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Welcome to BIOTECH NATION !!! With understandable interviews requiring no background in science, BTN attracts a wide global audience. From everyday people looking for hope in treatments in development, to bioentrepreneurs interested in the experience of their fellow travelers, to venture capitalists looking for possibilities in cutting-edge breakthroughs, to scientists simply interested in the work of others, BioTech Nation is the voice of human endeavor, driving science to new realities for everyone. These interviews are drawn directly from the public radio program, "Tech Nation", which also can be heard in numerous global radio and podcasting venues.
Today on TechNation, continuous monitoring. When we want it, when we don't, should we share it or not? Or perhaps just part of it. Doctor Kal Patel, the cofounder and CEO of Bright Insight, talks about this brave new frontier, monitoring us when we're healthy and when we are not. And now, doctor Kal Patel.
Dr. Moira Gunn:Doctor Patel, welcome to the program.
Dr. Kal Patel:Thanks for having me today. Super excited.
Dr. Moira Gunn:We often think of treating disease as the effort of developing new drugs to treat them, which is undeniably important. But another aspect, which is relatively new and which may become equally, if not more significant over time, is recognizing that a human suffers a disease all the time, 247. And here's where technology can help and where Bright Insight is working. Can you describe this new frontier of patient treatment and what part Bright Insight is addressing?
Dr. Kal Patel:Sure, Moyra. I'd be happy to do that. Let me maybe break it down to 2 aspects, right, I think you alluded to there. You know, one is this notion of how can technology help us better understand what is going on inside of our bodies all the time. Right?
Dr. Kal Patel:If you think about a typical person, you know, you we might be going to the physician's office once a year for a checkup. You're getting the small snippet of data being collected about you, whether it's biometric data, blood test, you know, etcetera. And even if somebody is you know, has a chronic illness, they're still in and out of the health care setting for a very, very limited amount of a typical year. Now imagine what technology could do. It allow can allow you to start tracking how you're doing potentially, if relevant, 247, 365 days a year.
Dr. Kal Patel:Right? And and so that could be in the form of things like, for example, a glucose monitor, that you would wear, and it's literally on a continuous basis, being able to track what's going on with your blood glucose levels if that's relevant to, you know, condition like diabetes that somebody may have or potentially, not yet indicated, but potentially in the future for preventative reasons as well. So that's kind of the forefront of where a lot of this technology is going is how do you actually start monitoring us when we're actually outside of the health care setting and ideally well before we show signs of any clinical illness and really start learning what's going on so that we can use that data to then make decisions, either lifestyle decisions or clinical, you know, interventions that can keep us healthy. Right? So that's one key area.
Dr. Kal Patel:The other key area, you know, you alluded to is there's so much innovation happening on the drug side and has happened, and we need that to happen. But what I would say is what we as a society are doing is getting only a small fraction of the impact that this innovation could actually yield and should yield. So let's say, we take the example of diabetes. There are fantastic insulins that exist from many different companies and there's incredible high quality product being produced around the world. In patients that have insulin dependent diabetes, very small subset of them are actually taking the right amount of the right insulin at the right time.
Dr. Kal Patel:And it's not their fault. It's incredibly complicated to know what insulin I should take at what time, you know, etcetera. And by the way, even for it's not just a matter of personalization because every person is different, but then it's around what are you doing. So how well did you sleep? How stressed are you?
Dr. Kal Patel:What activity did you just do? What activity do you intend to do? What are you eating? What have you eaten? What do you plan to eat?
Dr. Kal Patel:So this is very complex. So you have this mismatch between this amazing innovation from a drug therapy perspective and the personal human application of that. Right? And that's just kinda one example where, there's a big drop off between, you know, what the ideal should be and what the real world benefit is. And that's where technology is coming in.
Dr. Kal Patel:For example, here in the form of really being able to monitor key biometrics from a patient, understand what they wanna do, and then having an algorithm as an example really be telling the patient how much insulin to take when. Right? So just two examples of both from kind of the data that we can start unlocking that we've never unlocked in the history of humanity, as well as how do you think about all this great drug innovation that's already happened and really fully getting the value of that innovation in, you know, in our everyday lives.
