Technology for Good Innovation Challenge Kickoff

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welcome i'm terry kramer i'm the faculty director  of the easton technology management center here at   ucla anderson and i'd like to welcome you to this  event technology for good cross campus innovation   challenge now we've got two objectives for the  program tonight the first is to let you know about   the program parameters and objectives of what is  our third annual cross-campus innovation challenge   our second goal for tonight's program is to have a  discussion with two industry luminaries regarding   innovation opportunities and key success factors  in two areas health care and sustainability those   are the two areas of focus for what will be  our innovation challenge now let me talk just   a little bit about those two areas as a bit of  context first of all to start out with healthcare   healthcare in the us represents the largest  sector in the largest economy in the world   but its benefits are far from evenly distributed  improvements in affordability and access to care   together with better health outcomes and care  delivery represent critical challenges in   achieving efficient effective and  equitable care for all americans   second item is on sustainability again some  context the world is now on track to exceed three   degrees fahrenheit of warming by the turn of the  century so in less than 80 years the current pace   of progress needs to improve dramatically for the  world to limit the worst impacts of climate change   now while care and sustainability may seem very  very different they're actually very much tied   in a recent statement published by the new england  journal of medicine physicians were calling for   the rapidly warming climate as the greatest threat  to global public health and urged world leaders to   cut heat trapping emissions to avoid catastrophic  harm to health that will be impossible to reverse   so with that context let me share my screen  and i want to tell you a little bit about   our innovation challenge  and our innovation challenge   is one of the kind of marquee events that we've  got at the easton center that is across campus   to really start thinking about technology based  innovation that can address large societal needs   so in terms of the objectives of the innovation  challenge there are two of them the first one   is to take all of the great resources and  talent that we have across campus at ucla   to identify innovation opportunities which affect  notable societal areas of need the second goal is   the sustainability goal is to create a set  of learnings from this innovation challenge   about technology-based innovation that can help  future students and help future entrepreneurs   we're going to have two tracks this year for the  innovation challenge first one is on health care   and that is to create solutions that  significantly improve accessibility   affordability health outcomes or care delivery  in the u.s on the sustainability front   the prompt that we have here is to create  a sustainable solution that will improve   water energy food agriculture transportation and  or ecosystems now as i mentioned this is designed   to be a cross-campus effort so all ucla students  fellows and post docs are eligible to participate   and all the teams have to have at least one  mba and one non-mba and as many of you know the   best areas of innovation are interdisciplinary in  nature so getting diverse teams are going to help   hugely terms of the criteria that our judges will  use in this innovation challenge there are four   of them first one is impact we're looking for  large transformative ideas that have both depth   and breadth of value both to the venture and to  society second evaluation criteria is feasibility   so notwithstanding what i just said in the first  about impact you've got to identify areas of   innovation that can be executed on so that ability  to identify how do you execute what are the paths   to execution how do you think about metrics of  success will be part of feasibility third area   of evaluation is going to be on innovation itself  we're looking for original ideas powerful ideas   and ideas that are differentiated in nature and  then the fourth and final criteria is persuasion   as all good leaders and entrepreneurs  have to do you've got to be persuasive   persuasive with customers to try out new products  and services persuasive to investors to be able to   raise capital persuasive in thinking about public  stakeholders whether that be governments regulated   officials community leaders etc so that ability  to be persuasive in both written in oral form   will be the fourth criteria now in terms of the  calendar that will lead up to the final innovation   challenge presentations in the fall we'll  have a series of events that the easton center   will put on that will help prepare anybody who's  thinking about entering the innovation challenge   or people that have already decided to do that in  a lot of the critical areas of need so tonight's   event is going to be the kickoff event which i  hope you'll find from our two lead speakers here a   lot of ideas about where the biggest opportunities  might be where innovation might reside and how you   might win a second area is a series of workshops  financial modeling workshops on october 13th   a product management workshop on november 2nd  a pitching workshop on november 3rd and then   a team formation workshop on november 17th so  all of these kind of preparatory workshops are   literally going to be held in the next few weeks  and then when we enter the winter there'll be   team registration team registrations will open on  january 3rd the deadline will be on february 4th   and then literally just two weeks later  business plan submissions will be due   on february 18th we'll then have a series of  judges review the business plans for announcements   of finalists that'll occur on march 18th and then  we'll have a series of industry advisory programs   so people from industry to help give advice to  the teams that submit and that will occur from   march 21st first to april 15th main message on  this is think of your ideas early because there's   actually not that long a window to develop a  business plan we'll then in the spring have   final round presentations from the finalist teams  those will be held on april 22nd and april 29th   winners will be announced a few days later and  then we'll do a debrief event where we'll share   the types of ideas that came up and then the  finalists the winners that came up to benefit the   broader ucla community so if you need more info  on the innovation challenge you'll see a variety   of contacts here our website that provides more  information our slack channel and most importantly   jamie park jamie works in our easton center  and she is a program manager for the innovation   challenge so this as i mentioned is the third  annual event jamie is very knowledgeable about all   the ins and the outs and the deliverables and what  success looks like etc so feel free to contact her   her email address is listed there final point  is i just want to thank our sponsors and i want   to thank our sponsors not just for providing  financial support and other support to this but   the fact that we are growing across campus set of  relationships as i mentioned the outset the real   magic of this is to make this interdisciplinary  so we've got four sponsors here ucla health   the anderson school of management with our  dean tony bernardo who has earmarked funds   to support this the ucla sustainable la grand  challenge and then the institute for carbon   management a thank