fitness business we bought a space built it out you know signed lease terms and agreements we split the equity amongst three different um uh co-founders and i went and got my nutrition and personal training certification i did all that like in a three-month period and so i hit the ground running really servicing people that juxtaposition of being the athlete with a team helping me to be becoming the practitioner on a team helping other people get healthier and stay healthier and so after about five years of that um i decided i wanted to do my mba because i saw i was i got a i had a huge interest in machine learning and ai and right around that same time uh you know uh there were activity trackers coming online so i thought why help four or five hundred people when i could help four or five million people potentially right high aspirations of course so um i left san diego my kids were born and raised here in baltimore i was always going back and forth between san diego and baltimore moved back here full time and as theresa and i were talking about i jumped into a full-time mba program with the idea that i wanted to build this health and fitness platform with the perspective of a practitioner and a world-class athlete embedded into a single place that was driven through a smart device and so um marco you did mention nasa i'm a nasa technology transfer partner um uh marco didn't quite hit it on the head right 90 of what we do comes from my company my ideas my engineering team nasa is a marketing juggernaut so they do have something interesting that they do but i can tell you uh you know to people on the call and the people that are we're looking at here on the screen uh the secret sauce comes from us not from nasa nasa does open doors no doubt vc's are interested when they see nasa hopkins nfl no question um the marketing and branding was done on purpose with thought uh but at the end of the day if the platform doesn't do what it's supposed to do it's just a gimmick and we're far from that we want to put people's health in the palm of their hand we want to focus on a couple things body composition uh metabolic insights uh nutrition and health risk we're able to do all that in five minutes from uh from a smart device basically right now um we uh the company like i said uh actually some people on the call don't know this but i was talking to uh dr kanaris about this briefly um when i retired in 2000 or i'm sorry when i graduated from hopkins in 2016 i did jump into the into the kind of the business world temporarily for about two years and the minute i was able to get out of that and build health real i left and have been doing that ever since so health reel was founded in about 2017 and basically we've been gathering data streamlining our ai machine learning algorithms and beta testing uh we're going to go live with our go to market product probably in april with our fingers crossed i apologize if i uh i did not hurt you you gave nasa too much credit marco sorry yeah yeah i know i know a lot of these uh there's a lot of technology that sits in these places uh that uh go unused and when entrepreneurs can tap into it um and license that they can really take it off you know what i'd love to do is if we get a chance i would love to talk to the panel about the tech transfer process and how valuable it can be and how easy it can actually be so that could be something that we could pivot back to later yeah no that and i think that that's part of one of the the follow-up questions so so we'll get back to that and then brian um why don't you give us your background yeah thanks marco and it's great to be here uh with everyone today andrew i'm sorry about the recent passing of your father and it's incredible what you're what you're building and really what everyone's building here on the panel today my background is really one rooted in service i joined the army rotc program at johns hopkins as an undergrad after 9 11 and was part of one of the first commissioning classes of military officers spent about four years out of my five years on active duty overseas and it was really on active duty that i saw firsthand the problem of really army soldiers not getting access to mental health services and other derivative services that was manifesting itself into a very high incidence rate of suicide and so when i got off active duty in 2010 started an organization with two actually fellow hopkins army rotc brethren it's called stop soldier suicide it's really grown into one of the largest technology enabled mental health and suicide prevention organizations in the country we serve clients in every state and our clinicians do virtual care coordination uh both clinical and non-clinical into about 4 000 resources across the country uh we're starting to do actually some very interesting things working with some partners around using ai and ml to do predictive analytics around suicide prevention and it's really leading edge in the suicide prevention and mental health landscape and it was really that work and building stop soldier suicide as a volunteer ceo for about seven years while working full-time in financial services that really sparked the idea of how we could take those best practices and lessons learned to a broader civilian population and so in 2018 i resigned from goldman to really build what is now rapport and my partner and our co-founder and chief medical officer officers a gentleman named dr fred cass former vice chairman of psychiatry at columbia he helped build a lot of the preeminent mental health programs at columbia at new york presbyterian in new york city and we're really now focused on how we build the best online mental health care company to deliver uh telepsychiatry teletherapy or psychopharmacology psychotherapy uh to those in need and so really excited about the opportunity to be here today and to talk more about the entrepreneurial journey thank you brian and thank you everyone for you know taking the time to join us um this afternoon my name is michael k and i'm very excited to be moderating this um session as well so maybe for