How the toilet seat became the new frontier for healthcare w/ Nicholas Conn

When it comes to health data monitoring devices, society has a host of choices: phones, watches, apps galore - but what if you could just relax and use your phone to surf TikTok videos instead of checking your fitness app? Sound good to you?   It sounded good to Nick Conn as well. So good, in fact, that he parlayed that thought into a whole new level of health data monitoring. You might want to sit down for this one: The toilet seat.   Yes, the toilet seat - because, honestly, where else can we gather health data with minimal effort on the patient’s behalf - not once a month, but daily (sometimes more than once a day!)?   The more frequent the data, the better the clinical decisions will be - and that’s a win win for everyone - patient, doctor, health system, and entrepreneur!   Of course, selling the idea came with its own set of challenges, but Nick is here in this week’s episode to walk our listeners and viewers through how getting the right data, in the right ways can fuel a company’s success, instead of gathering sporadic data that risks, well, flushing that success right down the toilet.   Here are the show highlights: How to refine your story and secure investors (2:47) Gathering the right data for clinical decision making (5:13) A better way to collect data (6:33) Traditional data collection versus consistent data collection (9:20) Co-creating in data collection (15:09) Why you shouldn’t outsource core competencies (18:42)   Guest Bio Nicholas Conn, PhD is the Founder and CSO of Casana, a company obsessed with improving patient outcomes and reinventing healthcare at home. Nick completed his PhD in Engineering in 2016 at Rochester Institute of Technology. While in his PhD program, he developed a new form of health data monitoring technology – a toilet seat-based cardiovascular monitoring system.  That technology led to the founding of Casana in 2018 Nick’s broad expertise includes business development, algorithm development, cardiovascular monitoring, medical devices, ultra-low power systems, physiology, and signal processing.  He also holds a BS and MS in Electrical Engineering from RIT. If you want more information about Casana, you can visit their website at CasanaCare.com, visit their page on LinkedIn at  @Casana, or reach out to Nick on LinkedIn at @Nicholas Conn.