Health Explorers

Vicky Demas - Founder and CEO of identifeye HEALTH

On this episode of Health Explorers, Dr. John Martin and Michael Kisch speak with Vicky Demas, Founder and CEO of identifeye HEALTH, a company using AI and automation to transform retinal imaging, preventing vision loss and unlocking powerful health insights at the point of care. Before launching identifeye, Vicky helped bring GRAIL’s multi-cancer detection test, Galleri, to life and was a founding member of Google Life Sciences, which later spun out to become Verily. We explore Vicky’s journey building cutting-edge health tech, her passion for translating science into scalable solutions, and why she believes the eyes might be a literal window into your health—and your soul.

Sari Kaganoff of Rock Health

On the latest episode of Health Explorers, we speak with Sari Kaganoff, the Chief Commercial Officer of Rock Health.  At Rock Health, Sari leads the consulting and insights membership team, supporting companies on strategy and achieving a deeper understanding of digital health trends. She is also a venture advisor to Rock Health Capital and an angel investor. Before Rock Health, she worked at McKinsey, advising clients on harnessing the power of digital, data, and analytics to improve patient care. Sari brings a unique perspective, which is informed by the research she and her team conduct and their many interactions with big and small companies.  This makes her a distinctive voice in the digital health ecosystem and someone who can often see where the industry is going before almost everyone else. In this episode, we learn where the following emerging growth opportunities may be, the hard questions that founders need to ask themselves, and what Sari would do if she waved a magic wand and made one change to the US healthcare system.

Renee Ryan - Former CEO of Cala Health

New episode of Health Explorers w/Renee Ryan, former CEO of Cala Health. On the latest episode of Health Explorers, I speak with Renee Ryan, the former CEO of bioelectronic medicine pioneer Cala Health.  Renee brings a unique perspective, having spent time as a start-up CEO and a healthcare investor.  Before running Cala Health, she was an investment banker at  Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, Jefferies & Co, and Robert Baird.   Renee then joined J&J's ventures team where she invested in over 15 companies.  While at J&J she played a central role in incubating several start-ups and joint ventures including Verb Surgical in partnership with Verily. In this episode, we discuss Renee's experience on both sides of the investor-operator relationship.  What she thinks each doesn't fully grasp about the other, the key trait she looks for in leadership hires, and the advice she provides to early-stage founders.

Dr. Dan Azagury - Director of Stanford BioDesign Fellowship Program

On the latest episode of Health Explorers, Jay Shah and I speak with Dr. Dan Azagury, Director of the Stanford Biodesign Innovation Fellowship Program, a 10-month experience that equips aspiring innovators with a proven, repeatable process to identify important health-related needs, invent novel health technologies to address them and prepare to implement those products into patient care. Since its inception in 2001 over 50 companies have been founded out of the program including Shockwave Medical, iRythym, Viz.ai [http://Viz.ai], and Cala Health. Dan grew up and started his medical career in Europe, but migrated to the United States, eventually landing in Silicon Valley, where he became a BioDesign Fellow himself. His time in the program eventually led to his co-founding of Ciel Medical. In addition to his faculty role, Dan is also the Section Chief of Minimally Invasive and Bariatric Surgery at Stanford. In this episode, we discuss what attracted Dan to Silicon Valley, the roller coaster ride of entrepreneurship, and how to teach people the process of healthcare innovation.

Dr. James Min - Founder and CEO of Cleerly

Dr. Jay Shah [https://www.linkedin.com/feed/#] and I speak with Dr. James Min, the Founder, and CEO of Cleerly, a pioneer in the application of Artificial Intelligence to better identify patients at risk for heart disease. Based on over a decade of foundational research, Cleerly represents the natural progression of the pioneering work that Dr. Min and his team performed at The Dalio Institute of Cardiovascular Imaging at New York Presbyterian Hospital. James is a former Professor of Radiology and Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College. He is a board-certified cardiologist with a clinical focus on cardiovascular disease prevention and imaging. In total, Dr. Min has published more than 500 peer-reviewed manuscripts and served as Principal Investigator on numerous landmark clinical trials and registries. James received his BA from the University of Chicago and his medical degree from Temple University. He completed his residency and fellowship at the University of Chicago Hospitals. In this episode, we discuss Dr. Min's transition from academic medicine into building an innovative start-up and the lessons he's learned along the way.