you to all four of them for  everything that they're uh that they're doing   so let me now switch over here and uh  share a few thoughts about our uh speaker   and our speaker our moderator is a terrific  moderator who's a colleague of uh of mine   and has just done a lot of great things she's  anderson's very own adjunct assistant professor   gail northrup a little bit about her background  she's a consultant she's a coach she's an educator   she's a president of northrop nonprofit consulting  she teaches social entrepreneurship governance and   impact at ucla anderson and she helped launch  impact at anderson which is an initiative and   a center at anderson that's really responsible  for coordinating all of our activities regarding   impact at the school she's also an adjunct  professor at the university of cape town   uh the graduate school of business there she  works with the bertha center for social innovation   and entrepreneurship she uh has co-founded as a  former associate director of spark health africa   which is a non-profit assisting governments in  africa to strengthen their health care systems   and improve health care outcomes including  the elimination of mother-to-child   transmission of hiv her consulting firm has  served numerous uh important and prestigious   social impact organizations including human rights  watch the aclu of southern california liberty hill   foundation homeboy industries and more she  received her mba from ucla anderson and her   bachelor's degree from stanford serves on a number  of boards including the pediatric and adolescent   aids treatment for africa spark health africa and  ucla's global lab for research in action so let   me just take a moment again and just say a huge  thank you to gail and turn it over to uh to you   thank you terry and welcome to everybody for  joining us today we're really excited about this   event and the challenge and i'm excited to spend  some time with our two panelists that you'll get   to know over the course of the next hour and i'm  excited to be in conversation with harlan levine   and matt koslov so before that i just want to talk  a little bit about today's event and build on what   terry has just shared with you today's  event really aims to highlight the key   trends in leadership today the transformative  effects of technology across all sectors   the imperative for interdisciplinary collaboration  and the critical need for businesses of all types   to be serving society it's an important  leadership call to action to deeply understand   some of society's greatest problems to identify  potential solutions to resource organizations and   initiatives appropriately and ultimately to lead  in a way that creates value for all stakeholders   stakeholders not just shareholders stakeholders  including customers employees society and even   the environment so today's event will also be an  opportunity to exemplify the spirit of collective   effort which is essential to success an invaluable  partnership between the anderson school and the   greater ucla campus our many students faculty  and alumni who are committed to innovation and   advancements in health care and sustainability  and most importantly also to be looking at our   partnership with the broader community as we seek  to listen to to learn from and to engage people   who are experiencing the challenges that we're  seeking to solve through the innovation challenge   so we're very fortunate to have our two panelists  with us today harlem levine and matt koslov   first a little bit about their backgrounds  harlan is the president of strategy and   business ventures at city of hope where he's  responsible for strategy innovation and growth   drug commercialization payer strategies and the  center for internal medicine prior to city of hope   harlan held executive roles at united health group  towers watson and anthem inc he serves on the   board as the board chair of access hope city of  hope's wholly owned subsidiary focused on serving   the employer market and making leading edge cancer  care available to all regardless of geography thank you yeah i have a little more about  you harlan a little bit more to highlight   he serves as a board member for active life  scientific bioscience la and keck graduate   institute board of trustees he received his  ba from harvard college and his md from ucsf   welcome to harlan great to be here thank you  thanks and matt koslov he has worked across a   variety of industries entertainment mobile  uh mobile gaming cyber security healthcare   aerospace he's currently the managing director  of techstars la many of you are probably   familiar with techstars one of the top venture  accelerators in the country he was the founding   managing director of the cedar sinai healthcare  accelerator in partnership with techstars   and the founding managing director of techstars  space accelerator prior to joining techstars   matt was head of corporate development  at telesign a leading anti-fraud firm   and one of la's fastest growing tech companies  he's also worked at sony music entertainment   as the vp of web and mobile products at yahoo  in corporate strategy and product development   at it and at bain and company matt has a ba in  economics also from harvard and welcome to matt   sure so about today's uh format for the  session i'm going to be asking harlan and   matt a series of questions to hear some of their  insights and reflections and recommendations   and really tap into their expertise of sitting  at the intersection of technology innovation   healthcare and sustainability then we're going  to use slido uh for moderated q a so the slido   event code will be put in the chat it's innovation  21. i'll remind you of that later on um but first   let's just jump into conversation with with harlan  and matt i've got a couple of questions i'm going   to start with you matt um you have had extensive  experience as an investor and as a mentor to a lot   of different companies that have gone through  various accelerators you've been involved in   you've invested in over 60 rapidly growing tech  companies directly can you just tell us a little   bit about the breadth of tech star las focus what  are some of the themes you're seeing in terms of   areas of innovation and we'd be interested to hear  what you personally think what are some of the key   elements to successful innovation quite a few  questions there so i'll try to remember them all   at techstarzla um we're a generalist program so  we're investing in the best companies that apply   to our program regardless of industry however we  try to invest in sectors where our mentor pool   as well as the corporate and non-profit landscape  in la can best support the companies we decide to   invest in and so in la that means we've made  healthcare a very strong focus we have some   of the leading academic health systems in the  world in our backyard we have some of the best   pharmaceutical companies in our backyard  and so healthcare has always been a very   strong focus for us i think we've invested  in at least 40 to 50 health tech companies   through our la programs and that's just to  date but we're also investing in property tech   e-commerce and retail related technologies we are  investing in sustainability related technologies   a lot of aerospace and defense  related companies as well given the   cluster of aerospace defense corporate civil  and military organizations in our backyard   but we are trying to really invest in the best  companies that we see we're investing in about   25 companies a year at this point across a  variety of industries and i forgot what your   second question was already i'm sorry no it's good  