Tech Tonics: Recent Episodes
Connected Social Media
Tech Tonics, the Podcast, is a twice-monthly program focused on the people and passion at the intersection of technology and health. Hosted by Lisa Suennen and David Shaywitz (the co-authors of “Tech Tonics: Can Passionate Entrepreneurs Heal Healthcare With Technology?”) the show draws on their experience in business, medicine, and health-IT.
The Tech Tonics podcast seeks to bring the people in the digital health field to life and, ideally, elevate humanism in a healthcare world captivated by technology. “We deeply believe in what Robert Coles, an inspiration to us both, has termed ‘the call of stories,’” David Shaywitz says. “Our aspiration is to bring the spirit of Coles and Michael Lewis to the world of digital health.”
Together, Suennen and Shaywitz engage a range of intriguing guests in discussions that enable listeners to appreciate the stories behind the startups and the people behind the passion.
Lisa Suennen is the Managing Partner of Venture Valkyrie Consulting, LLC, a firm that provides advisory services to corporate and independent venture capital funds and to large and small companies around investment and product strategy, innovation spin-outs, market development, partnerships and financing. She is currently a member of the Qualcomm Life Advisory Board, the Sanofi Integrated Care Advisory Board, the Dignity Health Foundation Board, and an Advisor to the California Health Care Foundation Innovation Fund and a member of several private company Boards of Directors.
Dr. David Shaywitz is the Chief Medical Officer of DNAnexus, a company that makes it easier to work with genomic data using advanced bioinformatics and scalable compute systems based on the cloud. He received his M.D. from the Harvard-MIT Division of Health, Science, and Technology at Harvard Medical School, and his Ph.D. from the Department of Biology at MIT. He trained in internal medicine and endocrinology at the Massachusetts General Hospital, and conducted his post-doctoral research in Doug Melton’s lab at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute.
Tech Tonics, the Podcast is produced by Jason Lopez and syndicated by Connected Social Media. You can also find out more at venturevalkyrie.com and connectedsocialmedia.com.
Inspired by health technology from the age of five, Griffin Weber has pursued this passion both doggedly and joyfully. Now an associate professor of medicine and bioinformaticist at Harvard, Griffin spends his days doing what he loves, leveraging technology to pragmatically improve the health and the care of patients. Griffin grew up in Virginia, the […]
Matt Wilsey grew up wanting to serve. He spent his early career in government working for both blue and red administrations, but was eventually lured back to where he grew up–Silicon Valley—to join the tech scene, and helped start and lead several successful tech companies, including Zazzle and CardSpring (sold to Twitter). Along the way […]
Amy Emerson, CEO of MAPS Public Benefit Corp. (MAPS), grew up in Kodiak, Alaska and fell in love with both animals and science as a child. Later in life, when considering veterinary school, she realized that she loved biology but hated math – she would rather live in the wilderness on a lake and look […]
Stacy Feld had settled into a satisfying career in biotech business development when she accidentally found her way into a meeting with Genentech’s CEO and a tiny startup company called 23andMe. The moment sparked a sudden realization that the best life science innovation would be focused around the consumer and a career finding ways to […]
A Jersey girl drawn first captivated by engineering while in college at Dartmouth, Ariel Dowling went on to pursue her PhD at Stanford, exploring the use of wearables to anticipate and prevent knee injuries. After several experiences at tech-focused startups, Ariel has more recently found a home — and a calling — as a digital […]
A self-described “nerdy” kid from a working class family in a bedroom community of “The City,” on the South Shore of Long Island, Paul Bleicher trained as a physician-scientist, and was heading towards a career in academic medicine when he boldly decided to pivot to industry, where he’s enjoyed a remarkable and storied career in […]
Dr. Sally Shaywitz – Yes, she is David’s mom – has brought an entrepreneur’s mindset to her life’s work in dyslexia, recognizing the condition as a prevalent and underappreciated need, then working tirelessly to advance the science and enact the policy required to fully unlock the potential within so many brilliant individuals. Sally has helped […]
Matthew Zachary, CEO of Offscrip Media has had multiple careers despite the fact that he shouldn’t have had any. He had studied to be a concert pianist and composer and conductor through college, but at the age of 21, on his way to study in a USC graduate music program with Hans Zimmer, he was diagnosed […]
