The Healthy Enterprise

This episode is part of a limited series called Money Ball in conjunction with the BLPN Club. BLPN's Money Ball program helps founders step up to the plate and knock fundraising out of the park. You'll hear about the people, their ventures, and their pitch-making experiences.

In this episode of The Healthy Enterprise, host Heath Fletcher interviews Doug Cohen, the Co-Founder and CEO of IR Medtek, about his journey in developing a groundbreaking technology for cancer detection. Doug shares his unique background in mechanical engineering and how it led him to identify a significant gap in the healthcare market, particularly in skin cancer detection. The conversation delves into the development process of their innovative device, the challenges faced, and the importance of refining their pitch to investors through the Money Ball program. Doug emphasizes the value of collaboration, confidence in their technology, and the potential impact on patient care.

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction to Money Ball and IR Medtek
01:14 Doug's Unique Background and Journey
02:27 Identifying the Gap in Cancer Detection
05:51 The Development Journey of the Technology
07:41 Current Progress and Future Steps
08:39 Understanding the Device and Its Functionality
10:58 Enhancing Primary Care with Technology
13:25 Investor Response and Presentation Experience
14:34 Refining the Pitch through Money Ball
18:32 Public Speaking and CEO Responsibilities
21:12 The Advantage of an Engineering Background
24:11 Reflections on the Money Ball Experience


Guest Information:
  • Guest's Name: Doug Cohen
  • Guest's Title/Position: Chief Executive Officer
  • Guest's Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/doug-cohen-64761410/
  • Company / Affiliation: IR Medtek https://www.irmedtek.com/
  • Guest's Bio:  Doug Cohen is IR Medtek's Co-Founder and CEO and has over 20 years of experience in manufacturing equipment, product design, global sourcing, and logistics. Doug is a graduate of MIT in mechanical engineering and has experience as both an owner and investor in start-ups. He owns a number of technology patents and serves on the board of the public company Organovo.

Takeaways:
  • Doug's background in mechanical engineering shaped his approach to IR Medtek.
  • The technology developed can differentiate tumor from non-tumor tissue.
  • Skin cancer detection is a significant market opportunity.
  • The device provides real-time feedback to primary care doctors.
  • Investor confidence is crucial for the success of startups.
  • Refining the pitch can significantly improve investor engagement.
  • Public speaking skills are essential for CEOs in fundraising.
  • Collaboration with experts enhances the team's capabilities.
  • The Money Ball program provided valuable networking opportunities.
  • The technology has the potential to improve patient outcomes significantly.

The Healthy Enterprise Podcast is produced by Bullzeye Global Growth Partners  https://bullzeyeglobal.com/


Creators and Guests

Host
Heath Fletcher
With over 30 years in creative marketing and visual storytelling, I’ve built a career on turning ideas into impact. From brand transformation to media production, podcast development, and outreach strategies, I craft compelling narratives that don’t just capture attention—they accelerate growth and drive measurable results.
Guest
Doug Cohen
Doug Cohen is IR Medtek's Co-Founder and CEO and has over 20 years of experience in manufacturing equipment, product design, global sourcing, and logistics. Doug is a graduate of MIT in mechanical engineering and has experience as both an owner and investor in start-ups. He owns a number of technology patents and serves on the board of the public company Organovo.
Editor
Griffin Fletcher
Griffin Fletcher is a Junior Project Manager who wears a lot of hats. He’s skilled in podcast and video editing, film production, cinematography, and social media management, bringing creativity and organization to every project he touches. Griffin also has a sports background—he’s worked in hockey analytics and as a referee—which sharpened his attention to detail and teamwork skills. With a BA in Economics, he mixes analytical thinking with a creative edge, making him a versatile and hands-on contributor to our team.
Producer
Meghna Deshraj
Meghna Deshraj is the CEO and Founder of Bullzeye Growth Partners, a strategic consultancy that helps businesses scale sustainably and profitably. With a background spanning corporate strategy, IT, finance, and process optimization, she combines analytical rigor with creative execution to drive measurable results. Under her leadership, Bullzeye has generated over $580M in annual growth and more than $1B in client revenue, guiding organizations through large-scale integrations, business transformations, and organizational change initiatives. A Certified Six Sigma Black Belt, Meghna’s superpower lies in strategic marketing and growth consulting, helping businesses grow through innovation, efficiency, and strong, trusted partnerships.