our audience members maybe sticking with you brian can you tell us a little bit more about what does a day-to-day look like and do you have a favorite entrepreneur sort of story that you know our audience member can learn from or reflect upon sure well i'd say the day-to-day is being now a full-time entrepreneur from really an entrepreneur trying to build a company while also working full-time in financial services which is a pretty owner's job in and of itself is really um it's the ability to be flexible to adapt iterate and constantly improve whether that's you know personally or on behalf of the organization um you know every day depending on where you are in the entrepreneurial journey and how well capitalized your business is uh you know you're potentially wearing a multitude of hats right so you're always trying to find ways of creating operating leverage for yourself as being really only one person but trying to do the job or role of many many people and you know i'd say for me the biggest lesson that i've learned and really having again looked uh you know failure in the eye many times and i'm sure um you know for those of us who have had to overcome any challenging aspects of our lives can can assimilate to this is that you know things are really hard and there are a lot of dark days and there are a lot of times when you think that the odds are insurmountable but you take a step back you breathe you re-evaluate reassess and try to attack it from a different angle always knowing that you know oftentimes the problem contains the solution and so it's really the um you know at the core of it just never giving up never quitting and and i think that that's ultimately for me the most important lesson that i've learned uh after a decade plus of of building you know not just one but now you know two organizations that's wonderful thank you for sharing family does that sound too familiar to you how does it look on your side of the equation uh and sort of what lessons resonated with you as well yeah i think brian hit the nail on the head you know um someone told me um not too long ago those that believe will have success those that are that are patient will have even more success but those that don't give up will have the most success and i know that's cliche but someone reminded me of that a while back and that's one thing about me i'm a grinder i love to grind um and you have to embrace the grind it's kind of a football thing we stay in the locker room all the time it's like hey you gotta embrace the grind dude they don't care if it's cold they don't care about the weather you still gotta go out there and hit and do what we gotta do to be prepared to play a football game you know and some of those principles carry over into business you know you have to be ready to go out there and figuratively hit that's what's required sometimes sometimes it's shaking hands and you know hugging you know not a whole lot of that happening right now obviously with covid but um you know i think that uh for me a year ago around this time was probably the most stressed out that i ever was and brian brian's words reminded me of this we had an issue in our algorithm and the data was coming back incorrect like at a high level that was completely unanticipated um and i had a horrible christmas mentally i didn't tell my kids didn't tell my family i just had to sleep with it because i didn't want to ruin their holiday but for about a two week period i didn't know how to fix the problem and i had to really ideate on it and think about it and go back to the drawing board the problem has been fixed since but um i did not have a good christmas last year because of that and i think that um someone asked me recently on a podcast what keeps you up at night and i said nothing because if i want to i could be up every night because there's always something to keep me up but i choose to sleep and rest and recover because i'm not going to be valuable to anybody if i'm up at night all the time now doesn't mean i sleep good every night i'm gonna be honest i don't but um i think that what i'm trying to do and i've always been a person who like big things when someone tells me i can't do something i go okay well watch you know i'm gonna go do this i'm gonna go do that i i do feed off some of that negative energy so to speak when people doubt me um but i wouldn't want to be doing anything else because i believe that as an entrepreneur and as the ceo of the company i would rather have it on me and have me make the difficult decisions and sit back and hope that someone else makes that decision if i make the mistake i would do my best to rectify a change it fix it um but i will i will not run away or hide from difficult decisions and tasks i actually uh i think it's important to embrace those as a leader and sometimes you have other leaders with you that can help share that burden but oftentimes when you're the ceo and you're low on capital you're not capitalized brian i feel like i need to just bring you along with me everywhere i go because i think your words your words are really resonating with me but um you know some of the difficult things that come with being an entrepreneur on the flip side there are so many positive things that come when you have that aha moment when someone appreciates what you're doing or when someone says hey i haven't seen something like this yet or this solves the problem that we have there's just as many good sides to being an entrepreneur as there are difficult ones but um i think i just really enjoyed the full process yeah and thank you for sharing this and you know i hear grind i hear persistence i hear doubters that you're staying up at night a lot and hopefully that's becoming less of an of an issue for you um andrew what do you think keeps keeps an entrepreneur going day-to-day realizing that this is not a short-term sort of path for everyone and it takes a lot um it could be there's ups and downs how do you stay focused how do you stay you know motivated uh day-to-day realizing that you you may not get it right the first time and and