Kevin Lyman was once the world’s highest ranked Warlock in Worlds of Warcraft and a professional Halo2 player. But that wasn’t his original plan. In fact, growing up in New Jersey, Kevin always wanted to be a scientist, even before he was sure of what that meant. While a student at Renselaer Polytechnic, Kevin took […]
Diana Brainard’s passion for understanding our stories and experiences initially led her to study comparative literature in college; but sometime during her junior year abroad in Lyon, she realized she could pursue her passion through medicine, a journey that’s taken her from academic infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital through her current role as Senior Vice […]
Geeta Nayyar started off wanting to be a teacher, but then decided “science is the answer to everything” and became a doctor. Today she is the recently-appointed Executive Medical Director at Salesforce and gets to do both, which is her dream come to life. Geeta’s parents were both MDs and her two brothers are both […]
Ken Mandl has a gift for listening to other people, whether they’re mentors offering the advice that shaped his career in pediatrics and informatics at Boston’s Children Hospital and Harvard Medical School, or helping physicians and patients learn from each other by making it easier for them to share information. He’s a pioneering leader of […]
John Groetelaars learned to work with his hands on his family’s vegetable farm, but he realized early that he was more interested in using those hands to build motorcycles and mechanical devices. He followed his inclination first by helping manufacture engines and axles after earning his engineering degree through the GM Institute; he later transferred to […]
With a knack for engineering and a passion for patients, Andrew Trister career has taken this Jersey boy from radiation oncology to Apple to his current role at the Gates Foundation, where he’s spearheading their efforts to leverage technology to improve the health of people around the world. Andrew – like E Street drummer Max Weinberg — […]
Growing up in a small town in Iowa, Jill Hagenkord never imagined herself as a doctor, or scientist, or entrepreneur – yet she became all three, blazing her own path and charting for herself a captivating personal and professional journey. Jill’s childhood was especially difficult; her parents divorced when she was ten, leaving Jill and her siblings struggling to […]
Arnaub Chatterjee comes from a long line of physicians, and in his youth, assumed he’d follow the family tradition. At college at the University of Michigan, he pursued a well-traveled path towards medicine, graduating with a degree in cell and molecular biology. But then his heart wandered, and ultimately he found himself having a difficult […]
Madeline Bell is one of those people who decides what they want and does what it takes to make it happen. She grew up wanting to be a nurse, wanting to work with children and ultimately deciding she wanted to lead. She has achieved all three of these things and so much more. Today Madeline […]
Since March 23, 2020, Dr. Patrick Hines, physician, scientist and entrepreneur has spent most of his time between the Detroit Children’s Hospital and a nearby hotel room, where he stays to minimize COVID-19 risk to his family. He occasionally drops by to participate in movie night from a backyard chair while his wife and kids stay […]
As a boy, Craig Lipset thought he wanted to become a doctor – but over time, he came to appreciate that his real interest was, as he put it, engaging in the spirit of medicine at the population level – a pursuit that ultimately brought him to the forefront of digital health at Pfizer, establishing […]
For 20 years, advocates of telemedicine have been trying to break through to common usage. For all of modern human history, those with mental health challenges have held back from seeking treatment due to the stigma associated with doing so. And then, a Chinese bat opened the flood gates. Today we are seeing record usage […]
A brilliant and creative cardiac surgeon who went on to become the brilliant and creative CEO of the Cleveland Clinic for 14 years, Dr. Toby Cosgrove surprised many when he was invited back to his alma mater, Williams College, to give a convocation address. As his topic he picked: failure. In our latest episode of Tech Tonics, we learn […]
A childhood fraught with illness, loss and uncertainty drove Torrie Fields to an adulthood focused on making these experiences better for others. Torrie sincerely believes that we are all here for a reason and that her reason to is help people have more dignified, less painful experiences at the end of their lives. Having learned early in […]
Dr. Laurie Zephyrin was disappointed to learn that a less-than-rock-star voice was going to stand in the way of her career as a singer, but fortunately she locked onto her healthcare destiny in her teens. A formative moment in high school set Laurie Zephyrin in the direction of public health and she has never looked back. This […]