What is The Healthy Enterprise?

Hosted by Heath Fletcher, The Healthy Enterprise explores how innovation, technology, and leadership are reshaping the life sciences industry—from discovery and development to commercialization and care delivery. Each episode features candid, heart-centered conversations with founders, scientists, executives, and investors, sharing real-world experiences and insights for building resilient, future-ready organizations.

Created and Produced by Bullzeye Global Growth Partners — Let’s build it together!

Heath Fletcher (00:01)
Hi there, I'm Heath Fletcher, host of The Healthy Enterprise. This episode is part of a limited series called Money Ball. It's in conjunction with the BLPN club. BLPN's Money Ball program helps founders step up to the plate and knock fundraising out of the park. You'll hear about the people, their ventures, and their pitch-making experiences. I hope you enjoy it.

Doug, welcome to this episode of the special edition Money Ball series. Looking forward to hearing about yourself, your background, ⁓ IR Medtek and your Money Ball experience.

Doug Cohen (00:35)
Thank you for having me.

Heath Fletcher (00:38)
So let's start with ⁓ yourself. What's the story? What's your backstory? What led you to this role now?

Doug Cohen (00:45)
So our story is a little bit unique in terms of my background as mechanical engineering at MIT a long time ago, part of a family business that we grew up and sold to a private equity group, and really afforded me the opportunity to make a pivot in life. And my MO has always been devices to help people, inspired by a professor dating back to MIT named Ernesto Blanco, who did all kinds of different assistive technology.

on the way started a company to build braille displays for blind people and came across this technology ⁓ when ⁓ a business partner of mine was looking for some additional consulting work. Said this is fiber optics. He was an expert in fiber optics. They said, let's go have coffee with this professor in this and at Ohio State because he's talking about fiber optics in cancer detection. They said, this is cool. They said, so

went over to Ohio State, that turned out to be a big presentation by Ohio State for a lot of reasons. But after a two hour meeting, we left that meeting, Andy and I looked at each other and we said, gee, you know, this could work. But we're gonna need a whole lot of team members to do this. ⁓ And we said, okay, let's figure this out and let's go for it because how often do you get to...

opportunity to have a meaningful impact in the cancer fight. So that's what really got us started. We started in 2019, we put the company together and ⁓ kind of took it from there and just started laying out a path that made sense.

Heath Fletcher (02:27)
So when, what was the core, what was the core problem or the gap that you guys noticed was, Oh, this is, there's, there's an opportunity here.

Doug Cohen (02:38)
So the first part of this was we looked at it from the cool factor. What does this do? This technology is a mid-infrared light technology, and it can tell tumor from non-tumor on tissue, any tissue at all. And with that, we said, gee, this is so cool. How do we apply it? What makes sense? Let's take off the technology hat, put on the business hat, and say, where is there

a challenge in healthcare that we can add value. And looked across the range of different applications of ⁓ cancer detection and said skin cancer looks really interesting. And spent some time looking at ⁓ skin cancer because it's a non-invasive path. It's easy to touch. It's a huge market. ⁓ What is it? One in five people by the age of 70 will suffer from skin cancer. And we said, what's the pain point?

in skin cancer. And when we looked at it, we said, you know, there's a lot of skin biopsies that are done every year that come back negative. In fact, the vast majority of them do. Right. And said, ⁓ maybe we can add some value if we can avoid some of those negative skin biopsies. So from there, we started laying out the path and we looked at it. And really from day one, we said, what is it going to take for us to be successful?

What does the cost look like? What is reimbursement? What is the payments? What does everything look like in order for this to be successful? And we did that from day one. And then from there, we said, okay, does the science actually meet this? And does it meet this threshold that we're gonna need to have to be successful? And every science meeting we've had, we're constantly having the conversation of what's the results? What's the accuracy?