sometimes an algorithm may go off yeah i think for me and as for all entrepreneurs the the moment you realize that you're crazy um you can you can have a sigh of relief and crazy in the sense that you know we've all left budding jobs that are much more lucrative than the ventures that we're in right now like no one knows as an entrepreneur if this is going to manifest into something uh you know larger than what you were earning or the opportunity cost of what you could have earned if you stayed on that path in corporate so i think the what keeps me going is perseverance right some similar um come from same class as family as a former athlete right um this is no different than having to wake up at five o'clock two and a half hour practice go to weights squeeze in you know a ten minute bite to eat before your first class then you have your next class then you have your midday workouts um then you have study hall then you have two more classes then you have to go to practice for four hours then you have to finance so like entrepreneurship i've been doing that for the last you know uh 10 years even though officially i've been entrepreneurship uh for for four years and i think again just just perseverance having the unstoppability mentality because this this is not for the fainted heart right uh to your point you don't just get it wrong one time right if you got it wrong one time then i think you know we would all be like jeff bezos right like just the like the moment we started our business you have to continually get it wrong right it's not it's not formulaic right it's not you know an academic academia and this is not a shade to academia but it's like you know here's the what's going to be on the test you know memorize this information and then fill in the bubbles and then you get a right or a gold star and entrepreneurship is different right because during customer discovery um the you know what you you know hallucinated in your mind is irrelevant to what the customer actually wants right and so you have to figure out a way to um kind of humble yourself listen to customers who to be honest with you um are going to tell you that your business ideas suck right and i'm actually interested in this so it's you know i and lastly i would say just a good support system right for me it's my wife it's my faith and you know i have a strong team that really encourages me because uh uh you know from where i come from uh just the you know the fact that i'm sitting on this call is a testament to having people behind me and rally behind me and support because i don't think without that um i would be on this call so uh yeah i'll just leave it there before i continue to monopolize the time no this is this is great and you know hearing more about what day to day look like it does sound like it's not for the for for the painted heart so to speak at dr canarys i saw you shaking your head and nodding your head in agreement with with our three other panelists and i suspect you already are juggling multiple things uh as a position already uh why would you take that on and and i can only imagine how does your day look like or your weekend weekends and what keeps you going oh so many answers to this question i was nodding because um i feel like i identified with every everything all the other panelists said um and i think one of the common themes here is that grit that that perseverance um i think we've all drawn from different experiences for me i think i built a lot of grit through residency when we were doing like you know 36 hour call 80 hour work weeks and um i guess i haven't really stopped some of that but um that that grit is definitely something that keeps you going through the really hard times and um and to andrew's point the entrepreneurship is not a quick journey i mean the average exit like selling your company or going public is first of all most likely to fail for uh your as a first-time entrepreneur second of all um an exit might not come for seven to ten years so this is not uh a quick journey but um as far as um you'd ask before a little bit about um you know what are some some of the stories along the way that reminded me of um something i'm going through a little bit now which might be a unique perspective relative to our other panelists um there are not a as many women entrepreneurs as as there are men and um that's okay with me i don't mind that um but something i've noticed is um someone that i work with in my company is uh we don't always get along and i can't quite tell if it's a personality mix or is there some implicit gender bias there and i'm noticing a consistent theme of um my ideas are getting shot down then the next person sort of says the same thing and that person agrees with the male who said the same thing i did and so i'm learning to navigate this component of implicit gender bias even within my own company and one way i don't know if there are other um women listening to this but i think this message is relevant for men as well something that i have found to help me through that difficulty is finding allies and i have found allies in both men and women some of them are mentors some of them are like collaborators or partners like our our lawyer for example and so i found different allies that i can sort of get support from and i also know that when we're in a meeting and i'm anticipating my idea is going to be shot down i can sort of present it in a way or pose a question to my ally in a way that they'll say oh yeah i recommend this which is kind of what i wanted all along and so um there are ways for me to build my my own network so that i can remain resilient despite that that challenge thank you yeah i think uh i mean you touch on a really important point there and uh you know i think you know having been around the entrepreneur space a little bit hanging around the hubs and accelerators um it is apparent you know it is a more male dominated world and um i think it's important for you know it's exciting to see women like you um being in the space and being vocal and um we have mentorship programs through hfma so if