The Redox Podcast

Nikita Singareddy and Nikhil Krishnan joined me on the show this week. You don’t often hear their last names as these two have rapidly earned their way into the ranks of first-name status in our industry. I wanted to have both of them on the show together as they have incredible rapport and both bring an absolutely refreshing and unique perspective on the industry, as younger analysts having graduated college in ‘16 and ’14.

Nikita (@singareddynm) is the creator of the Waiting Room blog. Her recent coverage of the new interoperability regulations is one of the best out there. In her day job, she’s an investor at RRE Ventures. She cut her teeth in healthcare working at Oscar Health.

Nikhil (@nikillinit) is the creator of the Out-Of-Pocket blog. He brings a satirical slant to his coverage of more esoteric slices of our industry, employing memes throughout to shine a light on the ridiculousness of the various arrangements he uncovers.

The conversation jumps around a bit and they end up making my job really easy, interviewing each other on how they met, industry trends, how they got into the space, and tips for young people trying to do the same. Here are some highlights:

2:51 - Nikhil’s background avoiding healthcare, then ending up here

5:04 - Tips for people breaking into healthcare

6:56 - What will change as Millennials and GenZ emerge

11:18 - Creating a safe environment for creative courage

13:34 - Here’s the Venture Stories podcast Nikita mentions

17:13 - Nikita’s journey from Oscar to RRE

19:28 - Current industry trends driving Nikhil’s and Nikita’s investments

28:33 - How consumers are poised to upend existing business models

35:15 - Nikita’s thoughts on her next job

37:46 - Nikhil’s vision for Out-Of-Pocket

Hope you enjoyed the conversation. As always, send any feedback, suggestions, ideas to [email protected].

It’s an honor to have Bronwyn Spira, CEO of Force Therapeutics, on the show today. Force is a leading episode-based digital care platform and is also one of Redox’s first customers from back in 2015. We were able to catch up on what they’re seeing in the marketplace including how the pandemic has affected the world of episodic care that they primarily operate within.

Key Moments:

02:00 - Force’s customers (NYU, Geisinger, Muve Health, Northwell, etc.) and what they do for them

09:25 - The importance of a clinical team

10:32 - Being in NYC for the pandemic and a Redox pizza party

14:02 - A VIRTUAL Escape Room?! (link here, thanks Rachel!)

15:29 - Standing up telehealth in one week

20:42 - Telehealth as a commoditized feature

22:03 - How do you digitize something so physical?

27:58 - Utilizing data for clinical research

34:43 - Collaborating with academics and AI for customized care plans

37:21 - A Redox commercial from Bronwyn ;)

I think they’re a great example of how to build a multi-sided platform in healthcare. They were able to take advantage of regulatory tailwinds with the move to bundles to find early footing, then listen to their customers and patients to drive more value and engagement, then leveraged their data asset to contribute to research and improve their product experience by creating customized data-driven care plans. I’ve heard many many entrepreneurs pitch these sorts of stories but it’s far more rare—especially in healthcare—to see them fulfilled. Thanks again Bronwyn, for being on the show, for being a customer, and for the work you do to improve patient outcomes every day.

-Niko Skievaski

We're in the midst of a worldwide pandemic that will strain our healthcare delivery system beyond anything we've seen before. Those of us who work in healthcare technology have reprioritized to attempt to bring something novel--something of use--to the new challenges faced by health systems. This is a special episode of the podcast including guests from 10 digital health vendors who have created a COVID-19 specific solution. From the time a patient thinks they have symptoms, to getting on a waiting list, to triaging in an overcrowded and socially-distant emergency department, to care within the hospital and beyond, digital health solutions have stepped up to fight this pandemic.

1:15 - Social distancing and the excess demand problem

3:26 - Hypothesis: technology can be used to increase caregiver efficiency and effectiveness

6:02 - Vital and c19check.com screening tool

9:00 - Epion's remote check-in and triage solution

11:13 - Gauss and Operation Apollo for contactless triage

14:35 - ER Express's virtual waiting room

16:14 - Bravado and the forgotten patient population

18:09 - Redivus reducing errors in cardiac arrest

22:00 - EmOpti's streamlined telehealth triage

26:19 - CareLoop in reducing PPE and better communication

32:22 - Logical C19 Tracker for remote patient monitoring

35:02 - MedBridge's COVID-19 patient and provider education tool kit

We adopted these tracks from our 3/25 virtual conference: Innovate COVID. Check out our COVID-19 resource center for more solutions and videos from the conference.

We’re thrilled to announce Shift+6, a developer-focused, health-tech podcast from Redox. Here we'll explore the ways amazing technologists are bringing new innovation to market, growing their teams, and dealing with an ever-changing landscape in one of the world's most complex industries.

We believe that technology from diverse and empathetic creators holds the power to improve the lives of patients across the globe. And we hope this podcast helps make your work in healthcare even more impactful.

Our first guest is Ryan Scharer, the CTO of a new (and maybe in stealth mode?) telehealth startup called Folx. You might be wondering, “Does the world really need another telehealth offering?” Short answer: yes, this world does. Folx is aimed at LGBTQ+ communities with representative care providers, “Telehealth that’s pretty queer” as their website states. Check out their purpose statement here, it’s moving.

Ryan’s building on a long history of success in the digital health space, having played this early-stage engineering lead role at Humedica (acquired by Optum) and PatientPing. We dive into those early decisions and tradeoffs we make in building product and eventually taking it to scale. Here are some highlights:

• 2:00 - Ryan pitches Folx
  
• 4:33 - unique features, based on this demographic
  
• 6:07 - contrasting more established digital health with early-stage startups
  
• 8:53 - new technologies Ryan’s excited about
  
• 13:10 - balancing moving fast, or building things for scale
  
• 17:33 - the benefits of experience in getting started
  
• 20:34 - choosing an EHR
  
• 29:45 - resources for getting started in health tech
  

Ryan mentioned to reach out to him on LinkedIn if you have questions or want to start a conversation.

Thanks for tuning into our first episode of Shift+6. We’ll be launching our own podcast show soon so look out for that and be sure to subscribe. And let me know if you have ideas or feedback for the show. We’re excited to bring this to the healthcare developer community.

Today’s guest is Danielle Ciofani. A data architect turned strategist, she leads the Broad Institute’s Data Sciences Platform team maximizing the impact of data science on the biomedical ecosystem. She also cares deeply about the startup community and serves as a mentor to early-stage companies at the intersection of healthcare and data.

Prior to these roles, Danielle designed, built, and grew the largest integrated real-world database of clinical and claims data at Humdecia which was eventually acquired by Optum.

I really enjoyed this conversation. I learned about how the Broad Institute (pronounced “brode”) enables genomic research (1:11) and how they manage that much data via a hybrid cloud strategy (11:20). I found their reasoning behind their decision to utilize GCP (13:58) fascinating. They’re at a point where building a federated multi-cloud architecture (17:18) spanning AWS and Azure is starting to make sense. We discussed infrastructure considerations for international expansion (22:23) and how personalized medicine can combat institutional biases (24:33) to create more equitable healthcare delivery.

Danielle shares her take on the state of our healthcare system as it shifts under the weight of the pandemic (28:56) and why diversity in building teams (31:51) is so important. We get into what it means to build open-source software (34:08). Finally, Danielle shares resources to dive into for folks getting into the space (39:52).

If you’re interested in reaching out to her, find her on linkedin or her website.

Danielle, thank you so much for spending your time with us on the show!