Does it meet this? And the answer is yes. To this date, it has exceeded our expectations.

Heath Fletcher (04:43)
Wow, that's pretty exciting, Ashley. You're like you said, it is a huge market. ⁓ And when did you start this process? that when was that meeting that initial meeting with the three?

Doug Cohen (04:52)
So

our initial meeting with OSU was back in the end of 2018. And we really spent nine months trying to talk to various doctors and ⁓ clinicians and technical people. And really we wanted to make sure that we can come up with a business plan that didn't require us to build something that was going to cost a million bucks and we had to sell it for five. know, we had to have something that made sense.

So ⁓ we spent a lot of time talking to industry people as well, making sure that we can put something together and components are even available to be able to do what we're trying to do. And through the answer, once we went through that nine months, we got to do an answer of, yes, let's make a run at it. So we did. And a few of us put some money into it. We formed the company and off we went, just in time for COVID.

great timing to start a company. So really got delayed by about a year, year and a half before we really could get going and do our first study.

Heath Fletcher (06:05)
Very interesting. so then that was, yeah, so you're now you're now you're at 21 to 2021 2022 there. So that's when that's when you really got to work, right?

Doug Cohen (06:13)
Yeah, and that's when we conducted our first of four studies that we've done to date. And all we did was, hey, okay, let's take the tech for a spin. Does it work? And when it did, we said, oh, this is interesting. Okay, does it work for doing this? And we set out a whole bunch of milestones along the way because we said, okay, it's gonna take a bunch of money. We're gonna have to pull in investors. Each time we pull in investors, we're gonna de-risk the technology.

and we're gonna move it forward. So each time we said, okay, the first step is, does it work? Appears to work. We have 18 patients in this study. So we pulled in some money and that allowed us to conduct a bigger trial. We then did a second study, hit some more milestones, continues to work, pulled in some more money and went on from there.

Heath Fletcher (07:08)
And now today, where are you at now in the, in the trajectory.

Doug Cohen (07:12)
So at this

point, we've conducted four studies to date, enrolled more than 700 patients, ⁓ have three publications ⁓ out there. We have eight patents and several more filed. So we have a beautiful patent portfolio. The technology, we've built several operable devices that work and can detect cancer. Our next path, our next step is to take those basically

Heath Fletcher (07:28)
Very good. Yeah.

Doug Cohen (07:41)
first version devices and turn it into final products. And with that, finish out the machine learning models and then go for FDA approval, which is a class two medical device.

Heath Fletcher (07:55)
interesting. ⁓ describe the device for for listeners a little bit here. Is it a handheld device? it a? ⁓

Doug Cohen (08:02)
Yeah, so

the best way to think about it is ⁓ think of a blood pressure machine mounted on a cart. You're going to have this cart that's going to wheel into the broom, and then you're going to have a little fiber optic end with a ⁓ pen point on the end of it. So the stylus is essentially a pen. And with that pen, the tip of the pen is about the size of a ballpoint pen. You'll bring it down, you'll touch a lesion on your skin, and in

15 to 30 seconds, you'll get an output after touching the skin. And that output will be biopsy it or don't biopsy.

Heath Fletcher (08:39)
right, right. Interesting. mean, for people who haven't had a skin scan. ⁓ mean, I, I view my father actually died of melanoma. So I get regular skin scans, and constantly verified and actually the very first time I actually booked a skin scan, I thought, skin scan, had an idea, I had a picture in my mind, I thought I was going to be lying down on a bed, machine was going to scan me from head to toe. It's not the case. It is. ⁓

one freckle to another or one mole to another. And it's it's ⁓ if the doctor is actually using a loop and then you know, circling the ones that they don't like and then so doing that so I can imagine that this step would be like, ⁓ this one I don't like they just check it and it is it's real time it tells them don't worry about that one move on. Is it that quick?