you if you want to be a mentor to to some of our young women that would be much appreciated um because i'm sure they would appreciate it too so um um but very good insight so let's let's pivot a little bit you know we talked about the entrepreneur uh perspective but let's tie it back into healthcare um and i'll pose a kind of a few things i'll let you all kind of jump in on the ones that apply to you so for some of you uh dr canarys you you're growing this out of a academic medical center and um there are certain things that happen within that you know conflicts of interest that might arise um others are partnering or being they're part of a an accelerator program um you know so just talk a little bit about is it different being an entrepreneur in health care for some reason and then what's your personal experience been like connecting with these um providers in different ways and trying to grow things within the health care space that might be unique to um the healthcare industry versus what others might and we'll we'll let uh dr canarys you can even kick us off right here sure so um as marco pointed out our company is a spin-out from johns hopkins so my um as a physician my employer is johns hopkins simultaneously the technology that we're building out from oto photo comes from hopkins from direct research that me and my team have done and the one of the unique aspects of being a a tech transfer you know tech ventures spin out is we get access to a lot of resources that an everyday entrepreneur might not have for example through johns hopkins tech ventures that's their sort of tech transfer office they file our provisional patent for us and our patent application which is saving us thousands of dollars probably they have the fast forward program which is basically an accelerator space there's physical lab space to build your technology do your r d but then there's also free or discounted legal support grant writing support for like some of the common grants like sbirs sttrs the mentors and residents who are they basically um offer to mentor teams like ours and these are mentors who have raised um tens of millions for their own companies or they might have dozens of patents and so those are other successful people in the industry that we can lean on so i think that's one of the unique things and i'm hoping a competitive advantage for us that we can rely on the uh the johns hopkins resources but there's no free lunch right so that those things come with a little bit of a cost so you want to talk a little bit about kind of that relationship with um you know that you get a little bit from the from the organizations but from the health systems perspective the reason that they're able to provide those resources is you know hopefully with the growth everyone benefits from that but can you talk a little bit about kind of that that relationship sure um actually i think we're going to be experiencing that in the next year so the the technology that we have and the patent is owned by hopkins um in the coming months we the corporate entity are going to have to negotiate with hopkins to get an exclusive license for the technology and um i'm anticipating that that licensing uh negotiation is gonna be a fierce one in fact the hopkins lawyer had already said semi-threateningly that he was gonna be a really tough negotiator so that's that's gonna be a tough uh tough one but we have a great lawyer in our court so i think we'll be okay um the other consideration is uh as i understand that hopkins is going to take an equity stake in our company um and so we're giving up a little bit of ownership in that way so i'm hoping to balance that out by maximizing the the resources that hopkins has to elevate our company and build as much value as we can got to yep yeah it's not um yeah there's there's pluses and minuses with it and it's you know being an employee negotiating with your employer can be a tricky topic or situation to do so um good lawyers always help so keep that firewall so andrew you're interacting a little bit different with healthcare organizations um they're doing a pilot at lifebridge you want to talk about that and what is what's it been like growing a company you were in the sports world um now you're in healthcare space can you can you talk a little bit about differences i think we all know there's a lot of regulations and red tape in the industry so i don't know if you want to touch on any of those topics yeah no it's good so no the relationship with lifebridge health has been uh tremendous being able to tap into resources and the experts right for someone who doesn't have a ton of health care acumen has been great it's accelerated our business it's allowed us to refine and fine-tune certain areas of our business and without that you know relationship with lifebridge health i mean we have a team of great advisors right but actually have people that are in the health system or at a health plan on a day-to-day basis giving us insight saying do this tweak that way we're interested in this et cetera et cetera has been tremendous for our business so the partnership with lifeblood child has been fantastic and we're only going to continue to grow that relationship um have some good numbers and you know doing some great things that will that will come out in the future uh the second question was around the transition from excuse me the transition from sports or the business world to healthcare i mean the fields are diametrically different right when you think of an enterprise like for example in scheduling and booking and payment processing things tend to move a lot faster right and just software in general uh when you think about enterprise software just like sas companies uh move a lot faster than health care right uh and not necessarily in in uh technology but in health care you know it might take six weeks just to get an email approved right so and you know i'm i'm laughing but that that's really that sometimes happens right and so um you just have to be willing to deal with the red tape and the bureaucracy uh you know sometimes i 's