i mean that's a good breadth of all the different   investments that you've made and obviously  touches on your unique vantage point being here   in l.a what are some of the the trends that you're  seeing um or themes across some of the investments   that you're that you're either considering or that  you're actually um moving forward in your process   we are when assessing the companies  we decide to invest in the number one   attribute we're looking at  is the quality of the team   and we you know assess the team across a variety  of dimensions but number one we're looking for   founder market fit is this a founder that really  understands and is passionate about the problem   they're not solving their problem they're solving  not just the technology that they're building we   want to see that they're obsessive about solving  a particular pain point in the market that they   understand and have a particular passion for  because as anybody who's ever been an entrepreneur   it's really hard and that passion has got to be  the thing that gets them through those dark nights   we also want to see some traction and ability  to execute um so in terms of you know how we   invest as a firm we are aggressively  evaluating the quality of the team   um and just speaking around trends i mean  we could pick apart different industries   and different trends and we'll probably spend a  lot of time talking about trends in healthcare   i can say that macroeconomically right now the  venture market is very hot there's a lot of   access to capital valuations are higher  than i've ever seen them there's more   money flowing through the system than  i've ever seen before there are ipos   that are becoming great sources of liquidity that  then trickle down and funnel the next source of   growth for founders who then you know are looking  to access capital from that and so it's creating   a very virtuous cycle right now which is really  exciting um you know i've been in tech for a long   time i don't think i've ever seen it this this  enthusiastic is the best word i guess i could use   well good i love your one of your key points there  matt um and i've heard it before particularly when   it comes to social innovation which is falling  in love with the problem not your solution   and being married to that problem through  all the iterations that it takes and   and that's what we see in terms of successful  entrepreneurs is that grit and resilience when   when they're hit with different challenges to  stay connected to the problem they're trying to   solve and i think that's really relevant for for  those that are looking at the innovation challenge   so um so matt you've worked across a broad  range of industries and both in deep tech and   health care um and i had to actually look up  deep tech to make sure i knew what that meant   i i thought i knew it but uh so so for those of  you that might not be familiar with that term it's   it's a type of organization but most often a  type of startup that focuses on tech solutions   based on significant scientific or engineering  challenges is that about right that's about right   you know if you've got at least one phd on the  founding team you're probably a deep tech company   if you're going through fda approvals you might  be a deep tech company if you're putting something   into outer space or working in the semiconductor  industry you're probably a deep tech company   and capital requirements are probably different  but on the flip side grant opportunities are a   significant opportunity so um we've spent a lot of  time finding great founders who are solving really   hard problems that there may be a significant mode  around but if they are able to cross that chasm   not only is it going to make a huge marker on  the world but there's probably going to be a big   financial opportunity on the other end as well  yeah so tell us a little bit more about some of   the greatest you know if you see there are certain  segments or sub sectors within the health care   industry that have great opportunities for  technology innovation or technology solutions   so i have focused all of my health care  investments to date on software and class   1 and class 2 medical devices so i bet harlan  will actually be able to speak to some of the   more advanced deep tech developments in precision  medicine genetic um you know modifications crispr   cast 9 type stuff that i can only begin  to understand given my understanding of   scientific state of the art however there  are some pretty incredible developments in   in hardware and software that are enabling new  business models and new paradigms of of care um   that i've been fortunate enough to to work with  and one company that i get very excited about   is a company called tasso tasso is a company  that's spun out of university of wisconsin   group of phds with some grant funding from darpa  as well as from the university built a device that   can sit on your upper arm without any phlebotomist  they can use microfluidics to extract enough   whole blood to be able to run a pretty  wide array of diagnostic tests and as if   as as any of you who are following the whole um  theranose scandal it's really hard to actually   extract and preserve the integrity of whole blood  and theranus was not able to do it they said they   could do it but they were actually destroying  the sample in the process of collecting it but   tasso has figured out how to do that and they've  created an end-to-end blood analysis capability   that does not require a phlebotomist or a trip to  the lab which to me is so exciting for a number of   reasons one is it enables clinical trials at the  edge no longer do you have to get a patient into   a doctor's office on a regular basis to collect  blood which is usually something that needs to   happen quite often as part of a clinical trial  so you can democratize access to clinical trials   um pediatric applications become really exciting  i don't know if any of you are parents um who have   ever had to unfortunately get you know quantities  of blood from from your young children it's it's   not pleasant and to take some of the pain and  scariness away from blood draw um is you know is   is very comforting um military there are enormous  applications you can take an entire um you know an entire naval ship's worth of blood samples on  a regular basis i'm using this technology you can   create the ability to put labs in safe places and  get the blood drawn in in more contentious areas   but but frankly the amount of data that's  available to uh to us in in blood is enormous   and so what the spit test did for genetics you  know imagine the the amount of data that you can   extract from from blood and being able to get  that on a regular basis and so that's a company   that doesn't you know you can't just put that  to market in a year and hope it takes off it's   something that requires a lot of science a lot of  clinical trials a lot of nuanced understanding of   the market and that company has been you know very  effective i could go i could name a whole bunch   more if it would be of interest but give us one  more example maybe yeah one more that might not   seem as deep tech but they've been um rigorously  collecting evidence for years to to demonstrate   the efficacy of their digital therapeutic is a  company we invested in called applied vr actually   here in los angeles and they are using virtual  reality to manage stress pain and anxiety before   during and after surgeries as well as to manage  chronic conditions reduce opioid dependencies   um they are rolling this out in um obg's and  actually people are giving birth with these on   and it is wildly