Challenges faced by medical startups and the role of venture capitalists

The medical industry is one of the most challenging areas for startups to succeed in. "Move fast and break things" just doesn't work in medicine.  So you might be surprised to learn that right now there are quite a few innovative medical startups coming out of Japan. Today we talk with Yuichi Tamura, founder of Cardio Intelligence, who has developed Smart Robin, an AI platform that reads EKGs, has been certified as a diagnostic device, and is being used in clinics and hospitals all over Japan. We talk about the challenges of bringing medical AI to market, their plans for global expansion, and the most important thing that venture capital can offer medTech startups. It's a great conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it. Show Notes The importance and challenge of the current EKG-reading workflow Why is is so hard to bring a new medical innovations to market Yuichi's transition from medicine to business. A go-to-market strategy for medical startups How Cardio Intelligence acquired enough EKG training data Why automatic EKG diagnostic innovation stopped in the 1970s The importance of explainable AI for medical devices and diagnostics The role startups need to play in medical innovation in Japan What venture capital firms can really contribute to medTech startups (besides the capital) Links from the Founder Everything you wanted to know about Cardio Intelligence Follow them on Twitter @cardio_int Follow Yuichi on Twitter @TamCardio Transcript Welcome to Disrupting Japan. Straight Talk from Japan's most successful entrepreneurs. I'm Tim Romero and thanks for joining me. Genuinely new medical technology is one of the most difficult things for a startup to bring to market. Regulations are complex and capital needs are high, and yet Japan has a surprisingly large cluster of innovative medical startups who have new technology both approved for and actually in use in clinical practice. There are a number of reasons for this, and today we sit down with Yuichi Tamura, MD and founder of Cardio Intelligence, a startup using AI to read EKGs and detect atrial fibrillation. It's a technology that not only makes work faster, but it opens up a whole new range of important inexpensive diagnostic tests that were simply impractical before. It's AI technology that is doing genuine good. Yuichi and I dive deeply into that, and we also talk about how AI is going to change the face of telemedicine and rural hospitals. Why EKG innovation stopped in the seventies and exactly when technical founders need to step out of the CEO role. But, you know, Yuichi tells that story much better than I can. So, let's get right to the interview. Interview Tim: So, I'm sitting here with Yuichi Tamura, the founder and CEO of Cardio Intelligence and maker of Smart Robin, who's using AI to detect atrial fibrillations from EKGs. Thanks for sitting down with me today. Yuichi: Sure, my pleasure. Tim: Well, I gave a really brief introduction to what Cardio Intelligence does, and I'm sure you can explain it much better than I can. So, what do you guys do? Yuichi: So, Cardio Intelligence provides the AI medical software, which enables physicians and the technicians to lead the long-term electrocardiogram more easily. Tim: And you're focused on detecting atrial fibrillation. So, what exactly is atrial fibrillation and why is it bad? Yuichi: Atrial fibrillation is a very, very big problem for cardiac health. It brings not only heart failure, but also brain stroke because an atrial fibrillation make a paralyzing the atrium, the upper chamber in the heart, which brings some very, very small thrombin. And finally, it drives into the brain arteries which brings a brain stroke. So, in such a case, the patient suffer from very severe symptom, half of the body paralyzing and sometimes make sudden death. Tim: And from what I understand it,