#96, Unlocking Precision Health with Oculomics, with Carlos Ciller from Ikerian

Accelerating medical decision-making with AI is the mission of Ikerian, a Swiss software company enabling healthcare teams to harmonize and analyze data at scale. In this episode of the AWS Health Innovation Podcast, Alex Merwin, Head of Growth for Healthcare and Life Science Startups at AWS, is joined by Carlos Ciller, CEO and co-founder of Ikerian, to discuss their innovative platform and approach.

Carlos shares insights into Ikerian's journey, from its origins as a retinal imaging AI startup called RetinAI, to evolving into a comprehensive data platform serving pharmaceutical companies, physicians, and researchers across therapeutic areas. The discussion explores how Ikerian is empowering stakeholders to detect diseases sooner through biomarker identification, optimize treatment decisions with curated insights, expedite clinical collaboration through efficient workflows, and accelerate drug development by aggregating learnings. Carlos also discusses the key components of their scalable cloud platform, their focus on user experience and education, and the entrepreneurial resilience required to bring such an ambitious vision to reality.

1. Founder's Entrepreneurial Journey
   • Carlos Ciller shares his background, from studying in Barcelona to co-founding Icarian in Switzerland. He discusses the resilience and commitment required as an entrepreneur, learning from failures, and the importance of time management after becoming a father.
2. Oculomics: Unlocking Systemic Health
   • The eye provides a window into systemic diseases, a field known as "oculomics." Retinal scanning offers a low-cost, automated diagnostic modality compared to alternatives like MRI, enabling early disease detection and optimized treatment decisions.
3. Diverse Customer Needs, Unified Solution
   • Ikerian caters to pharmaceutical companies (AI, medical, market access teams) and physicians, offering AI analysis, clinical studies, patient identification, decision support, and patient engagement through a unified, cloud-based platform.
4. Scalable Cloud Infrastructure Enabler
   • Leveraging Amazon's scalable cloud infrastructure, Icarian's platform can dynamically scale based on customer needs, comprising image/data management, task processing, clinical viewer, and modular AI components.
5. User-Centric Design for Adoption
   • Recognizing the importance of user experience and education in healthcare, Icarian focuses on user-centric design to drive platform adoption among pharmaceutical companies and physicians.

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To learn more about Ikerian and their innovative platform, visit ikerian.com.