Tech Tonics - TopPodcast.com

View Top 200 Chart

Back to Rankings Page

Tech Tonics — Health & Fitness
Tech Tonics

Tech Tonics, the Podcast, is a twice-monthly program focused on the people and passion at the intersection of technology and health. Hosted by Lisa Suennen and David Shaywitz (the co-authors of “Tech Tonics: Can Passionate Entrepreneurs Heal Healthcare With Technology?”) the show draws on their experience in business, medicine, and health-IT.

The Tech Tonics podcast seeks to bring the people in the digital health field to life and, ideally, elevate humanism in a healthcare world captivated by technology. “We deeply believe in what Robert Coles, an inspiration to us both, has termed ‘the call of stories,’” David Shaywitz says. “Our aspiration is to bring the spirit of Coles and Michael Lewis to the world of digital health.”

Together, Suennen and Shaywitz engage a range of intriguing guests in discussions that enable listeners to appreciate the stories behind the startups and the people behind the passion.

Lisa Suennen is the Managing Partner of Venture Valkyrie Consulting, LLC, a firm that provides advisory services to corporate and independent venture capital funds and to large and small companies around investment and product strategy, innovation spin-outs, market development, partnerships and financing. She is currently a member of the Qualcomm Life Advisory Board, the Sanofi Integrated Care Advisory Board, the Dignity Health Foundation Board, and an Advisor to the California Health Care Foundation Innovation Fund and a member of several private company Boards of Directors.

Dr. David Shaywitz is the Chief Medical Officer of DNAnexus, a company that makes it easier to work with genomic data using advanced bioinformatics and scalable compute systems based on the cloud. He received his M.D. from the Harvard-MIT Division of Health, Science, and Technology at Harvard Medical School, and his Ph.D. from the Department of Biology at MIT. He trained in internal medicine and endocrinology at the Massachusetts General Hospital, and conducted his post-doctoral research in Doug Melton’s lab at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute.

Tech Tonics, the Podcast is produced by Jason Lopez and syndicated by Connected Social Media. You can also find out more at venturevalkyrie.com and connectedsocialmedia.com.

Copyright: © ConnectedSocialMedia.com

Latest Episodes:

Tech Tonics: iRhythm’s Uday Kumar… What Makes Him Tick May 08, 2017

Show notes

The medical device company iRhythm has been described as that rarest of all breeds – a digital health company with an actual, viable business model behind it. On today’s Tech Tonics podcast, we’re delighted to welcome Uday Kumar, the cardiologist and serial entrepreneur who started the company in his apartment, and learn what makes him tick (hopefully in normal sinus rhythm).

Raised in Rhode Island, the son of two physicians, Uday initially pursued biochemistry at Harvard, but soon found himself drawn to medical devices. After medical school and residency on the east coast, Uday guided himself to Silicon Valley, where he thought the environment would help maximize his chances for success as a medical device entrepreneur.

Apparently, he was right. Uday not only founded iRhythm, a company that reimagined real-world cardiac monitoring by replacing a large backpack attached to leads and wires with a bandaid-size adhesive device, but he later also founded and now leads Element Science, a company tackling the challenge of sudden cardiac death in the days after a patient survives a heart attack.

This episode of Tech Tonics is sponsored by DNAnexus, the secure and compliant cloud platform that enables enterprise users to analyze, collaborate around, and integrate massive amounts of genetic and other health data.

Tech Tonics: Data Scientist Eric Perakslis, “I Build Stuff.” Apr 24, 2017

Show notes

“I build stuff” is how data scientist Eric Perakslis modestly describes his breathless career, a journey that’s taken him from industry to academia and back again, with a brief stop at the FDA.

Eric’s first job after college was at a small combinatorial chemistry startup in Boston, but he was soon recruited to J&J, where he spent more than a decade, embracing roles of increased responsibility that focused on the management of distributed information. While there, he set up tranSMART, a pioneering open source clinical data warehouse for deidentified genetic and phenotypic data.

Eric then joined the FDA, and in a short but productive year and a half there, developed a high quality technology strategic plan for the organization, advanced their cybersecurity posture, helped them begin to move towards the cloud, and worked on the implementation of Safety and Innovation Act (FDASIA), completing over twenty FDASIA-related IT projects in just a few months.