Doug Cohen (09:31)
So you're one of the few that's doing a full body scan at a dermatologist on an annual basis. The vast majority of people will see a skin lesion of concern and they go to their primary care doc or while they're doing an annual checkup, they say, hey, while I'm here, can you take a look at this spot? I'm worried about this spot on my hand. And that's how a lot of initial diagnosis or initial observations.

come about. So from there, that's where we want to help. We want to add value there. We want to provide more information to the primary care doc at that point in time so that they can make a better choice for path of care, other than say, I'm worried about it. You should go get a biopsy done. From there, the patient might say, doc didn't seem that worried or I don't have time to go to a dermatologist. So follow through is a huge concern. It's just

natural, ⁓ it's human nature that you see a machine that says red, you're more likely to follow through than if the doctor that says, you should probably get this done. So in that regards, we definitely can help improve care. We can help improve care because we're giving the primary care doc more information. That's a big key. Primary care docs are people that are looking to to help their patients.

Heath Fletcher (10:49)
That's right.

Doug Cohen (10:57)
Not saying that every doctor isn't but it's it's it is more of They want the ability to to care for their patients better

Heath Fletcher (11:09)
Yeah, that makes perfect sense because then now you're actually hitting it right at right at point of contact where it's a concern to somebody because they've noticed not necessarily in my case where it's like it's more proactive because of a family historical family experience. But now you're talking about somebody with somebody who's noticed something themselves on their on their hand or leg or whatever. And now they're getting almost immediate feedback from their primary care doctor. So yeah, that makes sense.

Doug Cohen (11:37)
Correct. So once we get into market, there is a chance that we can get into dermatologist's office as well, especially as ⁓ dermatologists are so overbooked at this point. business is faster than the number of dermatologists is growing. And that makes sense. The population is aging and there's only so many dermatologists that come out every year. So as a

things like full body scans are getting passed down to PAs and nurse practitioners that are doing a lot of these full scans. So in that case, we could augment what the PA and nurse practitioners are doing in the dermatology offices in a lot of ways. So there's a path for us to help in that market as well. But that's the beauty of us targeting the primary care space is it really creates

you know, what I call the participation award in the healthcare space, because the patient obviously wins if they can get a scan and avoid a needless biopsy, that's a huge win. The primary care doc wins because they get to provide better care for their patients. The dermatologist win because they get better referrals. They get people that are coming to them that they don't have to take a look at and say, you know, you didn't need to get referred. There's nothing here.

You avoid all of that cost, that anxiety, that office visit that's involved. That can all be avoided. The dermatologists want that because they're so busy. They don't want to waste time with that kind of a visit. then healthcare of course wins because it's cheaper to do a scan than it is to do a biopsy with path reports and extra office visits.

Heath Fletcher (13:25)
So you must get great response when you first deliver this or present this and then as CEO, you're kind of doing that consistently. You're always presenting this whether it's to ⁓ for research or it's for investors, right?

Doug Cohen (13:39)
Absolutely, absolutely. And initial traction and response has been fantastic. And ⁓ the investors that we pulled into date can all see it and can either have had an experience with skin cancer, know somebody, or can see, understand the business side of it ⁓ very well. And it's just an easy path to understand.

Heath Fletcher (14:06)
And ⁓ let's talk about your presentation experience because, you know, going out and talking to investors looking for funding, you have to present your story, you have to present the pitch. And ⁓ you've you went through the moneyball program through BLPN. And you've had an opportunity to kind of refine your pitch over the last couple of years. So let's talk about when you first started sort of doing that.

Where did you find the challenges in delivering this story to potential funders?

Doug Cohen (14:40)
So the biggest challenge I would say we had was, or at least I had, was the confidence of, is the pitch resonating? Am I saying the right things? Am I targeting the right things? ⁓ with ⁓ one of the reasons I wanted to go through the Money Ball program, and I really look at it as an accelerator and ⁓ a refinement of what we were doing because

Right. When the people that came into that started, ⁓ working with IR Medtek and with our presentation, it wasn't so much changing. was really refining. was, it was fine tuning elements of it and in tweaking our messaging, we had all the components there, but it wasn't necessarily in the right order. wasn't incoherent or it wasn't emphasizing the key elements, which I truly loved. wasn't.

