Choosing Turn-Key Biomarkers and Data to Treat Patients Better with Sathya Elumalai, CEO & Co-founder at Multisensor Diagnostics

Hey Outcomes Rocket friends, thanks for tuning in to the podcast once again. As a leader in health care, you have big ideas great products, a story to tell, and are looking for ways to improve your reach and scale your business. However there’s one tiny problem. Health care is tough to navigate and the typical sales cycle is low. That’s why you should consider starting your own podcast as part of your sales and marketing strategy. At the Outcomes Rocket, I’ve been able to reach thousands of people every single month that I wouldn’t have otherwise been able to reach if I had not started my podcast. Having this organic reach enables me to get the feedback necessary to create a podcast that delivers value that you are looking for. And the same thing goes if you start a podcast for what you could learn from your customers. The best thing about podcasting in healthcare is that we are currently at the ground level, meaning that the number of people in healthcare listening to podcasts is small but growing rapidly. I put together a free checklist for you to check out the steps on what it takes to create your own podcast. You could find that at outcomesrocket.health/podcast. Check it out today and find a new way to leverage the sales, marketing and outcomes of your business. That’s outcomesrocket.health/podcast.

: Welcome back once again to the outcomes rocket podcast where we chat with today’s most successful and inspiring health leaders. Today I have a very special guest for you. His name is Sathya Elumalai. He’s the CEO and co-founder at Multicenter diagnostics. Mr. Elamalai is an MBA and M.S. co-founder at the CEO for multisensory diagnostics. As I told you he’s got over 14 years of experience leading product development, program management, performance improvement and new business development at MDX which is a company that he’s currently leading. He’s responsible for the overall product and technology development initiatives, investor relationships and has established a successful business partnership with key telehealth providers and health plans. Before joining MDX, Mr. Elumalai served as head of business development at the healthcare data analytics firm responsible for managing a one hundred forty eight million dollar predictive analytics product and implementing improvements for health insurance plans. As you could see he’s very dialed into the data aspect of healthcare which is an area that we need to start paying more attention to as we turn the corner on value based care and start making decisions to impact organizations and even our employees. So it’s with that that I extend a very warm welcome to Sathya. welcome to the podcast my friend.

: Good afternoon. How are you.

: Hey doing really well. Glad we could finally connect.

: Thank you. And first of all I really thank you for this great opportunity and I think that’s a great overview and I’m really looking forward to tell you more about what other things that I’ve done.

: Yeah. Looking forward to learning so. Is there anything that I miss Satya in that introduction that maybe you want to share with the listeners.

: Yeah definitely my background has been doing a lot of different things. I started off being a biomedical engineer. Like building solutions to help human lives and then I have three Masters. Everything in health care. But more importantly I spent over ten years at Johns Hopkins which is really the foundation of my health care journey. And I work closely with the providers patients and caregivers to really help them with the patients safety, satisfaction, quality improve. And I also work with several startup companies commercializing new technologies. But overall we have been or been primarily focused on bringing in cutting edge next generation technologies into healthcare and simplifying health care for patient that need.

: Sathya, at the bottom line I mean that’s a very noble focus that a lot of the listeners are also focused on you know improving outcomes making the entire process better. What do you think should be at the center of our listeners minds on their agenda today and what’s that hot topic. What do you think there needs to be?

: I think oftentimes everybody’s talking about today least talking about AI and machine learning predictive analytics and all those different things but most importantly I think patient-centered care and personalized care is much more that is needed at this point of time and that’s something which have been integral to my success or my journey in healthcare. And I think that’s where we need to focus on having patients in the design and development of their own healthcare.

: So walk us through that. What does that look like and maybe an example of how you guys are doing that at your current firm?

: Exactly. So multisensory diagnostics we are chronic disease management company or you can call a digital health company with a device at the center where a lot of people are delivering care today using a more patient monitoring either like an home visit or through technologies mostly like individual devices or a group of devices that are specific to patients and their health care or help needs and everybody is taking them more individual disease specific efforts or using individual parameters to really identify what’s happening with the patients. For example heart failure the standard of care is still a scale that people are using to measure the patients outcome or identifying deterioration patient’s condition. But there are more to the disease. It’s a complex disease which involves both cardiovascular and pulmonary issues. So that’s where what we’re doing is Multisensor is we have developed a non-invasive rapid medical assessment device called Multilab that can measure more than ten vital health parameters in 30 seconds non invasively so that all patients have to do is simply pick up our handheld device put it in their mouth and breathe through normally for 30 seconds and they put it back and they are done for the day. So this is a technology that is integrated into the life flow of the user without them having to deal with complex devices or apps or even a tablet because for example I always use my mom as a center because the reason for me to start Multisensor or to be into doing what I’m doing today is because of my mom and her multiple chronic conditions. So can I do something to help communicate what’s happening with her health with her physician. So that’s what brought us to build this device of love to tell you more about it.