right right to have some of the procedures in place and then sometimes i look at myself i'm like well i think this is why healthcare needs to be changed right and so it's good for someone like me who's an outsider to bring some ideas from sectors that are traditionally not um looked upon as you know the the the modus operandi right or you know the way we do business so and then the third you had a third question i don't recall or the third question i think i think you touched on the on the good stuff i think yeah i think uh yeah and i think you know that that speed the market and and uh when when you're cash flow negative um that duration uh matters right uh on how long it takes to get customers right you don't have all the data yeah that's what works in the why so you know in healthcare i think you probably should raise two or three times more money than just a traditional business because of that long ramp to get you know a pilot contract or to get a paying customer and to you know get the regulations and and legal in place right so your burn um is a lot faster and i think in health care and so you want to just have enough cushion to be able to withstand the uh the ebbs and flows that come with healthcare thank you brian you want to talk a little bit about kind of your experience um uh being in the healthcare space you were in the not-for-profit world um doing it you know in the in the um in the military space and now in the civilian world and behavioral health is a a whole different animal to deal with um so i don't know if you want to talk a little bit about what's it been like to be in healthcare and any sort of parallel you can describe here yeah sure i mean i guess first and foremost i come at everything with the attitude of you know someone who you know commanded troops in a war zone right like you just have to make it happen to accomplish the mission and i think that that mentality is often great for entrepreneurs but it can often be problematic when you're going into highly regulated uh industries and healthcare you know for better for worse right it is highly regulated and comes with a lot of challenges especially when you're trying to innovate and um i think what you're seeing though is that the continued proliferation of technology right the um thoughtfulness of legal counsel and capital providers as well as things like exogenous events like kovid right are really forcing change in industries that have really not wanted to change right and my partner at rapport right being one of the thought leaders in mental health care right someone who spent over 40 years at an academic medical center um yeah actually a hot johns hopkins uh medical school grad right i mean very familiar with these these these premier academic medical center institutions right um is looking at some of the things that are happening in the landscape and is kind of you know shocked by it right but the point is and i know this is part of a later question right you're seeing margin compression across the industry you're seeing uh technology change the delivery of healthcare of pharmaceuticals and it's really forcing the industry writ large to have to adapt and you know that creates a lot of opportunity but that tension also creates um i think a lot of diametrically opposed forces and so you know and going back to the opening comment right i do think that at the end of the day um if you're going to drive innovation right you're going to have to you know break things right it's just a function of where are you picking and choosing what you're going to break and so we've always had the mindset that we're going to put patients or clients first right we're going to put our clinicians and our people first um and that if we're going to break anything let's break things around kind of technology maybe around you know innovating on the regulatory side right really think a lot about ethical growth versus growth at all costs and you know what we're seeing a lot in mental health right now is that you're seeing more and more of what you know i think people in the industry are calling pill farms or pill factories right um and we know that that's antithetical to ultimately you know getting patients the help they need and lowering total cost of care but um these companies you know technically aren't breaking any rules with the way that they're delivering this care i mean i think that they're you know finding ways to skirt regulations or you know work you know really stretch the letter of the law but but our point is that ultimately we want to build the best foundation you know for the for the business that's going to win long term right really keeping those principles and those values in check and it's really hard to do and so i think there's there's got to be this balance of you know you'll do whatever it takes as an entrepreneur to succeed but especially when it comes to healthcare in people's lives it's just so so very important it's paramount um that growth and um you know patients and people are really kind of kept top of mind above all else otherwise you know you're really sacrificing ultimately what you're looking to innovate and change thank you brian yeah i think it's um you know you have a group of people here that uh you know working for hospitals patients are always at the forefront patient-centered care and so any technology or changes we adopt you know need to have that first and foremost and so working with entrepreneurs and startups and uh you know companies like that it's good to know that they're aligned in principles as they grow their companies too so that me anything to add uh here before we pivot to some talk about finances and value proposition yeah i'll keep it brief because i kind of stay away from the monoliths that are kind of health insurance in general because um i'll say that we are a health assessment and health education company and when i say that to somebody who's a healthcare provider well how does that reduce our costs well it keeps people from getting sick and it stops people from getting sick well how about the money we're already