fascinating to me how effective  virtual reality can be in hijacking the the   the brain uh and to think into tricking you into  you're somewhere else experiencing somewhere else   and they did submit and receive a breakthrough  designation earlier this year from the fda which   opens a lot of commercial opportunities for them  they've raised about 30 million dollars so far   and it's uh you know it's a technology  that really was in infancy 20 30 years ago   10 years ago and only recently in the last  few years has gotten to a state where it's   it's real enough and compelling enough that it can  have clinical efficacy and there have been a lot   of trials and you know i've been really impressed  to see the results of um not just on an individual   patient basis but across the longitude great  examples um i i think of of some of the underlying   challenges that you're speaking to in terms of  these tech solutions have to do with challenges   in as you say democratizing access whether that's  to clinical trials or to um effective diagnostics   i'd love to turn it to you now harlan and ask kind  of the similar question what do you see as some of   the greatest challenges health care challenges  that either haven't been addressed yet or   areas where you see greatest great potential  for technology in the healthcare space   you're happy to jump in on that i just want to  touch on something matt said about the applied   virtual reality because i saw the company years  ago and and they clearly have made a lot of   progress but this is going to be a common theme  that i'm going to talk about today it's what what   matt was talking about was the really cool stuff  which is you while you're having the procedure   you can separate yourself from the  procedure but i think you're somewhere else   but it's initial impact on people it's just asking  people what gives you anxiety about these things   and it's the unknown so what the that company  and others can also do is take you through the   experience that you would otherwise have no way  of knowing knowing what it's like to walk into   a hospital walk into a procedure room whether it's  getting pain management with a needle in your back   or radiation therapy it takes the mystery out  of it and that's really when you talk to human   beings that's what they want they want they want  the known as opposed to the unknown because most   people can handle the known so the theme is and  i'm picking up something terry said about wanting   original ideas it's also original ideas and how  you apply them in original ways and i hope we can   hit on that a few times during during the evening  today to answer your question you know healthcare   is so broad and we have such amazing acceleration  of data and technology and capabilities and   understanding the genome and problems across  the country and as cobit is pointing out   which we already should have known global health  care issues there really is no single answer to   like what are the biggest issues things are  getting addressed but i think with the new   technology and data i'm going to talk about  things that are being under attended to or   there's huge opportunities still ahead um so i'll  start with um in fact matt kind of outlined my   you know where i should go and i'm going to follow  that lead for a while um you know the the the   opportunities are so big with a new understanding  of the human genome i mean this is something that   it has advanced immensely in 20 years and it's not  just understanding dna it's the the the volume of   data that's being generated from that is going to  lead to immense opportunities like in new drugs   gene therapies but we'll talk a little bit later  about the impact it can have on what we do today   as well so i say the human genome is a there's a  ton of interest going into it there's more money   going into that than i've seen even if i go back  maybe five to six years i think you can add a zero   on to the valuation of some of these companies  that are very early stage so there's huge   opportunity with human genome the the second  area that i think there's huge opportunity   is addressing areas of healthcare that are  lacking data and analytics today and applying the   new capabilities we have in high-speed computing  and the better analytics that we have and really   addressing problems that we've never been a bit  addressed before so i'll try to keep it simple   can we take a population of people and better  predict who's going to get sick and what they're   going to get sick from so we can mitigate it we  do that already with less sophisticated ways for   things like heart failure we're trying to predict  which diabetics will become more serious over a   short period of time um but you know think about  the current problems we have now with the covet   pandemic if we could tell who uh was going to  present in the er and was safe to go home and who   had to go in the hospital think about the impact  it would have in capacity in the hospital that we   have and there's so many other examples of better  uh and more efficient use of of the resources we   have if we can predict short-term complications  like who's going to get septic or just who's going   to get sick in the long term maybe we'll touch  on it later today we can now predict or identify   people who have cancer just at the beginning  stages before they have any manifestations   and think about the opportunities to intervene  there i do think one of the really under attended   opportunities is to understand um how do we  improve access to health care across the world   how do we drive more equity and affordability um  and improving really the health of our population   and quite frankly when we can do that  in the united states how do we do that   and take it on globally and i'm not suggesting  that's the sequence and a priority but i think   we have such opportunities to learn here on  how to improve access and you know how to make   uh how to understand the social determinants  of health and what really limits people from   getting the care that they need it's you know  there's cultural barriers but there's really just   distance to food there's distance to access um i  hope to have some time to talk about behavioral   health at some point we have to disrupt the way  we go about these things i'll plant the seed on   behavioral health right now which is um i heard  this in npr years ago in zimbabwe they had i think   about 15 million people in the community with 15  psychiatrists and they needed to do something to   and you know that they have stress just like we  have stress and someone came up with the idea and   said who's one of the most trusted individuals in  in the in the culture and it was the grandparent   so they actually trained grandmothers to do  some basic uh behavioral health stability   um interventions and listening and they put them  on bus stops across the key areas in zimbabwe   and you can't imagine the utilization that these  people that that those grandmothers had and the   impact it had and it became the social norm by the  way to stop by and do one of those bus stop visits   to a grandmother people just need to be heard they  need simple tools and without technology they were   able to solve a problem by thinking reinventing  the role and thinking about what was really needed   now imagine if you can apply technology to that  how you can magnify the the impact of having those   new trained roles now be accessible to everyone  even people that can't afford to get into the city   to get to the bus stop we need to think creatively  like that and those are the opportunities that i   think are under attended at the current time  