They didn't take our deck and say, basically, you're idiots. We're going to start all over. This is nonsense. This is how you should be talking about it. No, they were just absolutely lovely people that were very, very reinforcing. And, know, we had a great coach with Michael Hill, who was the CTO of Medtronic, of course, Amelia Newberry was phenomenal. She can just looked at the deck and like.

Heath Fletcher (15:39)
All up.

Doug Cohen (16:01)
said you need to do this, this and this and she was spot on. It was just amazing. Absolutely incredible people to work with along the way. it really, by the end result of it, more than a deck refinement, it just gave us, it gave me confidence that the message that we were saying and we were putting out there resonated. It made sense. And that's what works. And that was the biggest element that came out of that for me.

Heath Fletcher (16:31)
So that's great. So you were on the right track. You had, you know, put together the right, more or less the right tools. You just needed some fine tuning and that's what they were able to provide you with.

Doug Cohen (16:40)
Absolutely, absolutely. those tweaks really connect with people in a lot of ways that it was missing. It was just pieces you kind of, know, kind of like the conversation transitions in a lot of way. But it was a way to lead from item to item to item that made a lot more intelligent sense.

Heath Fletcher (17:00)
Can you elaborate a little bit on some of those ⁓ key points that they sort of gave you feedback on that that you adjusted?

Doug Cohen (17:09)
Yeah. So two big elements that they helped with was one, the timeline of the company in terms of where we've gotten to and what it's going to get us to next. And looking at really those key strategic endpoints of what would an investor want to see? And we had all the parts there, but it was X dollars gets you where in what timeline and what is that potential ⁓ gain in terms of value.

and do that a couple of times, and it really shapes out a very nice investment picture. And then the second piece was, we'd always talked about how we compare with other companies. It was looking at, as an exit, comparable companies that have exited like us. How do we look? And really, when you look at that in terms of potential unicorn, we look really cheap.

And it's really attractive for an investor from that perspective.

Heath Fletcher (18:09)
interesting. Right. And just having someone shed light on that or put a magnifying glass on that you kind of just yeah, know a moment there. Hey, we were

Doug Cohen (18:19)
telling

that story, but we're telling it right. And that's what it came down to. And that was the beautiful thing about this, this about interacting with these people. They're like, you're saying it, you're not saying it. Let's put it all together.

Heath Fletcher (18:32)
Wow, great. Now, you admitted to me earlier that public speaking isn't your favorite. So how do you work with that? You know, as CEO, you probably do a lot of that. And, and, you know, was that the aspect of the role that you stepped into that you sort of was released excited about?

Doug Cohen (18:55)
So that's a great question because being a mechanical engineer, I've always been the person to make stuff happen and behind the scenes person. can't figure it out. We'll make it go. We'll fix the problem. We'll make things work. having run a factory for many years, public speaking isn't the strength, but being the CEO of company is very different. You are the face of the company and it

is something that repetition, the more you do it, the more you get comfortable with it, the more that your story becomes in the focus too. And once the story is clear, it also builds confidence because you have a story that is, that you can tell and you can be confident with. And from that perspective, it gets easier because, okay, I know what I'm saying, I know how to do this. Sometimes I get tongue tied or whatever, but ⁓ it's still something that, ⁓

As you do more often, you just get more comfortable with, and I see how people can do this and, and, and get comfortable. don't know that I'll ever be completely comfortable public speaking, but I'm definitely a world better than I was. And it has to do with a lot of elements of the technology, the team. And if I don't do this, who will? You know, when you look at it from that perspective, when we got into this, we said, if we don't.

take this technology out of the lab, it's gonna die on the shelf. And this technology can help a lot of people. It's a platform beyond just skin cancer. If ultimately the technology was developed to do interoperative margin detection, so when a cancer surgeon is cutting a tumor out, did they get all the tumor? And that's the question that we're trying to answer. And this technology can be used to do that in real time in the OR.

