Preventing Blindness with Early Mobile Eye Disease Detection with Mike Ricci, CEO at Spect: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Preventing Blindness with Early Mobile Eye Disease Detection with Mike Ricci, CEO at Spect: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Paul Grand:
Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in! This is Paul Grand on the Outcomes Rocket MedTech Podcast. Very excited to be back here today. If you haven’t heard me before. I’m the founder and CEO of MedTech Innovator, the world’s largest medical device accelerator. Learn more about us at MedTechInnovator.org. There’s a link in the show notes. In this podcast series, I interview medtech innovators, stakeholders, people who are working to improve outcomes in health. There’ll be a link in the show notes for this episode to a post on LinkedIn, and you can join that discussion about today’s podcast by clicking on that link and sharing your thoughts. My guest today is Mike Ritchie, the CEO at Spect. Spect was a finalist in Med Tech Innovator 2018, which makes me especially excited to interview Mike today. Let me tell you a little bit about Mike. He’s the co-founder and CEO of Spect.A four time CEO and a co-founder of three digital health startups, the most recent one being RecoveryOne, which was backed by Seven Wire and Cigna. It’s a musculoskeletal company that is just raised a Series C. Prior to the work that he did in Digital Health, Mike was a telecommunications executive, has extensive strategic planning, M&A and experience, with 14 acquisitions successfully completed. Very impressive. Welcome to the Outcomes Rocket MedTech, Mike.

Mike Ricci:
Pleasure to be here. Thank you, Paul.

Paul Grand:
Well, let’s get to the beginning, Mike. I want to know about you and your background. You know what inspires your work in the med tech industry?

Mike Ricci:
Well, you already indicated in my bio that I am a transplant not to use medical terminology, but I spent the first portion of my career, my WE actually going way back in communications wired and mostly wireless. Sold the company a little over a decade or so ago and I reflected, took a year off. Looked back at what I did when I got out of college and I wanted to connect the world altruistically and I said, well, you know, half the world’s connected on a smart device these days, so maybe that’s good. But then I reflected more on what smart devices are used for, and I thought, maybe there’s a way to get a little more value on these devices. So it’s been all sort of mobile platform focused and it’s been exciting, been an exciting second part of my career in terms of doing that. In terms of health care, I have a brother who’s a doctor. Several friends who are doctors. Co-founding happened with most of those people, not my brother, but most other people. So that’s how I got into the health care industry and after a decade, I know enough to be dangerous.

Paul Grand:
It’s always great having the doctor in the family.

Mike Ricci:
Yeah, exactly.

Paul Grand:
That definitely has led to a lot of startups. I know that for sure. So that’s great and certainly having that experience in on the mobile side of the world and seeing how that can change things, I know that that’s a real inspiration for a lot of people in health care because we got this smart technology in our pockets. It might as well keep us all healthy too, right?

Mike Ricci:
That’s right. That’s right. Might as well use it for good, right? Some good technology is being used for good, but this is a thing I think you could argue we do.

Paul Grand:
So, yeah, no, I would agree with that. So so let’s talk a little bit about the technology, about what it is that you’re doing at Spect. So first, maybe just tell us kind of the founding story. So what got you started at Spect?

Mike Ricci:
Yeah. So I actually started initially because of your Medtech platform. It turns out that my marketing person and my previous company said, Hey, we were co-presenting with this company called Spect. You should reach out to them because I think they might have interest in having you as a consultant. At that point in my life, I was just going to do consulting. So I reached out to one of the original co-founders and was due to Medtech Innovator that we got introduced and we hit it off on a number of fronts, mainly having spent enough years doing health tech I was aware what didn’t work. I learned early on that a lot of tech people don’t do well in health tech because they assume you throw technology to the wall and it sticks. It’s a totally different world. I mean, they call it health care for a reason. The care part you need to understand workflow. You need to understand how it can be seamless, how it adds value without adding burden. Everyone’s overworked and busy. And so I really liked the mission of the company sort of at the highest level because it prevents blindness, which was a very good thing. You know, one of the original co-founders had a grandfather in India who was taking care of patients when they came to his home after clinic and had this kind of kludgy device that could look at their eyes. And the co-founder, who has a bioengineering degree, said, well, maybe we can do better, migrated to an iPhone, and that was probably eight or nine years ago. So the fact that it was a device that could prevent blindness and also in unfortunately a very big market. One out of three people is either diabetic or pre-diabetic. So there’s a big need which has the benefit of creating a good business opportunity as well. So to me, it fit the bill and it also fit the bill, it’s very easy to use which was that issue of workflow, that it really does seamlessly integrate into work environments today. Clinical workflows.