spending on sick people you know it's this kind of hamster wheel this way this view that they have of looking at things um that i don't prescribe to so you know health care providers and health insurance companies are not the first basket of customers that i'm engaging you know i think that um it's important that and brian said it perfectly in regard to doing first of all doing what's right is not does not always mean doing what's easy right um our goal and our company's goal is to put the information and power into the hand of the customer and the user and once again that could be antithetical to what uh is valued by healthcare providers and health insurance companies i know we i know they don't want people to get sick necessarily right i do understand that i do know that they don't want p recidivism and people being back in the hospital nobody wants that either but i'm kind of outside of all that honestly we're kind of straddling the health and fitness space and the health and medical space probably leaning more towards the health and fitness space because why it's more innovative it's more of creative to some degree there's a lot more space and freedom to move around with ai and machine learning on the health and fitness side in my experience and there is on the health and medical side and i'll leave it at that yeah well thank you very much and and it's it's interesting that you you've you've described the hamster wheeling around you know dealing with you know providers or insurance companies as well uh then tell us a little bit more how how important is to um have a crisp value proposition and how do you articulate that to your customers to get them on board too yeah you know i think when it comes to our mission and value proposition stuff um i try to make it very clear that um we understand the the world of misinformation that we live in when it comes to health and doing what's right and at the end of the day you're not gonna out exercise your diet you're not gonna out sleep your diet the decisions you make in regard to what you put into your mouth to really break it down to what is the core value of health it is the food that we eat the next thing are is our sleep and our activities so to speak and to really drill it down into people our goal especially during a pandemic is to help people understand that they don't have to be handcuffed by what they're told they don't have to uh be relegated to you know making decisions that feel good over safety um we want to empower people with information that is highly personalized and customized to them to their bodies to their ages to their genders and give them information that is actual that's actionable that they can deploy on their own if they want help they can get that too but ultimately pulling back the cover on what we feel what we view is kind of the holy grail of long-term health and wellness and that's really nutrition nutrition is the foundation of that and i don't think if you ask people uh they'll say oh let me get on my peloton let me you know who knows what they'll say i hear a million things but at the end of the day long-term health and wellness comes down to nutrition and ultimately and this is probably the the psychological and emotional part of it it's also the people that are around you if you if you eat healthy and you have good people around you you will live a long healthy happy life and at the end of the day we're trying to pound that into people's heads as nicely and kindly as we can and that in a lot of ways is outside of some of the normal stuff that you hear on a day-to-day basis and especially in a social media influenced world you might not hear that ever you might hear all kinds of other things so we really try hard to to meld our mission and value proposition in a way um that gets people excited because we're trying to frame it a bit differently than what they would normally hear and that's a challenge but that's the challenge that we've accepted so that's uh that's my answer to that question no thank you and brian as someone who've who had to make the pitch around the valley proposition and probably heard about value proposition from your from a previous experience um you know what problems have you been seeing more and more come across that that need to be addressed whether it's the total cost of care targeting high-risk populations mental health and and how important it has been for you to stay on those key problems and tackle them you know head on so to speak yeah i mean look post pandemic you're seeing a sea change in the way health care is consumed in this country you're seeing non-traditional players come into the space you're seeing very well capitalized venture-backed companies come in and again do things that are antithetical to i think what you know traditional clinician-led practices would do and what it's doing is um creating again this natural tension between quality and affordability and convenience and i do think that you know there is a day of reckoning coming with um some of the traditional players and some of the traditional constructs um that are just uneconomic uh in this you know kind of go forward environment and ultimately you know what what you're likely going to see are those you know payers right which really do have a stranglehold on the healthcare industry right but are economically rational actors right they will likely become the arbiters of these two market forces right if you think about you know again what they're motivated by it is total cost of care right so if you have a well capitalized affordable and convenient solution right but it's trying to get people you know anti-anxiety medication very quickly right but those people end up you know committing suicide or trying to attempt to commit suicide right which is very costly to the health care system right the insurance companies are likely not going to endorse those models and or you know continue to uh sponsor those right you'll likely see them look more towards more affordable and convenient uh but ultimately higher quality solutions right that are ultimately driving