Dr. Moira Gunn:Now let's talk about one of your products, Hizentra. That's h I z e n t r a, Hizentra. You've been developing this with CSL Behring.
Dr. Kal Patel:That's right. We've been partnered with CSL Behring for a number of years now. And our first product that we built together was the Hizentra app for rare disease patients. Just as a little bit of background, you know, the main indication is an illness called primary immunodeficiency or PI, which really actually stands for a multitude of rare disorders that cause immune problems. Patients that have PI have very weakened immune systems and it can be very serious typically.
Dr. Kal Patel:They experience very strange unexplained symptoms their whole life. Many of them actually have very bad recurring infections that really have a big impact on their quality of life and oftentimes can land them in the hospital. Additionally, it can be very disabling. And because it's rare, it has the additional, challenge that you ultimately need to find a specialist to diagnose it and to start treatment. So patients can go many, many years before they get to the right diagnosis, which obviously is needed for the the right treatment.
Dr. Kal Patel:Hysentra is CSL Behring's drug for PI. Hysentra contains what's called immunoglobulins, which is basically something that's extracted from folks who donate their blood. And so you take it from someone's donated blood and you put this into patients who lack this. Right? And so you're essentially doing that transfer and you help, you know, fortify their immune system.
Dr. Kal Patel:So before Hizentra, patients were typically getting infusions at their doctor's offices. So they would have to go weekly, you know, just dependent on on the on their particular condition, specifics. But, you know, imagine somebody who has to go to their physician's office, you know, on average, once a week for the rest of their lives to get get this infusion. What Hizentra does is really amazing. It essentially, enables somebody to now do self administration at home, which, as you can imagine, is so much more convenient than having to go to your health care provider on a weekly basis.
Dr. Kal Patel:It's almost
Dr. Moira Gunn:like insulin. You know, where you're self administering insulin. Although, you have to do that multiple times a day, and you're only doing this once a week. But you don't have to go anywhere for it.
Dr. Kal Patel:Exactly. You don't have to go anywhere for it. Exactly. And the and the other difference between, you know, insulin and Hizentra is that Hizentra is not just a sub q or what's called subcutaneous under your skin injection. It's actually an infusion, which means that it's being slowly administered under the skin over a period of time.
Dr. Kal Patel:Right? And, again, for a typical patient, that could be, you know, plus or minus around an hour. Right? And so patients, in order to successfully do this, they have to learn how to use an infusion pump. They gotta understand how to use the right needle size.
Dr. Kal Patel:They have to select the right infusion site on their body, and importantly, they have to rotate those sites. Otherwise, the therapy won't will start losing its effectiveness and the patient could have pain by using the same site over and over. So there's a lot of complexity, and and patients need to get trained on on how to navigate all of these challenges of of self infusion. Not to mention, right, for many, there could be a a mental challenge as well in terms of, you know, the fear of doing, you know, at home at home therapy like this. And then, of course, we want folks wants folks to be able to live their normal lives, which means, like all of us, you can forget to do important things.
Dr. Kal Patel:And so, you know, you're having the challenge additionally of forgetting to infuse or you infuse, but you're not tracking what you did and where you infused. And so it ultimately becomes a very complex problem to to do self management at home. And so PI patients, what CSL Behring learned was that they typically, you know, will keep even things like paper journals to help them try to remember some of this data so they can do do this type of self management and and tracking at home. The app has educational resources and a self infusion guide. It also allows patients to track the dosage of each infusion, the time of day, the lot number, the expiration, just by scanning the QR code on the vial so they don't have to actually write any of that down or type it into their phone.
Dr. Kal Patel:They can also very easily schedule a reminder for their next infusion, based on, again, their personal dosing regimen. And we also created for them a body map, which is kind of a very intuitive and simple way for them to keep track of where they last infuse and be able to, you know, easily rotate their their infusion sites for, you know, across their body in a way that's just to get much more intuitive to record and and easier to remember. There's also a journal so patients can track their symptoms and be able to share that infusion history with their physician whether when they go into the clinic in person or via via email. And and this information becomes really important, again, to continuously personalize and optimize their dosing for how how their treatment is going. And all this info is securely stored in the cloud.