: That’s fascinating. And listeners if you go to multisensordiagnostics.com. Right there on the landing page you’ll see that device. It’s a very elegant very small device used to capture all this data that Sathya just walked us through. It’s super interesting Saadia you know. You’re right. We’re dealing with the main standard I guess the gold standard is weight using the scale. But there’s a lot more. So tell us a little bit more about this device and how exactly you’re gathering this data?

: So basically what we wanted to do is to find one area or one region in the body where we can collect a lot of health information. So that’s when my co-founder Dr. Gene Friedman. He’s a professor at Johns Hopkins and me we working on finding a location and then he really is a mouth is a rich source of a lot of biomolecules or biomarkers or associated with health because it has access to breath and saliva which in turn gives access to many biological indicators of health. So we started there and we didn’t want to just use or directly go into the bichemical analysis piece but what else can we do with we have the lips you’re holding the device with your hands. So you are you have access to a lot of information from your hand. So we are collecting all these different physiological parameters from your breath, saliva, mucous membranes, blood vessels and the mucous membrane and also from your hand. So today we are measuring temperature, blood pressure, ECG, oxygen saturation, pulse rate, respiratory rate, respiratory pattern or breathing pattern Hatari variability hydration and parametric lung functions. These are all integral to managing a chronic condition like anything from COPD, heart failure to even certain forms of cancers where these are key parameters that a lot of people would love to have it but because they need to go to five or six different devices to get all these things. So no they are not doing it today we are presenting one device that is as simple to use as a electric toothbrush. Somebody told me or your devices idiot proof. I think that’s kind of true because we want everyone from 9 to 90 plus to use it without any training or assistance or having accessories or a tablet to kind of play a Bluetooth. And most of the every data that we collecting from the device is sent via 4G using our universal IoT technology. So you don’t even have to have a tablet if you don’t have one. It’s much easier you can use this device in any part of the world at any time. So we’re actually it’s like a check engine light for humans.

: Love it. Great analogies here Sathya. So you guys have this fascinating pathway for health care organizations, providers, payers you name it decisions even you know local physicians to gather data from patients. Tell us a little bit about some of the results that you’ve had.

: So at this point basically we rebuilt the first version of our device and we are ready to start a large scale pilot study at Hopkins. Our studies that we did before was with our first version of our device. In fact this device has been under development for almost 10 years because it has got so many information from that. I mean even just the other form factor was went through a lot of changes because it needs to be specific and it needs to be catered towards entire demographic. So today the data that we collected from our first version was really helpful in terms of understanding what the design and also what other things can be added to our device. And we also published a paper from that study at Hopkins. It’s a randomized human study with more than 50 patients. It’s called Mahd lab a tricorder concept optimized for rapid medical assessment so that tells you more about what we wanted to do and then the data is really accurate to the gold standard devices. Now we are moving in two words finalizing our technology device and taking it to the FDA.

: Fascinating and Sathya appreciate you walking us through that as the listeners take this in and part of the thing that we do here on the outcomes rocket is you know we connect. We bring people together so as as folks are listening who out there can help you? How can you help them? What kind of collaboration going happen right now?

: So one thing with our device it’s it’s a blessing as well as a challenge is it can apply to a wide variety of settings and a lot of different stakeholders are very interested in using this device because we are talking to these eight top health systems right now and you’re working with seven of the top 10 pharma companies. The challenges not going to the peers yet they are the ones who are going to get most value out of our device and technology. So we’d love to connect with peers and also more importantly looking for working with advocacy groups. Right now we have great support from the COPD Foundation, as well as the American Heart Association. But what we’re looking for is it’s a device and technology not just for the patients but for the caregivers. So we would love to hear from caregivers and also from our perspective as I said it has a wide application and it’s also a challenge. So we would love to connect with like minded people who wanted to really use our device to make an impact in whatever efforts they’re doing in healthcare because we don’t see anyone as a competitor. But we would love to work with even our competitors if it’s going to help them to reach our customers or consumers early.

: That’s outstanding. So listeners they have it. If you fall into the category of those folks that Saati is looking for: a caregiver, payer, folks interested in the spot check devices – please reach out. At the end of the podcast Sathya will give you the best way to get in touch with him as well as check out his episode through the outcomes rocket website. There’s always a way for you to get in touch with guests and in particular on this round, Shathya. So Sathya you guys are making some big progress here. Can you share a moment when you guys had a major setback and what did you learn from that setback?