results in mental health care specifically for far too long because of fragmentation and inefficiency you did not have a lot of quantitatively measured outcomes that's something we spend a lot of time both that stop soldier suicide and rapport uh focused on right um which is you know taking high quality care and actually measuring success in a quantifiable way that we can then you know demonstrate um to to a payer and say this is what um you know happens from a total cost of care perspective so um that would be my perspective on you know kind of the the value prop and the the market forces and where ultimately i think things shake out yeah that makes sense and dr canars when it comes to sort of presenting quantifiable results talking about value proposition uh reflecting back on your experience how has that been for you um i think this also loops into what you just commented on which is total cost of care i think for for companies like like ours like the panelists here i think one of the common themes that we're seeing is prevention like prevention of disease or prevention of a particular situation turning into crisis mode and their uh innovation such as all the things that we're working on and new models of delivery or new technology or any type of new innovation has the potential to prevent a variety of things prevent disease prevent visits and ultimately reduce the total cost of care and so that's something that we're actively working on getting data to actually prove that easier said than done so i think also thinking of the audience here if i had a message for the this uh this particular audience it would be to um entertain talking to companies such as ours if we are all on the same page of improving health care and reducing the cost of care um let's see if we can partner and do it together and you know just because we are a you know perhaps newer company or a smaller company that doesn't mean that we aren't offering value that will ultimately benefit um your health system and the bottom dollar thank you um andrew any additional thoughts from your experience as it pertains total cost of care prevention um and sort of changing sort of the business models and the theory of business and healthcare yeah i think um you know so if a dollar was if a dollar spent save you two dollars you obviously you save one dollar right and so um organizations need to continually invest in innovations because of uh you know it'll drive higher quality and lower cost of care and i think femi made this point earlier we're spending the money already right we're just not spending it in a way that makes makes sense so one of the things i think will be the future of healthcare is removing or moving away from the four walls of hospitals and finding community-based liaisons and in hubs to deliver those care and we we've we're seeing this right i mean cvs have they have health hubs right that are in the community you can get a nurse practice see a nurse practitioner or even a primary care physician um obviously with our business we utilize hair shops or hair salons and barber shops right that unique social space because that's where people gather so in terms of like total cost of care if we uh you know one focus on the vulnerable populations by partnering with organizations like live chair health or other community based organizations you're going to be able to address or find those people that may be driving up um most of the the health care costs right um you know if you can catch someone before they have a triple bypass surgery right um and just you know ounce of prevention is a you know it's it's i think i forgot the the famous saying right but it's like uh you know if you focus on prevention right that that will lead to um not having to dole out so much money specifically from a health plan perspective so i think that's all i would add there just you know removing or moving away from the four walls of the traditional system into familiar places and then also you know the education and awareness right has to increase because i one thing that we've identified in our business is that most members are not utilizing their health care properly so instead of um you know joe smith going to the his pcp or urgent care for a common cold that person is showing up at the er obviously health plans think that's that's tragic right because then you know that the bill is exponentially higher and that could have been treated at a urgent care or their primary care physician which unfortunately for a lot of our members not a large percentage have primary care physicians because of the distress that's the entire separate story um but we're working on those things with our partnership with lifebridge health to you know be a bridge builder to better care thank you thank you andrew let's let's let's uh do one one last uh question here and we'll try to go through this a little quickly um and then we'll open it up to the audience um so so like i i told you all a lot of hospital finance people uh part of our membership base um used to evaluating business plans based on traditional finance metrics of you know i buy an mri i get so many scans through that mri and uh here's the capital cost and here's the um you know the cost to run the machine and the and the the revenue associated with that and i can see my payback and um you know i think we all know we're seeing different reimbursement models evolve in the space uh different incentives uh value-based incentives that are put into place but there's still a lot of those traditional reimbursement fee for service incentives out there so what's your pitch to uh to this group on how do we how do we evaluate that when you come to us and you want to uh sell us you know your technology if you're trying to sell to a hospital or a health system or insurance company after we'd be viewing this um knowing that we have short-term margin pressures and those dollars compete with other capital uh strategic capital so how should we think about this um andrew let's start with you um yeah so i think it's you know similar to what's what i mentioned