Taking on challenges is nothing new for Dr. Lynda Chin. It started with learning English well enough in a couple of years to graduate valedictorian of her high school, evolved to a distinguished career as a physician-scientist and then full professor at Harvard & the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, and ultimately led to her current role […]
Seth Feuerstein’s grandfather was a physician and his parents were both attorneys, so naturally his parents thought he would become…a comedian! While that didn’t come to be, he did end up as both a doctor and a lawyer who practiced neither discipline full time. Instead, Seth combined his skill sets to serially create new behavioral […]
After escaping the revolution in Iran, Sean Khozin found his way to the United States, harmonizing his passion for patients and data into a career that’s led him into startups, the FDA, and most recently J&J, where he’s now Global Head of Data Strategy – all while pursuing his love of music. The phrase “it’s […]
Matthew De Silva was a macro finance guy working for Peter Thiel’s hedge fund, Clarium Capital, when a family illness profoundly changed the course of his career, leading him to found Notable Labs, a Bay Area startup that aspires to identify better treatments for patients. Matthew had a busy childhood. Born in Ontario, Canada, his family moved to […]
Many people have heard of Nancy Schlichting, as she has been part of the fabric of the U.S. healthcare system for nearly 40 years. She has built a long and amazing career as someone who takes chances, makes unconventional choices and leads with her conscience. While her path to success wasn’t always easy, she learned […]
A physics and math wonk from MIT, Jim Manzi figured out early in his career that he loved the application of pragmatic, quantitative approaches to solve pesky real-world business problems, including today, challenges faced by life science and healthcare organizations. Jim’s early life sounds like a Springsteen song, and indeed, he grew up less than 10 feet […]
Like many entrepreneurs, he was born with the itch. Jason Lehmbeck grew up around his father and grandfather, both entrepreneurs in their own areas of expertise– dad was a geologist who worked with the mining industry and grandpa had a butcher shop. He knew that his destiny was to be “one of those guys who […]
Shamiram “Shami” Feinglass, MD, MPH, should have been a born again flower child. She spent her childhood among the San Francisco royalty that defined the 60’s and 70’s rock and roll culture here in the City by the Bay. Her single mom raised her while helping found the legendary Haight Ashbury Free Clinic, which was Shami’s first exposure […]
Born and bred in Mill Valley, California, where we record our podcast, Sam Brasch saw himself as a modern-day Alex P. Keaton – he just wanted to be a business man. He was “that kid” who was reading the Lee Iacocca biography in 4th grade while the other kids played soccer and kickball. Sam got […]
Stanford professor Kari Nadeau lives the life, some would say the dream, of what Judah Folkman has called the inquisitive physician, integrating her deep knowledge of chemistry, her experience in biotech drug development, and her clinical acumen and deeply-felt compassion for patients to bring the best of medicine and science to children and adults with food […]
David Altshuler was living the academic dream as professor and human geneticist at Harvard and MIT, where he was co-founder and Deputy Director of the Broad Institute. Yet in December 2014, he left this life to join Vertex, in continued pursuit of his translational vision. Born in upstate New York, David moved to the Boston area when […]
Tanisha Carino’s family fled from the Ferdinand Marcos regime in the Phillipines and settled in what she still believes to be the sweetest of homes: Alabama. As she travelled through young adulthood she had her first awareness that many Americans live on the fringe, desperately needing both healthcare and social services. Since then Tanisha has […]
Physician, scientist, patient, advocate: Glenn Pierce inhabits all four roles, and seems the physical embodiment of the translational impulse, driven by his own experiences coping with severe hemophilia to advance the science – and the policy – he hopes will eventually cure this condition for patients across the globe. While other kids enjoyed carefree childhoods, […]
When Megan Callahan was growing up, she was supposed to end up in healthcare – she didn’t even know there were alternatives. And she has spent her career and life in and around the field in more ways than she ever expected, as both an executive and a breast cancer patient. What she didn’t foresee […]
With confidence he attributes to his free-range childhood, Chris Gibson has followed his instincts and his heart, stepping away from the MD/PhD program in which he’s enrolled to co-found and lead Recursion Pharmaceuticals, one of the buzziest companies bringing AI to drug development. In mid-July, Recursion closed a $121M Series C, bringing their valuation ever […]