Paul Grand:
Yeah. Having a seamless device that fits into clinical workflows is definitely a key critical factor for success.

Mike Ricci:
Absolutely.

Paul Grand:
You have you have something that is terrific, but totally changes the way people do things and slows things down, or it gets in the way, it’s not going to get used, right?

Mike Ricci:
No, I think we both know a lot of digital health companies kind of fell by the wayside because of that.

Paul Grand:
Yeah, I agree. So let’s get a little more than into detail kind of on the unmet need here because there are certainly devices out there to diagnose eye disease, and there’s people who’ve tried to do things in more of a mobile way before. So what’s different about Spect? And tell us specifically what the product does.

Mike Ricci:
So what’s different about us is that we are looking at this market is how do we fill that gap? And the simplest way to put this is when it comes to screening for eyes, which is non-trivial to do, it hasn’t fundamentally changed in about 100 years. People go to an eye specialist or sit in front of a very expensive camera, be strapped in and have their eyes checked. There aren’t many of those specialists, and it’s hard to get to it. And when you get something like diabetes, which is affecting such a large portion of the population, it’s not caught in primary care. Someone sees their primary care physician if they unfortunately are diagnosed with diabetes, they’re told to watch their diet and maybe get on insulin and have your eyes checked. A very small percentage actually do get their eyes checked, and as a result, they say my eyes are fine. The disease diabetic retinopathy progresses, and when it gets worse, it’s very hard to cure. It requires very elaborate procedures and actually really does degrade up to blindness. So catching it early is key. And what we do is we allow primary care to use this device like a stethoscope, like a blood cuff. It’s done by a nurse practitioner. It’s done by could be done by the doctor. Most times it’s the same person who takes your vital stats. They do it very quickly, and they can quickly tell if you have this disease or truthfully other diseases as well. We’re starting with diabetic retinopathy, and so it can be diagnosed very early and one can be sent to a specialist early on if they need to go. So it really does solve a lot of problems blindness being number one. It is a huge benefit to the payer environment with health insurance companies because they can avoid a lot of expense by catching this early quality of life. Obviously, a huge factor to the patient. And it also helps primary care because under accountable care organizations, they’re being judged on the total quality of the care, and they don’t do this today. So allowing them to do this actually broadens their horizon in terms of what they can do within their practice as well. So it’s kind of a win for everyone.

Paul Grand:
It makes a lot of sense to create value proposition. When we look at this kind of a market right, where you’ve got a technology that can be so mobile, that’s not just for the, you know, just bound to an office. It’s not a big, clunky machine that gives you the opportunity also to be servicing patients in many different places. Is that part of what you’re doing here that you know you’re out working with people in their homes? Or is it primarily still something that’s going to be you think is going to be done in an office?