around uh you know if you spend a dollar and you save two you know you're saving one dollar right so uh and naturally if you're saving that money you're able to invest into delivering higher quality and lower cost care and if you're delivering high quality care at a lower cost that's going to reduce some of the pressures that you have so i think it's it's a it takes a shift in mindset um and and looking at opportunities that might be foreign but have big impact right so you know i applaud life bridge health for you know taking a a chance on live chair health and partner with us because you know we're seeing seeing great returns and um just the learning that we're we're having we're gonna have a massive impact on one of their uh you know communities that's that's really been ravaged to be honest with you and been marginalized for time not by the life for a shelf just for clarity but just the system in hole right because it's distrust right and so uh if we can reach and engage and influence and access you know populations a lot sooner um that's naturally gonna lead to lower costs which would you know eventually kind of uh decrease the pressure that a lot of these cfos have um in my honest opinion yeah and i think the other three are you're all really direct to consumer but maybe maybe you think about kind of that next stage models but brian why don't you jump in here anything this group should be thinking about whether specifically for your company or other other similar companies as they're looking at kind of roi on some of these things yeah i mean i have a slightly different lens that i look through right which is one of you know being an investment analyst for a long time right being a capital allocator um predominantly for for later stage public companies but also you know i've done a lot of early stage venture investing uh as an angel and you know look at the at the crossroads of excel and powerpoint right we can make a financial operating model or projections say whatever we want but ultimately you know i think if you have a really good business plan and it's stress tested and it's married up with uh an operating model and key milestones and those value inflection points and you know then you're executing on a trajectory where you can demonstrate you know repeatability of a business right once you have product market fit right you can really distill it down into something that a capital provider can understand even if you're running potentially a business that you know has near-term headwinds whether that's margin compression or you know patient acquisition costs that are higher right ultimately it's really about articulating right what the long-term business model is and the backwards plan of how to get there and so um i do believe that um again capital providers generally are rational economic actors and therefore if you have a good plan and you're executing against it or or can explain you know the variance of of how you're successful or not i mean that can be a very powerful tool uh to also you know support a great team you know that's coming out of um you know a great you know academic medical center institution alongside some great technology and and other things dr kinner has anything anything to add as far as kind of that that roi look or how finance people might look to license your technology for their patients or any any sort of thing uh because i i imagine that that primary care physicians large groups could be a very attractive um group to partner with here yeah yeah i'm hoping so um i'm thinking even beyond our product because our product is we are creating it as a consumer product but thinking from the healthcare system perspective um it reminds me of two examples so one is palo al palo alto health sciences they created free spira which is a digital therapeutic tool i think it's a an app based tool that helps uh coach someone through an anxiety attack and they have data that found that their users had significantly fewer visits when they would use that um that tool another one is a local baltimore startup that was also a hopkins graduate spin-out tissue analytics they also did a sort of ai based pressure ulcer detection and pressure ulcer characterization and they found that um i think uh i'm not recalling the exact numbers but they were able to save uh hospital millions of dollars from preventing later stage ulcers from developing and so the lessons i take from that is um ask ask companies who are presenting you with this new awesome amazing technology um how is this going to affect us financially is this going to save us money how much money will it save and i think that's a very valid question that on the business side is something that we need to be prepared to answer but from your end if it's saving you on the scale of millions of dollars i think that's worth taking into consideration yeah and i think you know you touched on a good point there's a lot of problems out there to solve it's just how big the problem is sometimes you know to you we can we can create things that do a lot of cool things or address problems but the size of the problem is um uh you know important too family i know we didn't get to you we're actually at 3 30 here i want to make sure um we get to uh any questions that might be out there from the panelists or from the from the audience uh i know we're buttoned up right here on time um so if there's anything um just typing in the q a chat bar i know we hit a lot of topics here so there might not be much out there we covered a lot here in this hour okay well i want to thank everyone here uh a phenomenal panel uh group of people well accomplished just really cool cool group here um thank you very much from hfma and all our members uh uh we have been recording this so we will be putting this up on the website for a membership base and and they do like listen to the recordings um and so um thank you very much um exciting great day here for uh entrepreneurship and innovation healthcare and thank you all for joining us today thanks hi everyone thank you all thanks for having us thanks you