: Yeah certainly I think as being an entrepreneur there’s more setbacks than successes. So basically I think the one incident where or in terms of even our device we developed it because we wanted a device that fits into my system or into my cofounder and how likely it is and how we enjoy using it or what is the impact that is creating. But we kind of forgot that the end user the consumer and the patients whether they can use it and can it be applied to a range of population who can use it and not just one set of people. So when we design we basically put in our mouth piece in such a way that we liked it and then the mobile interface was connected via Bluetooth where we felt like the bluetooth as a standard like everybody is using it. And let’s put that in and then we expected that like somebody was a 70 plus I don’t like my grandma still uses an iPhone so she could be able to use it. So.

: Yeah.

: That’s what we thought about that. And then we put we started with all these basic things but what we learned from that process and with all 100 patient user feedback study and human factor engineering study that we did. We realized that we’re going to lose patients after a few days or weeks if it’s going to be complicated and if it’s going to be uncomfortable. So we should of had patients before we actually designed it. But oftentimes that’s not always possible. So that’s where what we decided to have is let’s have patients and caregivers throughout the care and then the product development journey. So today in addition to business and clinical advisory board we also have a patient and caregiver Advisory Board which is unheard of. So we have people who are patients caregivers and also like providers sitting there and telling us what we really need to do and how we need to design a solution that can improve adherence. Today as I told you it’s simpler than brushing your teeth. And that’s where what we have done is to pair one habit that another habit by providing this device right next to your brush. You get a you brush your teeth and then then you go pick up this device read into it for 30 seconds put it back and you’re done. So you don’t have to do anything more than that. And this change of putting in an IoT technology for 4G communication significantly improved the patient adherence because now patients don’t have to bring in their smartphone or tablet to connect via Bluetooth.

: There’s no setup.

: No there’s no set up. All you have to do is they plug in a charger and then put it in an even a single charge can take up to 20 days of you can just use it for almost 20 days without a charge. So you can travel with it so it’s easier. So anything that one additional step that is needed to use your product, people are going to use it. So that’s what is a key lesson that we learned is to design something and have the users all as part of your decision making process.

: Such a great lesson, Sathya. I feel like a lot of entrepreneurs fall into this trap of designing their dream product without having that feedback loop of their end user. I love that you institutionalize this lesson to your firm and now you have a Caregiver Advisory Board which is awesome man. Congrats on making that an institutional priority for you guys.

: No certainly I would love to have every other company you have at least one or two person with a caregiver or a patient to be continuously part of even a weekly call. Just listen to it. There are people there who wanted to make a difference. And I was still part of the Corie patient centered outcomes research institute that has hundreds of thousands of patients and users and caregivers interested in helping in all these different initiatives bring them in have them part of your product development. It will make wonders for your company.

: That’s awesome. Now tell us about a great moment something that you’re so proud of in your in your medical career to date.

: There were a lot of moments especially the one where at Hopkins I was able to do like a large scale study where I was able to convince more than 150 top performing hospitals in the country to come together to disseminate their best practices. So I started off thinking about why one hospital is doing great. And then the hospital just 10 feet away from that house. I mean there are hospitals like a Texas medical center. Like you have like hospitals right next to each other. So why there is huge discrepancies when it comes to providing care and forget about the cost but even though the quality of care there’s a huge difference I mean based on the headsets reading. So for me I really wanted to know will these people share the information. And oftentimes everyone disappointed like or discouraged me really to say nobody is going to share because it’s proprietary. People wanted to stay up and then always on the top. Yes I was able to prove them wrong because I individually reached out to every single top performing hospitals based on three or four years of head scores under each domain of headscarves and pretty much 80 to 90 hospitals actually came for national conference at orphanages and almost 130 hospitals participated in the study. And we also published data or paper from that effort. So today I learned that people are willing to share. But we need the platform. We need a tool or technology to ensure that all the data that is presented are just translated to patient care and not just used for a consulting project.

: Now well congratulations on that. It’s definitely not easy to do. You picked up the phone and you got to it. And folks this is something that we all need to take a note of when everybody else is telling you now and you believe that there is a way to do it. What Sathya did pick up the phone. Get back to the basics and you’ll find that it’s amazing what you find on the other end of that line like Sathya did. Now is that paper available for anybody to read, Sathya?

: Yeah absolutely. I mean I can put it in my linkin, I’m happy to share with anyone who can reach out to me my e-mail address is selumalai@multisensorydiagnostics.com. You can also find me on our Web page at multisensorydiagnostics.com.