So that is step two for us. And if we don't do this, then how many people won't be helped if we don't take this technology to market? So from that perspective, the responsibility element plays into this and it enforces, all right, let's get on with it. Let's do this.

Heath Fletcher (21:12)
Yeah, that would certainly drive conviction for sure. Absolutely. ⁓ Now, ⁓ how would you how would you see the, you know, in comparison with another company whose founder is leading the way, you're not the scientist, you're ⁓ you like I've said, you're an you have an engineering background, you come from a completely other place. Do you think there's any advantage that you

aren't the founders founders tend to be very invested in the science side of things. there an advantage that you have having come from a more objective approach?

Doug Cohen (21:49)
Yeah, so in a lot of ways, I feel that my background is perfectly built for what is needed to do this. One, I'm a mechanical engineer, so I do understand how equipment goes together. I'm a businessman, so I understand the business opportunity and the business path to market. I can want a lot of things, but at end of the day, it's got to make financial sense where it's not going to get adopted. It's not going to be out.

being not the one who created the technology, I can get outside of the technology. I don't dive into the weeds right away with the tech and get focused on that. So in that regards, I can remain very disconnected from the tech. And then the other piece that we really haven't touched on is I'm a bit older in life. I've been around the block, done things. I'm not a young 20-something that's starting a company. In that regards,

I know what I know. I also know what I don't know more importantly. And I'm quite content saying, Hey, I need somebody to help me in this space. We need somebody that is an expert in this space. And we're comfortable saying that's what we need. Let's make them part of our team. As a result, our team is a bit bigger than typical, but we can do that because we can pull the people in. We can make it attractive for them.

And we can do it in a very financially responsible way. And yet we can solve a problem and we can bring somebody of very high caliber to the table, which we've done, make it so this whole thing will work and will succeed. Because at the end of the day, that's the model that I follow is success, not excuses.

Heath Fletcher (23:41)
I like that. That's good one. Success not excuses. Very good. Cool. ⁓ exciting. Well, what's ⁓ give me sort of a final sort of read and and feedback on your your moneyball experience. ⁓ you've now just come through you went to bio after ⁓ doing the moneyball program and now you've gone to JP Morgan week. So give me kind of a before and after comparison and maybe in light of somebody else looking at maybe

you know, joining the Bunnywell program.

Doug Cohen (24:14)
Yeah, I would say that two big things have come out of the Money Ball program. In addition to new connections and the opportunity to meet a lot of new investors. But the two big things is one I touched on previously was the confidence. Having the confidence that what you put together in the presentation, in the deck, and the way you're talking about it makes sense and is clear. And that is a huge, huge plus to be able to sit down with an investor and say,

hey, we've got something here and it's attractive and we're saying the right message. And then two, the second piece of it has really been the people that have met through it, whether it be other founders, ⁓ just like myself, have become very good friends and we connect with each other offline all the time talking about how do you do this? How did you come up how did you solve this problem? Or how did you bring somebody in to do this?

And just whatever the little problem or roadblock is, now I've got this network of people I can connect with to solve something that I didn't have before. And they're all great people and nice people and really trying to do things for the right reasons. And that piece of it can be just as empowering as the first part was. And with that, really think, you know, Money Ball program, I can't rant and rave about it enough.

Heath Fletcher (25:43)
Amazing. thanks. Any last remarks or maybe actually some information if people want to learn more about IR Medtek ⁓ or want to connect with you, where can they find you? How do they? What's the website address?

Doug Cohen (25:56)
Yeah,

so our website is easy. IRMedtek.com. That's IRMedtek.com. ⁓ Send us an email, send us a note, send us a note on LinkedIn. Happy to connect and talk more about our path to market. We're hoping to be on the market in two to three years and ⁓ helping improve results with skin care.

Heath Fletcher (26:23)
I'm excited to see where this goes and I wish you all the best of luck in the months ahead, Doug, and I really appreciate your time today joining me on this episode.

Doug Cohen (26:32)
Well, thank

you for having me. This has been fun.