The next stop for Eric was Harvard, where he joined (future Tech Tonics guest) Zak Kohane and helped establish the Department of Biomedical Informatics (DBMI). In his spare time, he also helped implement the data sharing platform supporting the Undiagnosed Disease Network. (Note: Tech Tonics co-host David is an adjunct/Visiting Scientist at the DBMI.)

More recently, Eric was recruited back to industry, motivated by the prospect of working with the exceptional science team Takeda has brought together (including several of David’s former colleagues from Merck). Eric is currently SVP and Head of Takeda Data Sciences Institute, and is focused on creating a unified data science platform for the organization.

Eric has achieved much of this while combating a diagnoses of primary renal cell cancer, which was first identified while he was at J&J, and which recently recurred, but again responded to a treatment approach Eric describes as “whack-a-mole.” According to Eric, his diagnosis “doesn’t dominate every aspect of my life – I view it as a chronic illness, and there are a lot worse things. I feel grateful, and I appreciate the cancer has given me a greater connection to what I do.”

This episode of Tech Tonics is sponsored by DNAnexus, the secure and compliant cloud platform that enables enterprise users to analyze, collaborate around, and integrate massive amounts of genetic and other health data.

Tech Tonics: Jan Bruce and the Science of Resilience Apr 10, 2017

Show notes

When you ask Jan Bruce where she grew up, she says “in the media business.” Jan worked early on in the magazine and then digital media sectors, backing into the health and wellness category through opportunity. She planned a career as editor and publisher but always found herself gravitating to selling the advertising rather than focused on editorial.

It turns out Jan was a born entrepreneur and that is now where she again finds herself as CEO of MeQuilibrium, after years in media (including a stint with Martha Stewart Omnimedia), and a lifetime practice of personal well-being. Watching her media colleagues tout health but ignore their own well-being, Jan saw a gap in the market distinct from what most think of as wellness. Thus she set out to help the nation’s largest companies build “transformational human and organizational resilience” by applying the right combination of technology, and psychology. Her goal is nothing less than to address what she describes as a rapidly altering value exchange between employer and employee.

We are grateful to our sponsor, AARP Market Innovation for supporting this episode of Tech Tonics. AARP Market Innovation, which works to spark innovation in the market that will benefit the quality of life for people over 50.

Tech Tonics: Jess Mega of Verily Actually Is Making the World a Better Place Mar 27, 2017

Show notes

Jessica Mega, an accomplished cardiologist and now Chief Medical Officer at Alphabet’s Verily (formerly Google Life Sciences), says she joined the venerable Silicon Valley company to help patients. According to Jess, physicians who love patients need to lean into the tech world because great tech that doesn’t actually change care doesn’t have much of a chance, implying also that it doesn’t have much of a point.

Very early to the concept of what is now called Precision Medicine, Jess helped pioneer the idea of large scale patient data collection (e.g., a study with multiple countries, 1000 sites, 20,000 patients) while studying the individual effects of medications, such as Plavix among populations. She was early to the concept of joining genetic, clinical and phenotypic information together to inform medicine, a concept she has imported to Verily as they take on some of the most challenging clinical problems together with world class medical partners such as Novartis, Dexcom, J&J and the American Heart Association, among others.

Jess imbues her work with the enthusiasm of someone who feels that work is play and that a real contribution is possible every day. She brings the kind of empathy and humanity to Silicon Valley that makes the effective intersection of tech and healthcare seem not just desirable, but also achievable. She just may be making the world a better place.

Tech Tonics: Deborah Kilpatrick – Calling Audibles Mar 06, 2017

Show notes

Deborah Kilpatrick grew up on a family farm in rural Georgia; her dad was a teacher and football coach; she describes life in her town as “very Friday Night Lights.”

With a passion for math and science, Deb decided to becoming a Ramblin’ Wreck at Georgia Tech, continuing on there for a masters and PhD in mechanical engineering after spending a few post-college years working in the aerospace industry building military aircraft engines. She reports that the memory of walking through the hangar past the entirely male team came flooding back when she recently watched the film Hidden Figures.