: Awesome. So folks they have it. We’re going to be able to share that paper with you. Why not. Take a look at this amazing work that Sathya did to gather to these best minds, best outcomes together under one roof and produce a paper get access to that reach out to him. Sathya, getting close to the end of the podcast here. You’re obviously working on some very outstanding projects here with multicenter diagnostics. Let’s pretend you and I are building a medical leadership course on what it takes to be successful in medicine today. It’s the 101 Sathya and so we’re going to build a syllabus here. Four questio

ns lightning round style followed by a book that you recommend to the listeners. You ready?

: Yes.

: Awesome. What’s the best way to improve health care outcomes?

: Definitely engaging patients throughout the design and development of healthcare. It’s not similar. Even here at multisensory not building a consumer gadget that is going to really use to help you to show your steps or something but more importantly it’s going to engage the patients and the users so that they can be empowered. So I would say patient engagement is key.

: Love it. What’s the biggest mistake or pitfall to avoid?

: As I told you earlier like thinking that you know everything about what you’re building and what you’re providing to the consumers. I don’t believe that swiping left or right on a phone app or just using a device and then sending that one data is going to improve adherence. But I think it’s important that you need to say what is the real need of users and also bringing in the right technologies to support them.

: How do you stay relevant despite constant change?

: Talking to patients talking to users on again a lot of conferences and being part of the Koreas been a huge advantage to really seat there on huge stakeholders from patients providers and policymakers. So have been really integral to our part of it as well.

: Fascinating. And what’s one area that should drive everything in a health care organization?

: I would say more importantly what the. Not just the what the end user ones. But as a customer you have the payers, providers the pharma. We also need to take into consideration that what is their needs are and always why, whe,n how. Those are key things that somebody needs to understand and put into practice.

: What book would you recommend to the listeners, Sathya?

: So since we had our candidates and more on patient centered care and patient focus care I would say there’s one book by Susan Framton on putting patients first best practices and patient centered care which is a great book for somebody who is into health care into their entrepreneurship life. It is a great book to start with. There are other great ones on other topics but I love this one.

: Outstanding Sathya, thank you for that. And folks if you want to get access to this syllabus that we just created for you the transcripts, show notes and links that we’ve discussed discuss the outcomesrocket.health/Sathya. You find that his LinkedIn profile will be there as well as a way to get that paper that that he discussed here on the podcast. So Sathya, this has been a blast. Before we conclude I love if you could just share a closing thought with the listeners and then the best place where they can get in touch with you.

: Absolutely. Well thank you again. I mean the one thing that I really wanted to say is I want every entrepreneur or even healthcare organizations to create something that is not complicated for this vulnerable population. Create a solution that is very simple to use something that can integrate into the life flow of the users and try to see what other things that they can do to close the gap in healthcare look specifically patient gap and I really urge everyone to join us. So let’s change the culture of care monitoring. Let’s change the standard of care. It’s not going to be tough. All we need is the right people to be at the right time to do the right thing. So our mission of the company is to change the culture of care monitoring. And I want each and every one of you who is listening to this podcast who believe in our technology who believe in bringing patient centered care to join us even if you’re our competitor as I said and talked to us let us find a way to work together to help make a difference in health care. You can reach me at my email address selumalai@multisensorydiagnostics.com. Our website is a great resource. You can also follow us on Twitter at mouthlab and also reach me on LinkedIn. I would love to connect with you guys. Thank you again for the invitation. This has been a great conversation and you made everything what I said looks so awesome.

: Hey Sathya. Thank you for making the time for us. You my friend are the awesome man and we’re super super glad that you’re able to join us so looking forward to staying in touch with you.

: Great. Absolutely. Thank you.

Hey Outcomes Rocket friends, thanks for tuning in to the podcast once again. As a leader in health care, you have big ideas great products, a story to tell, and are looking for ways to improve your reach and scale your business. However there’s one tiny problem. Health care is tough to navigate and the typical sales cycle is low. That’s why you should consider starting your own podcast as part of your sales and marketing strategy. At the Outcomes Rocket, I’ve been able to reach thousands of people every single month that I wouldn’t have otherwise been able to reach if I had not started my podcast. Having this organic reach enables me to get the feedback necessary to create a podcast that delivers value that you are looking for. And the same thing goes if you start a podcast for what you could learn from your customers. The best thing about podcasting in healthcare is that we are currently at the ground level, meaning that the number of people in healthcare listening to podcasts is small but growing rapidly. I put together a free checklist for you to check out the steps on what it takes to create your own podcast. You could find that at outcomesrocket.health/podcast. Check it out today and find a new way to leverage the sales, marketing and outcomes of your business. That’s outcomesrocket.health/podcast.

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