The Health Technology Podcast

Matt Milford, Co-Founder & CEO, Foresight Mental Health From the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology website Matt Milford and Doug Hapeman dropped out of UC Berkeley with a vision to transform mental health care. Their venture, Foresight Mental Health, is a data-driven mental health care service that uses modern technology to deliver highly personalized, data-backed treatment plans to their patients. Foresight is based in Berkeley and provides patients with a wide range of treatment and services to improve mental health and lifestyle. The company is composed of psychiatrists, therapists, neuropsychologists, software engineers, bioengineers, nutritionists and data scientists with a mission to revolutionize the industry. Matt and Doug were frustrated with how mental healthcare operates in the U.S. They explained that 55% of psychiatrists don’t accept health insurance and in the Bay Area, the number is even higher. Comparatively, in the healthcare industry, less than 15% of providers do not accept insurance. They said that most options are very costly, often even hundreds of dollars out-of-pocket. “We focus a lot on combating the stigma around mental health,” said Doug. “Traditionally, it’s been very stigmatized. With younger populations, people are starting to talk about it being more open, and we want to encourage and facilitate that openness and combat any remaining stigma.” Foresight uses a personalized patient profile that analyzes vital information including one’s genetics, comprehensive symptoms, and brain-chemical balance estimates. Foresight combines that data with their patients’ mental health history, family history, and lifestyle to create a personalized patient portfolio. Matt got an intimate look into entrepreneurship and innovation at the European Innovation Academy in Nice, France in the summer of 2016 through SCET’s summer abroad program. At EIA, Matt gained an early start in entrepreneurship and technology. His interests in entrepreneurship and innovation, coupled with his passion for mental healthcare, led him to co-found Foresight Mental Health with his friend and co-founder Doug. Although Foresight works with all ages, its focus is on helping university-age students. They currently help hundreds of UC Berkeley students at one of their nearby locations. To help modernize the mental health world, Foresight is reimagining the space where treatments are done. The clinics are calm and welcoming environments with music playing and a modern look. In the coming months, Foresight plans to open more clinics and expand its technology to new areas of healthcare and wellness. “We’re learning a lot here, in a totally new and different way than at Berkeley,” said Matt. “We’re set on our mission of reinventing mental healthcare through the use of technology to make people happier and healthier.”

Ryan Van Wert, Co-Founder & CEO, Vynca Dr. Van Wert is a co-founder and CEO of Vynca. In addition to his role at Vynca, Dr. Van Wert is a part-time Clinical Assistant Professor at Stanford University, where he maintains a small clinical practice. Prior to Vynca, Dr. Van Wert co-founded AWAIR, Inc., a medical device company focused on reducing complications for critically ill patients, which was acquired by Cook Medical Technologies in 2015. He is frequently invited to speak about his passion for improving care delivery at the end of life and the process of value-driven healthcare innovation. He is a named inventor on multiple issued and pending health technology patents. Dr. Van Wert graduated with the University Medal in chemical engineering from Queen’s University, Canada. He completed medical school internal medicine residency at the University of Toronto, and his post-doctoral training at Stanford University in Pulmonary Disease, Critical Care Medicine and Biodesign. He holds three board certifications from the American Board of Internal Medicine and is a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Canada.

Thomas J. Fogarty, MD, Founder, Fogarty Institute for Innovation Dr. Fogarty is an internationally recognized cardiovascular surgeon, inventor, entrepreneur and vintner. He has dedicated his entire career to improving patient care and has acquired 190 medical patents for his revolutionary work, including the “industry standard” Fogarty balloon catheter and the widely used Aneurx Stent Graft that replaced the open surgery aortic aneurysm. His inventions heavily influence the way surgery is performed today. Dr. Fogarty has been recognized by countless organizations for his contributions to medical science. Dr. Fogarty founded the Fogarty Institute for Innovation on the campus of El Camino Hospital in 2007 to spur medical device innovation, improve patient care and lower healthcare costs.

Thomas J. Fogarty, MD, Founder, Fogarty Institute for Innovation Dr. Fogarty is an internationally recognized cardiovascular surgeon, inventor, entrepreneur and vintner. He has dedicated his entire career to improving patient care and has acquired 190 medical patents for his revolutionary work, including the “industry standard” Fogarty balloon catheter and the widely used Aneurx Stent Graft that replaced the open surgery aortic aneurysm. His inventions heavily influence the way surgery is performed today. Dr. Fogarty has been recognized by countless organizations for his contributions to medical science. Dr. Fogarty founded the Fogarty Institute for Innovation on the campus of El Camino Hospital in 2007 to spur medical device innovation, improve patient care and lower healthcare costs.

Sean Duffy, Co-Founder & CEO, Omada Health Sean Duffy is the co-founder and CEO of Omada Health, a digital behavioral medicine company dedicated to inspiring and empowering people everywhere to live free of obesity-related chronic conditions like heart disease and type 2 diabetes. In 2017, Omada was recognized as one of Fast Company’s World's Most Innovative Companies and in 2016, the company was named a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum. Sean’s past speaking engagements include the World Economic Forum annual conference, Clinton Global Initiative Health Matters Summit, the Society for Behavioral Medicine, the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference, and others. He has written extensively about digital health and the future of healthcare in The New England Journal of Medicine, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and TechCrunch, among other publications. Prior to Omada, Sean worked at both Google and IDEO. A former MD/MBA candidate at Harvard, he holds a BS in neuroscience from Columbia University.