Dr. Kal Patel:Patient has access to it on their phone. You know, we have seen CSL now, have north of 30% of their US patient population using the app, And they're seeing great results with their patients and great feedback.
Dr. Moira Gunn:Now also with CSL Behring, you're developing a mobile app regarding a rare form of hemophilia. And you're using that in a different way and in a different way considering the arc of hemophilia treatments today.
Dr. Kal Patel:Yeah. We partner with CSL for their Hemgenics therapy, which is a very, you know, groundbreaking and innovative therapy. I'll talk about that in a second. But as you mentioned, that's for a particular rare genetic form of hemophilia. And hemophilia is when your body's not producing, sufficient amounts of the right proteins you need for for blood clotting and and right other components you need for blood clotting.
Dr. Kal Patel:About 15 or so percent of individuals with hemophilia have hemophilia b. And this is, again, not to get too technical, but a particular, you know, clotting factor that is in in sufficiently being, produced, clotting factor 9. Basically, when these patients bleed internally or or externally, they may not produce a sufficiently strong and quickly enough a sufficiently strong blood clot. And so it could actually be fatal at times where they're bleeding. You know, the body just doesn't stop it the way you know, I was taking my son to to the second day of school yesterday, and he, is 6 years old, fell off his bike, scraped himself up, you know, started to bleed.
Dr. Kal Patel:And by the time 3 minutes later we got to his school, all the bleeding had stopped. Right? So he's got you know, that's what you you would expect for for, normally. But here, a patient who would have that same type of issue with hemophilia, they wouldn't be able to typically have have that. Right?
Dr. Kal Patel:And they would need some kind of intervention if they weren't taking therapy. So, you know, hemgenics is the first and only gene treatment for hemophilia b, and it's delivered as an infusion. And it offers significant improvements in bleed protection and really has the potential to reduce or eliminate the need for other prophylaxis, which means, like, preventative treatments, so that patients, you know, don't have a bleeding episode. So as you can imagine, instead of going again through life where you have to do all these preventative treatments and still feel at risk for a potentially high risk event that takes you to the hospital if you have a bleed. Now imagine a therapy you can be infused with and really has the potential to eliminate all of that preventative treatment and and worry.
Dr. Kal Patel:And so the quality of life impact here, opportunity is just tremendous for these patients. And this is, you know, an example of the of the power of, of gene therapy and and the game changing kinds of treatments that are coming from gene therapy. But the hurdles for the patients can also be significant to get on therapy. Right? As you can imagine, these are innovative therapies.
Dr. Kal Patel:Some patients may just be hesitant to switch from a very cumbersome, but a treatment plan that they know and to get comfortable with this kind of innovative therapy, and this kind of concept. You know, there's also, you know, a cost hurdle, for this, and insurance companies and insurance coverage is really paramount to to getting this kind of, you know, financial support to to pay for an innovative therapy like this. So Bright Insight, again, we've partnered with CSL Behring here to roll out a comprehensive mobile companion app, and it's called the b support app to support the patient in their journey. It's really designed to address the needs of the patients who get treated, treat treatment with Hemgenics where they may all the way through those that may be even just considering taking it, and are on other drugs, for example, for hemophilia b. The patients start using the app typically before the gene therapy, and they can again access educational materials that help them figure out if Hemgenx is right for them, and it helps them prepare for the therapy itself.
Dr. Kal Patel:You know, through that, they can also manage some of the things they need for prior authorization, which again comes back to getting that insurance coverage. And the app also walks patients through the process of how do you switch from, again, this lifelong treatment they've had of factor 9 replacement therapy to this now hopefully onetime gene therapy. So, again, massive amount of opportunity, but very important transition, really life changing transition for a patient. Right? And it really helps them go from that preventative therapy to hopefully now being one where this this, you know, one time infusion, lets them get off that replacement therapy, and, and lets them track their bleeds over time and hopefully see that their bleeds have gone substantially reduced or eliminated.
Dr. Moira Gunn:Well, you've got a lot going on at Bright In Sight, but I do wanna talk about one that is far more common and that is, in the aging population, macular degeneration. And, you're talking about a companion diagnostic before and after treatment. You're using technology in a very different way in this patient journey.