such a great example harlan it reminds me of   my work in africa around mother to child  transmission of hiv and the use of a new   cadre of workers which i think has been one of the  most impactful social innovations around hiv is is   the idea of hiv positive mothers walking alongside  those other mothers who are pregnant to make sure   that they get tested to make sure that they go on  treatment to make sure that they stay on treatment   and that their child receives treatment so they  they deliver hiv free babies and and that was the   social innovation that happened because of humans  connecting with humans in a way that hadn't been   formalized before and later became codified in in  the system in the healthcare system yeah you know   it takes so long to formalize that and sometimes  we get ahead on the technology and then we don't   have the either the regulatory environment or we  just have impediments because people don't want to   change what they do today whether it's the  healthcare providers or the payers they want to   pay for what they pay for and they  want to use the roles that they have   you know you think about all sorts of remote  patient monitoring and again hope to hit on that   but you know the the remote patient monitoring is  good for solving the issues that we know today but   think about what you can do out of the home now if  you have remote patient monitoring but we have a   shortage of nurses already so how do we deal with  that well what if we think ahead of here's where   it's going does it have to be a nurse that goes  in and checks on the patient you know we have not   that i'm necessarily touting the success of it but  we have neighborhood watch programs why can't we   have community health watch programs where we know  people are going into the home to get their care   they're leaving the hospital sooner let's set up  like a social network where either by phone by   video by by computer or by visit people will  just lay people with basic training can make   lay eyeballs on someone to make sure they're safe  to get to the bathroom to get food to make sure   their monitors are working you know we just need  to create a new network to support the technology   and i think your example is a really good one but  i think it's going to be explosive as we we we try   to move more care to the home we can't rely on the  same roles of nurses nurse practitioners and pas   i think it's interesting you say that too  and i'll just connect it when we think of   cross-campus collaboration ucla anderson  just this week launched a new program   a management training program for community health  advocates community health workers and managers of   community health workers recognizing the power  particularly during covet of those folks that   are on the front lines of health care delivery  um and their role in ensuring better access   as well as better outcomes so um exciting  to see that actually get launched this week   yeah i mean i i think we have to do that because  we just don't we have a shortage of the the   skilled people and we have people working below  um you know their training level i mean i hope   we don't call it like defund the nurses at any  point along the way i mean it's really enhancing   the nurses enhancing the doctors and you know we  just got a grant or an earmark for a community   van to go out in an underserved area we're  stepping back to say how can we use technology to   have as few possible as of nurses and doctors in  the vans and put new people that can address other   community issues that you know have been ignored  in the social determinants of health the cultural   you know the need to look like the community  you're serving so it is a combination of original   ideas and technology that that will solve many of  our health care issues but the high-tech stuff we   will always exceed excel at it's the fact that  you know we're i don't remember the number but   yeah we're in the 40s or 50s in terms of our our  you know our ranking in the commonwealth fund of   of healthcare systems we have to do a better  job of meeting that lower end of the underserved   communities that we don't do today well let's  build on that point you know talking about um   you touched on harlan both kind of unattended  and maybe even over-hyped technology   solutions i'm curious matt if you have  any examples or any points you'd like   to share in terms of where you see um gaps in  terms of healthcare innovation or areas that   you think are being you know overly touted and  really we have to go to simpler solutions with   more creative execution let's say i mean from  where i sit right now and but i just wanted to go   revisit a point harlan made because it reminded  me of two companies in our portfolio um both   addressing the elder care nursing caregiver  shortage one is a company we invested in called   helper bees and they are using you know young  college-age students and you know recent grads to   pay them to go help out elderly people in  their neighborhood and there's a similar   company called neighbor force that's  doing something relatively similar   and it doesn't require a lot of deep tech to do  that it's you know there are people who want to   be helpful and can be and can be trained to be  useful without necessarily needing the medical   background so i thought that was an interesting  touch point and some trends we've been seeing   um and and sometimes the technology does not  need to be let me back up i still think that   we're really very much in the infancy of  using technology to improve healthcare um   you know some people call it health 1.0 2.0 3.0 i  don't know where we are exactly in the life cycle   um but a lot of the systems that are still  being used in day-to-day operations of um   of health systems and interacting with patients  are still very like old-fashioned like they're   broken processes they're outdated  systems that looked like they were   developed in the late 90s early 2000s and don't  really look like the patient experiences or   consumer experiences you'd expect to have in 2021  and sometimes sometimes it can be as simple as   using text messaging to communicate with  patients around their upcoming visits and   something as simple as that can actually become  a multi-billion dollar business um because the   status quo before that was using email or using  the epic or cerner app and pushing a notification   that the patient ever sees but guess what the  response rate on text message is nearly 100   and so one of our companies well health you  know saw that as an opportunity and has built a   you know several hundred person company worth  hundreds of millions of dollars based on creating   a better patient communication experience and so i  think when when the people who are on on the call   today are thinking around innovation challenges  think about it as a patient think about some of   the things that just there's a gap between your  experience when you go to a restaurant or to a   mechanic and when you go visit your doctor  and sometimes it's easier said than done   if you look at how artificial intelligence is  being applied in certain sectors and we're still   very much in the infancy of using ai in  healthcare and that doesn't necessarily mean   using computer vision to you know detect um  cancer tumors on on and radiate radiology   it can be something as simple as looking at the  text in your health record and helping the doctor   create the note they're going to spend half  their time writing up i can be helping find   the clinical trial that you you might qualify for  because in in the past it was someone manually   looking through all the requirements of all  the