Mike Ricci:
Excellent question. If you talk to me pre-COVID, I would have said we’re going to start in the clinic and it has the ability to be mobile. We have always had the ability to do both Wi-Fi and cellular. But when COVID hit, the world went external. Telemedicine, as you know, skyrocketed. And so a lot of our early engagements have been at home health care, which is now a big segment, and I’m convinced we’ll say a big segment. So early adoption was at a patient’s home. Keep it in your bag. Take it out. Use it. It’s hooked up over, in most cases, cellular because it doesn’t require WiFi. So ultimate portability because we are cloud based, meaning you’re actually communicating live to someone. The benefit of having that connection there has been huge as well. It’s really helped with the ease of use as well. So while we weren’t initially targeting at home to be our major target, COVID actually solved that for us and got us entrenched in an area that’s growing very quickly. So if there’s any benefit of COVID, there aren’t too many. But at least it did accelerate digital health and it accelerated telehealth, which needed to happen. No question that was a silver lining continues to be a silver lining of COVID. You see acceleration of technologies like Spect and digital health in general. You know, people are used to getting care now at home or more convenient locations, and I don’t think they want to go back. I really don’t. I really like the ability to do those telehealth visits. And you know, and again, having technology like Spect means that it can be done with the same level of quality, but at home.

Mike Ricci:
Yeah, it’s interesting poll. I think a lot of people would argue that it was a reimbursement issue for telehealth. I think it’s actually ended up being a use model that once people like yourself and myself use it, we don’t want to go back, right,particularly seniors. They don’t want to go to a brick and mortar facility. They may have ability to get there to start with. So it’s a huge benefit in terms of quality of life.

Paul Grand:
Yeah, agreed. So let’s talk a little more than it maybe about the experience quickly in terms of improving outcomes. So you know what we know fundamentally, you get your your eyes checked and you should be able to avoid developing a further disease, or at least you know, now being able to treat disease if it’s there. In the experience that you’ve had to date, are there any examples you can give and. Now the product is improving outcomes,

Mike Ricci:
Yeah, for sure. So matter of fact, it was somewhat exacerbated by COVID and as you know, a lot of other care went by the wayside, particularly in clinic for sure. But even at home, you tend to focus on COVID-related things. So eye care, which has always been important, wasn’t getting enough attention before, and it got even pressed down further due to COVID. So just the fact that we’ve been enabled people to go in and do this screening where it wasn’t being done is huge. I mean, no one was looking at their eyes at all. And so huge problem as they say this, this disease in particularly gets very nasty when it progresses. So I think the fact that we filled a gap that was not being filled in an, unfortunately, as I said, very large segment of the population, unfortunately. So I think that care gap, it had all the benefits of, you know, saving money and providing, you know, less cost in the system, but just in terms of care. It was a huge gap that I think we have already seen happen. So it’s been great to watch with our early deployments where you’ll go into a patient’s home, maybe a senior who’s never seen a doctor and they get their eyes checked. They’re delighted someone’s there to help them and they can get diagnosed immediately and they know if they have an issue that’s been very fulfilling.

Paul Grand:
I’m sure it has been fulfilling, and I’m sure it’s great for the team to, you know, in general, be seeing the devices out there, seeing people using it and getting benefit from it. I know it’s always really rewarding.

Mike Ricci:
It’s been very exciting for the team because we’re doing something unique. A lot of people are now focusing on eye care because it is a big opportunity and care gap. But I think we’re very excited because we really do feel we have the right solution because of the mobility, the ease of use, the ubiquitous. Our device is based on an iPhone, but it’s low cost, so we just license it. We don’t charge for the device itself. So it’s a very easy model for someone to use. They just pay a monthly fee. So it’s very scalable. And just to see that adopted and see the excitement about it, it’s really gotten the team very excited.

Paul Grand:
That’s great. And you know, I wanted to make sure the listeners here really understand how it’s different than what’s available today again. So, you know, you mentioned before the idea of workflow and how important that is and how this is, you know, to be successful in digital health, you’ve got to have a product that fits into the workflow. So how is what SPECT is doing? You know, fitting into the workflow has it better than what’s available today.

Mike Ricci:
There’s probably three key metrics. First of all, just the affordability model to start with is important because primary care doesn’t have budgets to buy expensive cameras, and they do not have individuals trained to use expensive cameras. Our device literally takes 15 minutes to learn how to use. It is called human in the loop, so the person who is the operator is pointing a light at the right place in the eye. Everything else we do. So they’re guided initially by someone over the speakerphone where to hold it. After a few times, they actually get the feel for that. We capture the image, we send it to our specialist and we send a report back. So there’s nothing they really need to do. These exams are down to like one minute optimally, we say three to five, very quick. Once again, the person doing it can learn this muscle memory very quickly. It’s very easy to do. It saves the patient a trip to go see a specialist. It’s done, you know, while they’re there. Other solutions are either pure software and there are people doing this. They don’t use them. They’re using all A.I., which we also use AI.