Gabriel Sanchez, PhD, Founder & CEO, Enspectra Health Gabriel Sanchez, PhD, is founder and CEO of Enspectra Health. As a doctoral student at Stanford University, Gabriel was the lead inventor of portable second harmonic generation microendoscopy and created the first functional system for in vivo tissue imaging of human skeletal muscle and connective tissues: the Zebrascope. Prior to founding Enspectra (formerly Zebra Medical Technologies), Gabriel taught biomedical device design in the Bioengineering Department at Stanford and consulted for several Biodesign teams at Stanford. Gabriel holds M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in mechanical engineering from Stanford and a B.S. degree in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Charlie Silver, Co-Founder and CEO, Mission Bio Charlie is CEO and co-founder of Mission Bio where he leads a team dedicated to solving complex biological problems with precision engineering, innovative biochemistry, and supported bioinformatics. Charlie has dedicated his career to commercializing next-generation hardware technology and scientific instrumentation at emerging ventures in healthcare and semiconductor. Prior to Mission Bio, he led engineering at Novelx (acquired by Agilent) and then served in R&D and marketing at Agilent. Charlie received a joint MBA from UC Berkeley and Columbia University, an MS in physics from UW Madison, and a BA in physics from Columbia University.

Beverly Huss, President & CEO, Qool Therapeutics Beverly Huss joined Qool Therapeutics as President and CEO in September 2013. Previously, Beverly was President and CEO of Vibrynt, Inc. a company that developed a novel minimally invasive therapeutic device for treatment of morbid obesity. Prior to this, Beverly was with Santa Clara, California-based Guidant since 1986, fulfilling a variety of executive roles within the company’s various medical device divisions. She managed the worldwide Endovascular Solutions business as President and quadrupled worldwide revenues to $150 million for the carotid and peripheral vascular business in four years. Prior to this Beverly held several executive level positions as Vice President of Guidant’s Canada and Latin America operations, Vice President of Vascular Intervention Global Marketing and Vice President of the Stent Business Unit where she built the company’s coronary stent business, a market leader for 27 of 28 quarters with revenue growth of zero to $1 billion in three years. Earlier in her career, Beverly held engineering positions at both Honeywell Defense Systems Division and Jones and Laughlin Steel. Additionally, she served as chairman of the Silicon Valley American Heart Association and as a senior advisor to Pervasis Therapeutics, a Cambridge, MA based cell therapy company. Beverly holds a M.S. in technology management from Pepperdine University and a B.S. in metallurgical engineering from the University of Illinois. Beverly has several patents to her credit in the cardiovascular, obesity and temperature management medical device areas. In addition to the Qool Therapeutics, Board, Beverly serves the boards of Accuray, Kalera Medical, and Madorra, and the University of Illinois Material Science and Engineering steering Committee and Biomedical Engineering Steering Committee. She previously served on the boards of Surefire Medical, Ulthera, Dade Behring, Inc., Wright Medical Inc., and Artes Medical. She is a mentor in the Stanford University Biodesign Fellowship Program. Beverly was the recipient of the 2013 University of Illinois College Of Engineering Alumni Award for distinguished leadership in the medical device industry.

Keith G. Lurie, MD Dr. Keith Lurie is a practicing cardiac electrophysiologist and resuscitation scientist who, over the past 30 years, has developed novel ways to resuscitate patients experiencing sudden cardiac arrest. As one of the leading innovators in the field, he has helped to develop new devices and methods that optimize cardiopulmonary resuscitation and improve the likelihood of survival following cardiac arrest. In addition, he is a respected thought leader in developing and implementing an internationally-recognized systems-based approach to managing and treating cardiac arrest. Some of his most notable contributions include the development and assessment of various resuscitative techniques such as the impedance threshold device (ITD), active compression-decompression (ACD) CPR, use of active intra-thoracic pressure regulation to modulate cerebral and systemic circulation in states of severe hypotension and head injury, and the development of devices to elevate the head and thorax during CPR. He has mentored scores of research and clinical fellows over the past 30 years and he actively collaborates with multiple scientific colleagues worldwide. A professor of Emergency Medicine and Internal Medicine at the University of Minnesota, Dr. Lurie also directs a NIH-funded research laboratory at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis and he is a co-founder and Chief Medical Officer for Advanced Circulatory Solutions. His scientific publications have been cited over 10,000 times in the medical literature. He previously founded and then sold Advanced Circulatory Systems Incorporated to ZOLL Medical in 2015.  

Shoshana Ungerleider, MD, California Pacific Medical Center Dr. Shoshana Ungerleider is a physician, philanthropist and speaker. She works as an internist practicing hospital medicine at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco. She received her medical degree from Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, OR and completed residency at California Pacific Medical Center where she is now on the teaching faculty and serves on the Executive Board of the Foundation Board of Trustees. She is an LP in Trucks Venture Capital Fund. Shoshana has been featured as an expert on PBS NewsHour, CBS News and spoken at Google, Exponential Medicine, The Schwartz Center Compassion in Action Healthcare Conference, Columbia University and Stanford University School of Medicine. She funded Netflix's Oscar-nominated Extremis and executive produced Netflix's End Game.