different clinical trials and matching them   up manually by hand so there are lots of  technologies we mentioned virtual reality and   you know every year there's a whole new tech cycle  that introduces new technologies and then thinking   through how can you apply them to healthcare and  again think through what is the problem you're   trying to solve not just what is the technology  you want to use there's just enormous opportunity um arlen tell us a little bit  about some of the promising   areas of innovation going on specifically at city  of hope i know you have a lot of cutting-edge   innovations share with us a few of the  ones that you get most excited about   yeah let me um i'll jump in with some of the tech  ones and then we'll get to some of the service   stuff um so with technology gotta start with the  human genome we've done so much research in that   area and and with the data that's generated let  me just tell you what it does i mean it allows you   to take high-risk cases and understand who has you  know what their prognosis is so you could take two   people with colon cancer and be able to help them  plan their lives to tell them you know which which   is the more aggressive case as i mentioned  earlier you can identify cancer patients now   by circulating dna um not waiting for them to  you know to to show up in an organ importantly   think about all the women that have surgery had  their breast cancer removed and we're not sure   if they have anything left in their body or not we  have now testing for what we call minimal residual   disease and aside from learning how to treat that  over time think about the comfort it can give   people families to know that it appears that  they don't have residual disease left we also   can use a person's dna we can reprogram a  person's t cells and by reprogramming their   dna so it actually attacks cancer cells and  only cancer cells so it um has less damage to   surrounding tissue or any other tissue and also  in many cases particularly blood cancers can give   you sustained remissions and we're building off of  that and those are called car t cells and next up   are going to be nk cells and then bites and what's  nice about that is they get more specific but also   safer over time and you can use them as an  outpatient and hopefully um in a clinic and then   people can go home and not have to be hospitalized  um the next step beyond that will be what everyone   hears about is gene therapy and regenerative  medicine and i won't go deep in that but in   regenerative medicine we basically take stem cells  that are the cells that are undifferentiated when   you're born and they become all your different  organs but we can now reprogram them so if you   need to replace heart fibers for heart failure  or something in the spinal cord you can the hope   is to be able to restore function that we haven't  been able to do so far we already have treatments   for blindness and you know the field will continue  to evolve it's going to get expensive but then the   price will come down so we'll have you know we'll  have to figure that out as a society a little bit   less scientific i talked about monitoring already  think about what that allows people to do is get   out of the hospital sooner it's safer to  be at home you know you have what we call   nosocomial infections where you get infected by  the bacteria in the hospital it's highly resistant   so you're improving health but also you're  improving affordability and it's safety and then   robotic surgery uh you know we city of hope did  not invent robotic surgery but one of the first   systems to embrace it in fact i think we had the  highest volume in the world for a while before we   start educating others in the area but you can  get at things that you couldn't get at before   you know prostate cancer is one where it was it  came to be and you know less bleeding and and   we think less um side effects and you  know cutting nerves and things but   you know in in metastatic liver cancer we can  take out eight or nine metastases in the liver   that would come from the colon where up until  doing that people it was a death sentence to   have colon cancer spread to the liver and now  you have not not a prolongation of life but but   a cure in 35 to 40 of patients so it's  really remarkable um what we can do both   with technology remote monitoring and then the  human genome and the data that comes from there   i want to just kind of stay on that theme of  uh creativity of someone else's idea i remember   as a kid i'm going to say a really young  kid but i think i may have been in college   and there's an article in the la times about dolly  the sheep and if you're old enough to remember   that you're my age or at least well you're you're  my age or close but i think i was in the fourth   grade when that came in with that i was not in the  fourth grade you know matt matt this was really   friendly conversations with this comment exactly  i'm gonna say you're you're still spitting up at   that age but we'll move on from there but but  you know one of the scientists at city of hope   saw that and he said well if you take dna and put  it in an egg and make a clone of a sheep called   dolly um why can't i take dna that makes human  insulin put it into bacteria that can make human   insulin at scale so up until then people were  always taking animal insulin and he basically   took an idea that was you know used for fun  for a sheep and put it to good use to solve   a problem that he identified and with that that  intellectual property we licensed it to genentech   and two things happened one was human insulin came  to be and the second thing was 41 years ago maybe   close to 42 the entire biotech industry was born  out of that license and out of genetech's vision   and this doctor's ingenuity to take something  that people were using for other reasons and   and bring it to human benefit so um you know and  the human benefit is people had allergic responses   to the animal stuff and it didn't work um and  and it was hard to grow to scale so we met a need   we improved lives and it just it's the  point of taking other people's original   ideas and being able to apply them in in new  original ways that lead to real disruption   because you're thinking about the problem  you're trying to solve not just the science   you got to do both and i don't want to discredit  our scientists he actually was on the forefront of   creating the cloning technology as well but it was  how he used it and i should add by the way um he's   still there 42 years later and decades later  he actually was part of the team that create   well he was part of a team that did the insulin  too the part of the team that delivered developed   the pathway for monoclonal antibodies so diabetes  to cancer another blockbuster for genotech and   you may not know what monoclonal antibodies are  but if you've had cancer you know what abastin   perceptin and rituxin are and those are up  until you know even today those are three of   the most popular most important drugs in our  regiment so looking at the world differently   um applying other people's knowledge is you talked  about collaboration in the in the um opening it's   really about collaboration and working together to  solve big problems i love that example harlan it   reminds me when you talk about disruption it  reminds me of the definition of of catalytic   disruption or catalytic innovation or disruptive  innovation being finding a good enough solution   to a problem that in in the end makes uh makes  society more just and more more equitable so   it's not always the most cutting edge although  scientific you know discoveries