Dr. Kal Patel:Yeah. That's a great example. So this is with a different company. And what we're doing with them is, as you said, macular degeneration, and that, you know, that is is your, you know, simple way to describe that is, your your eyes are are getting worse. And, typically, it's for as patients age or they have other, you know, comorbid diseases like, you know, cardiovascular disease, and and that results in a an impact where your eyes are worsening and you're losing your vision over time.
Dr. Kal Patel:And we partnered with a major biopharma company to build the first ever remote vision monitoring software as a medical device. So I said a lot in there. But it gets at what you just said, which is how do you have something that's in your phone that helps you measure and track how your vision is. And with that, it gets you out of the need to, again, go as regularly to your ophthalmologist and get kinda the everything's okay sign and instead do that monitoring for vision deterioration at home so that only those patients that are, again, clinically in a validated way at home showing the signs of of, of worsening, vision, they're the ones then are asked by their ophthalmologist to come in for further assessment and, you know, additional treatment or retreatment. Because currently, these patients, they may get their eyes tested once a year.
Dr. Kal Patel:Right? But vision can change much much faster than that. And and what you don't wanna do is have somebody whose vision started worsening 6 or 8 months ago be at home and not be, you know, in a more timely fashion assessed by their doctor and then have a change in therapy if appropriate. So the way this works is patients will download the app on their smartphone and receive directions, for doing home testing, you know, typically, you know, every week or so. And patients can again send their own reminders, set their own reminders for when they prefer to do the test.
Dr. Kal Patel:And once the test is done and it only takes a couple of minutes, it's sent instantly sent sent to the health care provider. And, again, they will get an alert if a patient's readout, if their results are out of the standard range. And then the physician and their dashboard can see this and then, be able to say, okay. Determine what action they wanna take. Right?
Dr. Kal Patel:Which could be, you know, wait and monitor. It could be come in. Let me assess you. You know? And then off of that, obviously, make adjustments around, prescribing chain you know, medicines or other interventions as appropriate.
Dr. Moira Gunn:And if they prescribe a medicine, they should be able to tell if the medicine's working or not.
Dr. Kal Patel:Exactly. And this is why this is tied with, you know, pharmaceutical company and one of their drug therapies. Because what you wanna do is not just treat the patient, but you wanna know is the patient how is the patient doing after they're treated. Right? And, again, if you think about any of our experiences with different therapies, you have something going on, Physician prescribes you therapy.
Dr. Kal Patel:They typically don't know how you're doing until you go back in 6 months later, a year later, or maybe you get a lab test, you know, after a certain period of time. Otherwise, they don't really know how well is that cholesterol medicine working or their hypertension medicine working or their diabetes medicine working. Right? But with the kinds of innovations that we're working on now and with this macular degeneration example, now you can see, you know, as appropriate in a weekly or, you know, once a month, etcetera, basis, is that therapy working? And if it's not, it's so important to intervene in a timely fashion so you don't have, you know, what could potentially be irreversible, you know, vision damage.
Dr. Kal Patel:Right? Or at least have to intervene and try to, you know, recoup some of that vision loss back.
Dr. Moira Gunn:Well, let me ask you some specific questions, and it's all about privacy. And it's at a number of levels. First of all, do these apps automatically send your data to the medical team?
Dr. Kal Patel:So, you know, fundamentally, from a privacy perspective, you know, our our belief is that the owner of the data is that patient. Right, and the company that's providing them that therapy. So it doesn't automatically go to anybody. You know, the patient's really owning and controlling that data, and they're determining, you know, who should be able to see this.
Dr. Moira Gunn:And so now let me jump to the big picture. This is a large privacy issue because now you're in a number of countries. You're in 64 countries, as a matter of fact. And every country has a different privacy law when it comes to medical data or any data for that matter. Not to mention people travel from, say, the United States to Europe on vacation and they're taking their medical device with them and or from one country to another.
Dr. Moira Gunn:Is this a solvable problem? How do you do this?
Dr. Kal Patel:Yeah. Yeah. It's a great question, Moyer. I mean, this is you're now getting at the heart of why Bright Inside exists. Right?