Mike Ricci:
But they tell you to buy the expensive, hard to use camera, which just doesn’t work, period. And then there’s hardware manufacturers who make cameras are making them more portable, but they’re still hard to use. One of the key metrics that we pride ourselves on is we’re getting about ninety five percent of the time we take an image. It’s degradable. Nobody can touch that most of the competitive products are like 50 or 60. And if you think about it, a patient doesn’t want to have to do this multiple times, right? And they don’t know at the time, it’s not doable. We’re alive. So we know immediately if we successfully capture it. So it just that from the patient perspective, even there’s a big, big benefit. So nobody really else has this scalable model. There’s no one out there. There are other iPhone based devices. They don’t work very well. Narrow field of view. Ours is really a pretty good camera for being based on an iPhone. You know, we’re not a hardware company, we’re a software company, but the device is a pretty efficient way of capturing the data.

Paul Grand:
It makes a lot of sense to me. I know lots of people have tried and have, you know, done similar things with, you know, different types of technology, and we haven’t seen many of them, you know, be very successful. No, we have along the way. So, you know, I know there’s always that kind of opportunity now for a company to come along like Spect and really get it right. Having, you know, seen a bunch of other companies get it wrong,

Mike Ricci:
We call it the arrows in the backs and there where other people went out there first. It’s like.

Paul Grand:
Yeah, that’s right, I’d rather have other people have those arrows in the back.

Mike Ricci:
Right? Exactly.

Paul Grand:
Yeah, no, that’s good. All right. Well, then let’s let’s talk a little more about arrows in the back. I know that not everything goes perfectly smoothly . All the function of providing solutions that make outreach to patients, customers and physicians in a great way. He’s been with Philips for many years in various digital roles, including healthcare, where he led digital transformation and in the health care informatics business looking after digital health and marketing. He started Philips, his work at Philips 10 years ago and the group digital team responsible for CRM, analytics and commerce. Later, he became Global Head of Digital for Healthcare, managing a team of worldwide supporting businesses and markets with all digital activities. And in the years at Philips, he’s focused on making new technologies meaningful and addressing the big challenges in health care. He’s passionate about the digitization and innovation in health care. And with this bright. Time and everything is is exactly the way you saw it from the day you had this idea in this company, so any particular setbacks you experienced along the way and if so, what were the key learnings?

Mike Ricci:
Now focus on the learnings, I’m not sure. So here’s a good example that relates to the story I just told you one of our earliest adopters was a large at home health care company, and we obviously had been focused on in clinic because telehealth was a small segment pre-COVID and our device was designed to be such. Ok, let’s schedule when you’re going to do the screening. If you can let us know a day ahead of time, that’d be great because we’ll line up resources and we’ll have everything ready because we do have this live interface. And they came back and said, Well, we pretty much just visiting a patient. We’re not even going to do a screening, so it has to be impromptu. It’s like whenever we tell you where you’re ready. So we figured it out. So we pretty much worked out close to a twenty four seven scenario that with virtually no notice, we can do a screening that made us more powerful because of it due to the flexibility. And we also proved that we could do one hundred percent remote training because we had to, right? So we’ve done very few in-person trainings. It works great remote training, right? So sort of a necessity is the mother of invention. We had to create a rogue system. I mean, without scheduling, any time somebody can just walk in and want to do a screening, we’re up and running and we obviously had to do that very flexibly and we had to be able to train anyone how to use it. Luckily, it’s very easy to use, but everything had to be done remotely. So telehealth in the full sense. Training’s remote as well as the device is remote.