are are critical   to the process but sometimes it is finding  a new application of an existing innovation   that increases quality accessibility affordability  and ultimately quality of care and quality of life   yeah i mean i mean this is not exactly the example  you're saying but mrna is not new it's been around   for 30 years a lot of work went into a lot of  money and but it's time finally came and it really   helped lessen what could have been a tremendous  disaster for the globe yeah yeah matt did you want   to add any examples where you've seen some um kind  of disruptive innovation or these areas of new   um applications of existing solutions to different  problems or different um contexts yeah i mean   going back to my earlier comment around new  technologies opening the door for new platforms   i mean the shift from on-prem to the cloud  with aws has enabled thousands if not hundreds   of thousands of startups to roll out technologies  that never could have existed without it um twilio   moving the telephonic stack from this are you know  impenetrable hard to create create experiences on   um platform to now any developer in the world  can create a text message campaign or a video telehealth kind of experience has has changed the  world you know obviously the iphone has probably   brought more access to technology and access to  care frankly than any device that's ever come   before it um so it's all evolutionary but with  each evolution comes you know a trickle down of   hundreds or thousands of more um you know we  we talked a little bit about um mental health   and around destigmatizing it in zimbabwe and one  of the things that you know gets me really excited   is the recent merger between ginger and  headspace um you know headspace has been bringing   mindfulness to the masses for years in a very  like media friendly accessible way where there's   absolutely no stigma i mean it levels you it  brings you into the moment it makes you healthier   and headspace has been trying to bring access  to mental health to people through a delightful   mobile app that you know puts you know helping  one one click away and i think together they can   destigmatize and give people better access to to  maintenance level checkups to keep us you know   like like the the folks in zimbabwe because we  have a shortage of um clinical therapists as   well and so what can we do to create better  practices for for behavioral health and so   i love that technology and slight business model  disruptions can actually lead to better healthcare   healthcare outcomes for hundreds of millions  of people and i do hope that technology enables   a shift away from dealing with acute chronic care  and moves it more towards the preventative primary   care model because we have been terrible at  that and people usually wait until it's too   late to get the help they need and so i hope that  startups will be part of that that transition and   that business models will follow suit nice nice  harlan did you want to talk a little bit about   behavioral health and and how some some examples  or opportunities you see for innovation there   well yeah i mean i think it's um it's just an  area for up it's an area for uh disruption and   i'll focus on again the ingenuity of it but  it's also stepping back and asking yourself   what's not working and why isn't it working  and how can we look at it from the person   point of view so as i look at behavioral health  think about in addition to the stigma if you want   to get help you got to find a provider and it's  it's not a well-kept secret the provider networks   are really poor in health plans and even if they  technically meet the network adequacy regulations   think about what you have to do you have to  get an appointment you don't know the person   got to go in person got to drive got to leave  work got a park gotta go in that waiting room   and think about which button do i push and what if  someone else walks in am i going to get seen here   and if it's close to my office am i going to  see someone from work if it's close to my home   am i going to see someone i know and then you  have your meeting and then you get the stress   of missing your work and you go back there's  no matching of whether that's the right person   now think about it from a mom's point of view  um you you got a kid that needs an adolescent   therapist good luck finding one and by the way  they only meet during school hours so you're gonna   now take the kid out of school so here's a system  that doesn't work and yet we perpetuate it because   it works for a few it works for the so you  know this idea of destigmatizing it simple apps   but also just thinking why does it have to be  in person most you know the newer generation   is perfectly happy doing something through video  and if you're not let them go in person but give   people options by the way there's no data that 50  minutes is the right amount of time so you have to   pay for a 50-minute visit where maybe your life  is better if you can sneak in a couple 20-minute   visits during a busy day so you know we need to  be you know you know think about from the person   point of view look at the data and stop doing  something because we've done it that way before   um and that's what disruption and that's you  know i i tell that story in detail because i   want people think about the innovation challenge  to think about in detail what's not working today   and how can we fix it you know matt was talking  about the user experience and you know kind of   technical stuff i'm at the level of why do you  have to check in like you if you've been to a   hospital or a clinic more than once they should be  able to recognize you as you go through the kiosk   that should be your check-in you should be told  where to where to park and then when you show up   there really doesn't need to be a waiting room for  you because you've already checked in um i love   it when i walk into these really fancy hospitals  across across the world and i see the first thing   is line up here what what sort of consumer message  is that i mean so we we really need to like to   question everything in the system and see if we  can reinvent it in an appropriate way and and i'm   not saying blow it up um i think you know blowing  up the system actually has unintended consequences   and as most things will affect the underserved  more i think we just need to solve problems look   at it from the people's point of view and start  with the fact that we have inequities in care   we have inconvenience and care let's figure  out how to you know how to address those one   by one and um and then create a new ecosystem over  time harlan you you that was very eloquently put   and i think there's one level additional that we  can put on that which is that not all communities   need the same thing what the trans community when  they deal with mental health support they might   need a different kind of provider some you  know an african-american uh patient may need   somebody who's culturally sensitive to their  upbringing and backgrounds like they're   someone who's an immigrant who recently moved here  is probably gonna have different requirements and   so every we have to layer all of those challenges  against the communities that patients are coming   from and it's a there's a lot to fix well i i  mean i want to go ahead gail i'm sorry well i   only have to take us on to to to briefly  on to um environmental sustainability for   just a minute as well as open up um some see if  there's questions in slido but what would you   like to add did you want to add something well  i was just gonna you know i was talking about   the matching and