Dr. Kal Patel:Fundamentally, you know, you could say, oh, you guys are building apps. Lots of people or companies out there build apps. But what we the approach we took is we started day 1 by saying, let's understand and build all of our infrastructure and processes against the stringent requirements of not just data privacy, but also data security and all the regulatory and quality requirements. So that's where, like, in the US, for example, the the FDA, the Federal Drug Administration comes in that that governs how, you know, medical drugs and medical devices are are are used. So we built our entire platform and product at Bright Insight under those stringent requirements that, as you mentioned, cover 64 countries and all the variations and intricacies in those countries.
Dr. Kal Patel:And I will say continuing to evolve rules and regulations in these countries. Right? So so the fact that our infrastructure and our product, you know, meets those requirements and continues to monitor and meet those requirements is really a big part of how we can, support our pharmaceutical and medical device companies to build these types of innovations while having the ability to ensure strict compliance and to give their patients, their physicians, the caregivers the peace of mind that their data indeed is is protected and appropriately managed to the requirements of that country.
Dr. Moira Gunn:You are listening to Tech Nation. I've been speaking with doctor Kal Patel, the cofounder and CEO of Bright Insight. What about the fact that everyone doesn't speak English? How do you address that?
Dr. Kal Patel:That's a great question as well. So, this is a nice little vignette about the evolution of our own company and technology. If you ask me that question a couple years ago, I would have said, hey. Look. Let's take the Hizentra app as an example.
Dr. Kal Patel:We can build this for you in, let's say, you know, Japanese. And then what we would do is we would go and rebuild the app in Japanese, and it would take us a certain amount time and a certain amount of money and and all of that to go do that. But we've been, investing in our own technology, and what we can now do is literally change language, in a matter of minutes. So when we you know, we believe is all the things that we build, you know, are built in a way that gives our customers that flexibility to say, you know, we wanna launch across these 64 countries and wanna be able to, you know, obviously localize the language to those countries, and that's not just about changing the language. As you can imagine, some languages you read right to left, others you leave left to right.
Dr. Kal Patel:So that's really, you know, the $100,000,000 plus that we've put into our technology that gets now, you know, really utilized. And and so what does that mean for a patient? Well, that means if we find our customers find an innovation that's really meaningful in one country, it doesn't have to wait years years, and cost, you know, a a ton of money to bring that innovation to other countries. Right? And and we can do that in a very simple, very efficient, and, of course, fully compliant manner to do that translation into different countries.
Dr. Kal Patel:Or even within a country, you can have, obviously, in a place like the United States where, you know, there's many native languages spoken. If somebody wanted to make, you know, their app available in different languages and give patients the option to choose which language they wanna, you know, are comfortable, using the app and we can we can enable that.
Dr. Moira Gunn:Now, I also mentioned, the going from one country to another. I have a friend who went to India for a month this summer and then she went and, she was in Paris for a month and then she is back here ready to start teaching school again. And, if she had a device, we were talking about 3 different countries' rules starting here, going to India, going to France, and coming back here. How do you work that out?
Dr. Kal Patel:Yeah. So, great question, and I'm, jealous of your friends' travels.
Dr. Moira Gunn:Aren't we all?
Dr. Kal Patel:Aren't we all? Yeah. Though I will say I got to go to India over the last, New Year holidays, and I was in in, France earlier this summer. So I just my my travel is a bit more spread out than hers, but, and probably a bit more work than hers. But, so great question.
Dr. Kal Patel:So, again, this comes back to understanding local data privacy requirements. So countries have requirements around, of course, what kind of data you can collect and how you have to keep it secure, but also where you store that. Right? So for example, in the case of Europe, they have very strict requirements on the data centers, you know, and, quote, unquote, the cloud, if you will, like, you know, the in physical places where this data is going and being securely stored. So, again, as part of working with Bright Insight, we automatically understand the requirements in all of these countries and store the data appropriate to those requirements.
Dr. Kal Patel:And then for the data to follow you, obviously, as an individual patient, you don't wanna come back and say, oh, where did my data from India go or or or France go? Right? And so that gets to the next layer of of, nuances on how you authorize for that. And and it actually gets sometimes even to things like, well, what country are you a citizen of or a resident of? Right?