Paul Grand:
So yeah, that’s that is definitely again another I think another silver lining in COVID Is it just forced a lot of people to get into this mode of doing remote training and and everything that maybe people still were bringing people in for training sessions and or sending out people to train. And it’s just not necessary.

Mike Ricci:
No, it’s not. We did pretty well.

Paul Grand:
So, yeah, I’m glad to hear you have. So that’s great. Well, thanks for sharing that story. You know, I know there’s a lot to be excited about Spect. I’ve known the company from the very beginning. I remember when Ankur Gupta was out on our stage doing a presentation. I remember saying, Hey, like, you know, you don’t even have a domain name, you don’t even have a website. You guys have just been under the radar. And isn’t it time to come out of stealth mode? I said, You know, you guys made it to the finals at MedTech Innovator. I think it’s time to come out of stealth, but you guys have continued to be a bit under the radar. So maybe tell us what’s what’s going on. I feel like you’re finally coming out now. So, yeah, so tell us a little bit about that. Why now?

Mike Ricci:
I may have mentioned this to you when I met you last fall, I think we’re the least stealth stealth company you’ve ever seen because we won all these awards. Yet we don’t have a website, right. So so yes, we are coming. We are coming out in terms of being under the cover of stealthness, and we have a bunch of PR work that’ll probably happen soon in terms of announcing some partnerships. We did officially cap our seed funds, so we’re going to announce that. We’ve hired some key people and we’re actually getting a lot of commercial traction. So you’ll see within a few weeks a lot more coming out on the company. It was just a methodology approach of keeping very, very secretive. It’s a competitive industry, but we’re well past that now. We’ve had the device out since twenty nineteen. You know, it’s getting for anyone in the space. They know us. But yeah, you’re right, it’s not a house. By the way. Our new and improved website, which you probably still think looks stealth, it’s definitely tells you more than the old one did. The old one pretty much just said we do eye stuff, and that’s it, right?

Paul Grand:
I remember that very well, and I’m really glad to hear that you guys are coming out of stealth because it is a great story and you’ve got a real unmet need. You’ve got a product that solves it, and it does so in a way where the business model works. You know, a lot of the things that the people just don’t get right, frankly. And I know you took your time in terms of, you know, of getting that initial traction and, you know, iterating as needed. And you know, and I’ve heard I know behind the scenes, you know, I’ve heard bits and pieces of the story. So I’m glad other people get to hear the news too.

Mike Ricci:
We’re excited. We’re excited. We’re relatively small, but very talented team. And so it’s very exciting for the team to see what’s happening now, and it’s actually very exciting for me, even though I’ve been doing this for a while. As you know, startups are really hard. They’re really, really hard. So that’s why the stats are so high in terms of those who survived. But we’re also benefiting from a lot of people now. Digital health is definitely in the spotlight for sure, and I think companies that bring value and have the right equation, I think will do very well.

Paul Grand:
No, I agree. And it’s time, you know, that the spotlight is shining on digital health and companies like Spect because you really are solving problems that you just can’t do in the traditional ecosystem or the traditional way of doing things. So I’m really excited about that and your place in that. So, Mike, you know, you’ve got this initial product. What’s the long term vision for the company?

Mike Ricci:
So the long term vision, we’re really a data analytics company. The one amazing thing about the retina and there’s been much published in this space wetrade market is the retina is the check engine light of the body. There’s invaluable information about your health buried within your retina, whether it be cardiovascular, whether it be, you know, things like neurological conditions, a lot has been discovered that you can track and monitor through the retina. And the fact that we’re gathering this invaluable data on the retina will be very powerful going forward in terms of how this device could become a monitor for your health. In my ultimate vision, is this in your medicine cabinet? Like your digital thermometer and beep beep, you’re pointing at your eyes and you get an update on health factors beyond just eye care. So we’re starting in DR diabetic retinopathy. We can do other eye conditions. And once we build this data repository more or less like a twenty three in Bini type model will have invaluable data for the industry across multiple fronts.