Eventually, Deb found her way to Silicon Valley, where she helped grow a medical device company (Guidant), and a molecular diagnostics company (CardioDx) before assuming her current and most ambitious role as CEO of Evidation Health, a company focused on defining and demonstrating outcomes in digital health. But as an entrepreneur, Deb draws a straight line between her childhood experience watching her dad build a football program in rural Georgia and her own willingness to start all over again every Monday and play any game and do everything you can do and then do it all over again, while building teams of people from disparate backgrounds to maximize their strengths and point them towards common goals. Rumor has it that it’s tough to work for Deb if you don’t know what “calling an audible” means.

We are delighted to welcome Deborah Kilpatrick, a helluva engineer, to Tech Tonics.

This episode of Tech Tonics is sponsored by DNAnexus, the secure and compliant cloud platform that enables enterprise users to analyze, collaborate around, and integrate massive amounts of genetic and other health data.

Tech Tonics: The Intersection of Medicine and Marijuana Feb 20, 2017

Show notes

Reports suggest that today there are between 1.2 to 2.6 million legal medical marijuana users in the U.S. But as we know, there is great controversy about medical marijuana as a “legitimate” medical intervention due to its history as an illegal substance and the lack of a large body of clinical trial evidence.

And yet, according to Pamela Hadfield, co-founder of HelloMD, cannabis is actually one of the single biggest healthcare disruptors out there today. It is not only becoming increasingly serious business, but it is being taken seriously as a viable form of medicine in many quarters, even it though it remains somewhat marginalized in some quarters.

Pamela Hadfield has, by many measures, had a traditional path through the tech world. She has been a successful pioneer in 3D animation, virtual reality and user experience all the way back to the early 1990’s. She and her HelloMD co-founder, husband Mark Hadfield, have been part of numerous tech successes and started this company as a continuation of that effort, this time in the telemedicine area. But along the way, they realized the real opportunity was not telemedicine per se, but the legitimization of medical marijuana and the ability to serve patients who had found no other solutions to their medical challenges. A controversial topic to be sure, but one we are not afraid to tackle here on Tech Tonics!

In this episode, Pamela talks about how the cannabis industry is changing medicine and, interestingly, how working in this field can affect friendships and acceptance in the entrepreneurial community, not to mention what you tell your children at the dinner table.

We’re grateful to our sponsor, AARP Market Innovation, for supporting this episode of Tech Tonics. AARP Market Innovation, which works to spark innovation in the market that will benefit the quality of life for people over 50.

Tech Tonics: Chris Benko, From Fortune 100 to Fortune Seeker Feb 06, 2017

Show notes

Chris Benko first joined Merck when he was but a lad of eighteen, rising through the ranks in HR and talent management to become one of the youngest VPs in the history of the organization, at the age of 34.

But instead of continuing his ascending career into the senior ranks of biopharma, Chris opted instead to scratch the entrepreneurial itch and, after several years in Merck venture capital group, he founded a new company and left Merck to run it.

Benko’s startup, Koneksa Health, focuses on applying the tools of digital health to the challenges of early clinical drug development. The goal is to support better internal decisions, particularly about which might be the most promising drug candidates, through the application of real world patient data obtained in the setting of a pharmaceutical clinical study. The company is one of several that is leveraging the ever-expanding world of data to improve operations, efficacy and efficiency within the healthcare landscape.

We are delighted to welcome Chris to Tech Tonics. Join us as we discuss his path from the Fortune 100 to fortune-seeker at an enterprise of his own making.

This episode of Tech Tonics is sponsored by DNAnexus, the secure and compliant cloud platform that enables enterprise users to analyze, collaborate around, and integrate massive amounts of genetic and other health data.

Tech Tonics: Susannah Fox, Learning from MacGyver Patients Jan 16, 2017

Show notes

Susannah Fox eloquently described her job as U.S. HHS Chief Technology Officer – a role which just came to an end in the transition to a new administration – as “helping Health and Human Service (HHS) leadership harness the power of data, technology, and innovation to improve the health and welfare of the nation.”