Dr. Kal Patel:Will determine, how that data needs to be treated. So it's not just whether you're in a country, but are you a resident of that country, or are you a visitor of that country? Which is why we have an amazing chief privacy officer, and, you know, she spends you know, her full time job is, is to be on top of all these, rules and regulations and and variations of how, you know, data, you know, is created and who it belongs to and and what you need to move it around. But our goal is how do you deliver a great experience in a very compliant and secure, way for the end user? And then we kind of, right, take on the burden of understanding all that in the back end, if you will, and then ensuring our technology can do that so that it doesn't have to be a one off question every time.
Dr. Kal Patel:Right? So but, yeah, that's the modern world we live in.
Dr. Moira Gunn:So in her case, wherever she goes, eventually, her data will all catch up with her and it'll seem very simple. Yeah. But it's not. But it's not.
Dr. Kal Patel:Exactly. A lot of compliance that happened behind the scenes for that to be done.
Dr. Moira Gunn:Now I do want to ask you something. You touched out a little bit with Hiscentra. But frequently, you know, people buy technical equipment from a stationary bike and a treadmill up to just about any kind of technology and they use it for 3 weeks, a month, 6 weeks maximum and then then it's in a drawer or it's just sitting there doing nothing.
Dr. Kal Patel:Yeah.
Dr. Moira Gunn:Do we know anything about how long people use these applications?
Dr. Kal Patel:Yeah. It's a that's a great question. And, you know, your your broader point is so important, right, which is any technology or breakthrough innovation is only as useful as it being appropriately used. Right? And that came back to, you know, one of the questions you asked me at the beginning, which is we have these all these great drug innovations, but are they getting appropriately used, you know, all the time?
Dr. Kal Patel:Right? And the reality is is they're not. And that's where I think digital and the kinds of solutions we're building with our customers can have a massive impact at closing that gap. Just to to, you know, build on your point around, Hycentra with CSL bearing, you know, the data latest data I've seen there is, as I mentioned, 30 plus percent of their US patient populations adopt to the app. You know, now it's available.
Dr. Kal Patel:I know I alluded to Japan, but it actually is available on Japan and and Latin America and Canada, I believe, and and other countries. But the US data where it's been, available the longest is actually quite compelling. You know, basically, if that patient found initial value, right, that they they were using the app, in those first couple months, 89% of them continue to use that at the 1 year mark. Right? And so
Dr. Moira Gunn:That's that's unprecedented.
Dr. Kal Patel:Yeah. Yeah. It really
Dr. Moira Gunn:is. Absolutely.
Dr. Kal Patel:That really is. And I think it just speaks to the fact that, all of our lives, you know, in some ways, you can say not always for the best, but all of our you know, almost every aspect of our lives have digitized in a big way. Right? And we all seek out that digitization to ideally, again, bring some kind of convenience or comfort or connection, you know, when when done well. And in my humble opinion, I think, you know, health care, education, and government has largely missed out on fully taking, you know, advantage of of the amazing technology innovation that's happened over the many decades, you know, certainly the last several decades, especially as we think about, cloud, as we think about mobile apps and so forth.
Dr. Kal Patel:Right? And and that's kind of the future that, you know, we're excited about is how do you really leverage this technology in a way where we leverage it in so many other aspects of our lives, like our financial lives as an example or how we communicate with folks, you know, with with, at work or with friends, loved ones, etcetera. Such a low hanging opportunity here. Again, complex to serve is just your one example in privacy showed. But I think we owe it to, you know, ourselves and each other as as, you know, citizens and as patients to really, embrace this and and and and, you know, help bring that personalization and and better clinical and, you know, impact all of us and and those we care about.
Dr. Moira Gunn:And if this was 20 years ago, the idea that we would always have some piece of technology that we would have with us all the time. And here today, it's like, do you mean I have to spend a day without my smartphone or that I wouldn't have it a year from now? It's like, if you've ever misplaced your your your phone, you're like, what am I gonna do? What am I gonna do? So our as a population, we've totally changed.