Paul Grand:
And that that data is going to be valuable for all of us, not just for one particular thing and, you know, in the product or one particular disease, but having a central data repository across lots of patients is really what makes health care valuable for everybody. So that’s great. I’m glad you’re doing that, Mike.

Mike Ricci:
Yeah, it’s the exciting big story here, so we’re very excited about it.

Paul Grand:
I’m excited about it, too. As we’re wrapping up here, I want to make sure that, you know, people know where to find you. So I want to make sure you tell us how they can get in touch with you. And also, if you have any closing thoughts that you want to share, you know what something that you hope that someone who’s listening, you know, if they take away one thing about Spect, you know, or just being an entrepreneur or anything you want to share, what would that be?

Mike Ricci:
Sure. Well, first of all, you can find us like a lot of small companies, we couldn’t get the URL we ideally like, so it Get Specked but if you look us up at www.GetSpecked.com you will see that fabulous website we built and there’s contact information there. I think the message I’d like to give to people is if you want to be involved in any way, we actually have a large number of advisors with the company as well. So if you have interest on the medical side or even business side getting involved, if you’re somebody out there who’s interested in doing screenings, contact us in terms of maybe how this could be used in your environment, and I couldn’t pass the opportunity since I’m doing a Series A, if you’re an investor and you like to learn more, please contact me.

Paul Grand:
That’s a great ask to put out there. All of those are good asks. You know, if you’re just somebody who wants to get involved, if you’re you’re curious about how this can improve the the care practice that you’re offering, if you’re an entrepreneur or somebody who wants to work at a startup, you know this is a great company to be looking into. If you’re an investor, this is a great investment opportunity and you’ve got all those all those boxes checked, Mike. So I’m glad that you put all those things out there because that’s what this is all about. Right? It’s getting people out there in the world. That’s why we’re doing this podcast. Let people know about what you’re doing over at Spect and what the opportunity is and have a chance to connect with you. So, so thanks for joining us today and and sharing the story.

Mike Ricci:
Thanks, Paul, for having me and I look forward to seeing you in person again one of these days.

Paul Grand:
Hey, I’m really looking to spend some more time with you in person. We got to hang out at that American Diabetes Association conference a couple of years back, which is a lot of fun. That one’s coming up again this November, the ADA Leaders Forum. So I’ll put a plug out there for people. If you want to Google that, that’s going to be coming up up in the Bay Area and it is in person and companies are going to be they’re presenting. Investors will be there listening.

Mike Ricci:
And not totally plug. We won that one too, but I won’t overly plug it.

Paul Grand:
I was going to say that you won, you won the competition we had there. I mean, as you said, it’s the least stealthy stealth company.

Mike Ricci:
Right.

Paul Grand:
But you are. But you have been kind of stealthy and and I’m glad to see that, as I said, you’re you’re coming out stronger now in terms of visibility. And I think the timing is right. So I think you’re doing the right thing, Mike. I’m really happy that you’re doing this. And again, thanks for joining us today.

Mike Ricci:
Yeah, thanks for everyone who listens. Appreciate it.

Paul Grand:
All right. So again, listeners. That was the story of Spect, Mike Ricci, CEO. So make sure that you go to our show notes and take a look. You’ll find a link to the website Get Spect. You’ll find a link to the post on LinkedIn, where you can join the discussion. You can reach out to Mike and he’ll connect with you on LinkedIn.

Mike Ricci:
By the way, it’s just mricci@getspect. So if you want to email me directly, it’s just mricci@getspect.com.

Paul Grand:
Couldn’t have been easier than that, right? So mricci@getspect.com. And again, look for us, as I said on LinkedIn. That’s an easy way to connect as well. And so again, for those of you listening, that’s another one of our episodes talking to health care leaders. We also have outcomes Rocket Pharma, Outcomes Rocket Nursing to learn about that side of the world. We’ve got the Outcomes Rocket OG Original with Saul Marquez talking to leaders, lots of people to talk to and listen to. So I encourage you to subscribe to the podcast and learn about all these great people who are influencing the future of health care. Thanks for joining us today.

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