It sounds like a tall order, but Fox was uniquely suited to take it on given her previous experience at the Pew Research Center and as Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Yet her most relevant experience may well have been her training in anthropology; Fox views technology as “a Trojan Horse for culture change,” as MobiHealthNews reporter Jonah Comstock nicely summarized.

She refers to herself as an “internet geologist” rather than a policy person.
Fox has also recognized the importance of field discovery, the innovative contribution of folks on the front lines of healthcare — as MIT professor Eric von Hippel has championed, as well as UCSF’s Aenor Sawyer (see this 2016 TechTonics podcast). She has strongly emphasized the role of patients as partners in discovery, eschewing the idea they should be passive subjects in their healthcare experience (David, in particular, has long been especially passionate about this topic – see here).

Fox’s legendary empathy and commitment – to patients, to innovation, to collaborators – contributed to her exceptional impact in her role as HHS CTO, and we’re so privileged to have her on our program (which was recorded shortly before she left office). Join us as we discuss Susannah’s life and work to make a meaningful difference in the healthcare lives of everyday people.

This episode of Tech Tonics was sponsored by DNAnexus (dnanexus.com), the secure and compliant cloud platform that enables enterprise users to analyze, collaborate around, and integrate massive amounts of genetic and other health data.

Tech Tonics: Sridhar Iyengar on IoT Meets Life Science Research Jan 02, 2017

Show notes

Many entrepreneurs and investors on our podcast advise would-be innovators to focus on the problem to be solved, rather than become wrapped up in a particular technology. “Your solution,” VC Dave McClure famously warned entrepreneurs, “Is not my problem.”

On the other hand, many scientists – and students of science – have emphasized the pivotal role of new technology in driving progress. For instance, legendary biologist Sydney Brenner once described scientific progress as “the interplay of techniques, discoveries, and new ideas – probably in that order.”

Today’s guest, serial entrepreneur Sridhar Iyengar is an example of the second type of innovator, one who is captivated by a particular technology and determined to find a use for it. His passion for signal processing algorithms was a key factor in the success of his first major company, AgaMatrix and also a pivotal driver of his second major company, Misfit Wearables. He’s now started a new, exciting company, Elemental Machines, which he might pitch as “internet of things meets life science research.”

Join us as we discuss Sri’s entrepreneurial journey from Knoxville, Tennessee to Silicon Valley and Cambridge, MA; learn how he first met his long-time collaborator Sonny Vu; and hear how John Sculley (of Apple and Pepsi fame) played a pivotal role in his digital health career.

This episode of Tech Tonics is sponsored by DNAnexus, the secure and compliant cloud platform that enables enterprise users to analyze, collaborate around, and integrate massive amounts of genetic and other health data.

Tech Tonics: Rasu Shrestha – Living Inside the Culture Clash Dec 12, 2016

Show notes

Rasu Shrestha, MD, is one of those doctors who found his way from medicine to technology. As he puts it, he rolled downhill from his birthplace in Kathmandu, Nepal, across many continents and into medical school in India. But Rasu kept rolling, finding his way to London, Los Angeles and then Pittsburgh where he now serves as Chief Innovation Officer at UPMC, one of the nation’s largest integrated delivery systems.

According to Rasu a culture clash is playing out in healthcare, specifically a clash between physicians and innovators and the tension between what is known and what is new. Doctors are taught to “go with the evidence-based – the tried, the true the tested.” On the other hand, innovators are taught to do something totally new outside the realm of what is known. The two need to come together. Rasu is calling for a shift in mindset from doing digital to being digital and for a coming together of physicians and innovators towards mutual goals that incorporate design thinking, end user engagement and new ways of understanding each other’s perspectives. Rasu acknowledges that this shift is essential given the role that UPMC plays in defining digital health success stories as both purchaser and one of the nation’s most prolific funders of digital health products and services.

And like many physician-innovators we have interviewed at Tech Tonics, Rasu has a creative side that extends beyond the medical. He is a prolific painter and likes to express himself as much through canvas as code.

We are grateful to AARP for sponsoring this episode of TechTonics. AARP’s Market Innovation team works to spark innovation in the market that will benefit the quality of life for people over the age of 50.

Related Podcasts