Dr. Moira Gunn:So this this actually the idea that that might help us with our health, that's that's, very fortuitous. Now let me just ask you. Where are where are you going in the future? What challenges are next for you?
Dr. Kal Patel:Yeah. So is is I think you can appreciate the kind of work we're doing is fairly innovative. This is not, you know, mainstream yet. And so for us, it's all about, you know, taking the kinds of examples I shared today and others and bringing them to market, showing really that clinical impact and broader business impact, you know, research impact, etcetera, through these types of technologies because then that'll really form the evidence base for, you know, pharmaceutical companies, medical device device companies to invest more and and adopt innovate more in this space, adopt more here. And, of course, you know, for this data to come back to, the health care providers, health care systems, and ultimately, right, all of us as as consumers and patients to say, oh, wow.
Dr. Kal Patel:You know, this can really help all of us. Right? And so the ultimate goal is we wanna be part of part of the future where we're trying to improve clinical impacts while improving experience, bringing down costs overall in the health care system. And so so that's, you know, the kind of the next, step is just executing against that executing against that vision as we, you know, again, broaden the reach and impact of of what we can do with this innovation with with more and more illnesses, more and more therapies, you know, with more and more, pharmaceutical and medical device partners.
Dr. Moira Gunn:Now you're an MD. You've treated many patients. The question I have for you is when you went to medical school, this wasn't really part of the the vision. How does the existence of just these kinds of applications, how does that change your perspective as a physician?
Dr. Kal Patel:Yeah. It's a great question. So, you know, when I was in medical school, you know, and I very distinctly remember this, like, in the in in our computers, right, in the electronic medical records, what we had was basic lab data, and we could start seeing basic x rays like a chest x-ray. But any imaging beyond that, you had to go down into the basement and get, hopefully, a nice resident to take time and show you what a CT scan or MRI or anything else showed. Right?
Dr. Kal Patel:Now all that data is seamlessly available in the electronic medical record itself. Right? And that's, so if you think about the kind of data we're unlocking here, this kind of data has never existed before. Right? So, again, if you're using a, let's say, an implanted neuromodulator or you're wearing a continuous glucose monitor, that data was never being collected before.
Dr. Kal Patel:And now when that's collected, the first question is, okay. How do you turn that into insight? Right? And then because nobody needs continuous streaming of your glucose data every minute. No.
Dr. Kal Patel:You don't need to see it every minute. Your doctors need to see it every minute. What they need is the insight. So that's step 1 is as a MD, what I would say is how do you put that back into the physician and patient's, quote, unquote, workflow at the right time. And so that is a complicated question.
Dr. Kal Patel:The simple way I would answer that is it depends. So as an example, sometimes that data does need to go right back into the electronic medical record and sit side by side with all the other data that your physician has, you know, that they're looking at when you go visit them. Sometimes, the data actually is best served to just stay on your phone. And when you're with the doctor, you hand them you hand them the app, your phone, and they see the app. And and there, there can be a physician tab that gives them the data they need right there because they really don't need to see it in between visits.
Dr. Kal Patel:They just need to see it to help augment and enhance the conversation they're having with you or the examination they're doing with you. And that data can help them ask the right question or contextualize one of your answers. Right? And and so then you don't need to necessarily do all the hard work of figuring out how to get it it back into the medical record. You are the best conduit of that data at the right time with your physician.
Dr. Kal Patel:Frankly, you might actually get more of their attention on that data that way than it just kinda sitting in the medical record. Right? So this absolutely is the kind of innovation that can't be done without really understanding who are all the users of the data and the insight and really thinking through what are their lives like and what how do their jobs or their lives work. And then how do you embed the right I would I would say not even data, but the right insight at the right time and the right place so that it really enhances, the discussion and ultimately the decision making process and the and gets that patient physician together to the right decision.
Dr. Moira Gunn:Well, doctor Patel, thank you so much for joining me. I hope you'll come back, see us again.
Dr. Kal Patel:I would love to do that, Martin. I really enjoy the conversation. Thanks for having me on.
Dr. Moira Gunn:Doctor Kal Patel is the cofounder and CEO of Bright Insight. More information is available at brightinsight.com.