i uh earlier which is what  matt's getting to in in detail i i think um   you know if you started with the data and you know  this we'll get to therapy in a second but if you   start with the data 100 the chances of dying of  prostate cancer are 111 higher uh in black men   than white men the chances of dying in breast  cancer are 36 percent higher in black women than   white women the system's not working there's  data to suggest that people feel more comfortable   getting here if they look like them and understand  their culture so we should be developing instead   of relying on you know can we hire someone into  this community um you know i'm waiting for the   old-fashioned way of doing staffing can we use  technology to allow people to find their match   where they're more likely to get screening  they're more likely to get early intervention   um i mean we just really you got to start  with the problem that you're trying to solve   and then all of a sudden becomes it becomes  a a an act of passion as opposed to an active   technology application i think i think that's what  we we lack sometimes we kind of look at like how   can we make this claim go by and you know get  paid more cheaply which is important by the way   but we really got to start with what are the  people and societal problems we're trying to   solve that i just wanted to add that because matt  kind of prompted that thought in my head yeah   absolutely and and i think that's relevant very  specifically to the innovation challenge and how   how teams how students put together  teams that have a cross-section of   of skill sets and optimally experiences and how  others can be engaged in that so i do want to talk   for a few minutes um about the sustainability  component of the innovation challenge and   um as as folks may know i mean sustainability  and this comes up a lot in my class it means a   lot of different things right it can mean  organizational sustainability that's what   funders are often asking non-profit grantees  to talk about their sustainability um there's   there's financial sustainability in terms of just  business model but we want to focus a bit today   on the environmental sustainability component  of the innovation challenge um and i know matt   you have some experience in this area and some  companies in your portfolio i think of an example   that sits at the intersection of the environment  technology and innovation there's a company in   morocco called cloud fisher and basically what  they do is they're harvesting the clouds they use   nets to capture fog and to put it into that's  coming off of the atlantic ocean and they're   condensing it into water and pushing it through  a filtration system and then piping it into these   very dry villages and communities so that they  can both have potable water but also to irrigate   their lands so cloud fisher for-profit technology  company and and there's many many other examples   so matt from tell us a little bit from  your experience what are some examples of   of the environmental uh innovation opportunities  either the challenges or or some of the solutions   you've seen so i'll caveat this all by saying  that i'm absolutely no expert on sustainability   although i think we all need to educate ourselves  on the state of the problem and what we can   individually do to make our own impact because  it is an existential threat to each and every   human being on this planet at techstars we are  very focused on sustainability across the firm   so i'm going to speak you know not just at the mat  level but right now at the techstars level we have   three programs to date that are focused on  sustainability one is a program we we run   in the nordics with equinor which used to  be called stat oil and then they rebrand   it as equinor because they even as a utility  company are very focused on sustainable energy   um we run a program with the alabama  power company on the east coast which is   uh alabama which is you know focused on on  energy and um novel approaches to to reduce   um carbon emissions and then we run a program  with the nature conservancy as well focused on   sustainability everything from preserving our  ocean to to climate impact um i'm going to take   off my healthcare hat and put on my space hack  for a moment so i built a space program for tech   stars a few years ago with the united states air  force nasa's jet propulsion lab maxar technologies   lockheed martin etc and a lot of the companies  we were investing in were at the intersection of commercial civil military space and climate  change um one of the things that you need   to be able to do if you're going to  be able to measure climate change is   sense the earth and understand where  things might be going wrong whether it's a   a drought that you can predict because you can  take the temperature of every plant or uh humidity   level of every plant on the earth and that's a  company that i invested in called hydrosat or   you are building a sensing capability  to detect um gas leaks methane leaks   toxic blooms that emerge um due to global warming  in a in a body of water there's a company that we   invested in called pixel that is that is doing  precisely that using hyperspectral imagery   um we invested in a company that's  taking nuclear waste product so a form of   radioactive material called strontium 90  which is produced by nuclear energy reactors   we spend hundreds of millions of dollars trying  to dispose of this material by the way nuclear   energy i'm a big proponent it is probably  the one of the most cleanest and sustainable   forms of energy we can create and we should  be absolutely investing significantly more   you know obviously within highly regulated  environments but we should be investing   significantly more in nuclear but anyway these  guys can take that waste product and turn it   into stable scalable electric power for undersea  for remote terrestrial applications for space   that's a company called xeno and so you're  seeing a lot of really cutting edge technologies   coming out of that aerospace independent  sector and that's just what i can speak of   um i'm you know if you were to bring in  some of the managing directors that are my   peers and colleagues with you know a much  more terrestrial focus you'll you'll be able   to hear a lot of incredible advancements around  marketplaces for sustainable energy companies   that are sequestering co2 and turning them into  you know industrial carpets and and bringing bringing market economic forces in line with our  goals of reducing carbon emissions to prevent that   that increase in temperature which could could  frankly kill us all um so it is it is horribly   frightening and there's you know a lot we  should be doing to to work on this but um   it's you know probably beyond my um expertise  to go much further than that perfect examples   and i think you you pointed out a couple things  come to my mind one is is when you're talking   about you know carbon emissions the there's a  lot of different opportunities for innovation   the question is which part of the problem are you  focusing on i just think of the the oil spill in   orange county like that is the problem what could  be done differently from from a technology whether   it's detection or response or education if we  really focus on what is that element of of the   environment and the environmental degradation  and the climate crisis we're all facing   that our student teams want to address in the  innovation challenge it's to focus on a problem to   as i say in my class projects apprentice with the  problem get to understan

2021-11-04

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