Sumit Nagpal was born to a pair of healthcare entrepreneurs and raised in Kashmir, India. When he was 13, he came to the United States where he saw diversity for the first time. Sumit followed his parents into the Ivy League, starting at Brown, but left to follow his muse, Steve Jobs, at NeXT, where he worked […]
A computational biologist by training, Imran Haque has managed to achieve the near-impossible: embracing the promise of data science in medicine while retaining his critical faculties. He may well be just the sort of innovator required at the intersection of medicine and big data. Born and raised in the Bay Area, Imran says he grew up in the sort […]
When Zoe Barry was a kid, she had two things she wanted to be when she grew up, either a veterinarian or “someone who writes checks.” She gave the first a shot and ended up settling on the second. Today she is CEO of ZappRx and a shining example of how drive and intellect can overcome adversity. […]
In graduate school, Karen Hong’s dream of becoming a biologist crashed into the inconvenient reality that she couldn’t stand working in the lab. Undaunted, Karen, pivoted into venture capital, and hasn’t looked back. As befits a future geneticist, Karen chose her own genes extremely wisely: her dad was a legendary wunderkind in Taiwan who had come to […]
Rebecca Kaul had planned to be a doctor. But life and the HMO era got in the way. As a result she went down an entirely different and windy path through chemical engineering, public policy, consulting on information systems and reinsurance. And together these all led her right back to a different way of contributing […]
A brilliant cardiologist and geneticist, Dr. Calum McRae rose to the top of academic medicine – then decided to reinvent it, from the inside. He just may be the person to do it. Born on the Isle of Skye off the coast of Scotland, Calum was the son of a physician, and couldn’t resist the call of […]
Dr. James Dromey was supposed to be a farmer in County Cork, Ireland and has the milking experience to prove it. But apparently cows were not his destiny, even though he was a farm family’s only son. Instead, James left the farm for the teeming metropolis of Galway and never looked back. Today he is […]
Andy Coravos left a promising career at a top private equity firm to follow her passion and pursue intensive training as a software developer; she now works on the frontier of engineering and medicine as CEO and co-founder of Elektra Labs, focused on the use of digital measures to support clinical research, and the generation of the […]
Carolyn Magill had planned a life in foreign service or international relations. But it wasn’t until she found herself at the nexus of healthcare and public policy that she realized she found her home. She has now traveled through the worlds of pharma, payers, providers and had leadership positions at companies both large and small. An […]
When she was a kid, Toyin Ajayi’s career goal was to “be the boss of something.” Drawn to power suits and authority, she aspired to become an unspecified boss lady. She may be a boss now, but her authority is well-balanced by a soft side. And Toyin’s path to her current role as Chief Health […]
Allison Kurian never had a chance. The daughter of two prominent academics, Diana Chapman Walsh the former President of Wellesley College and Chris Walsh, a renowned Harvard biochemist – Allison was destined by genetics and environment, it seems, to become the exceptional scholar and clinician-scientist who she is now. A self-described studious kid, Allison grew up in […]
An unlikely pair, Brian Smith and Jerry Harrison came together over their shared passion for music and science and helping entrepreneurs succeed. Together they are helping healthcare startups find their rhythm and chart a path to success through a new expert crowdfunding platform called RedCrow. Here’s the backstory and it’s a good one: Brian Smith, […]
Her illustrious career has taken her from clinician to biotech executive to university chancellor to CEO of the world’s largest foundation, yet throughout this exceptional journey, Susan Desmond-Hellmann has remained empathetic, inquisitive, and emphatically true to herself. Growing up in Reno, Nevada as one of seven children, Sue was inspired by her father, a pharmacist, and […]
Axel Heitmueller, Ph.D. grew up in Germany, the son of an engineer. Yet, despite the often discrete intellectual structure engineering can impose, Axel’s personal experiences have taught him how important it is to find comfort with a state of gray. As a transition economist, he has learned that everyone has an opinion; as a caretaker […]
Passionate about the intersection of policy and medicine, Darshak Sanghavi’s career has taken him from pediatric cardiology to the Obama Administration to his current role as CMO, OptumLabs, always seeking to define and improve on one thing in particular: the outcomes that matter most. Like so many origin stories, Darshak’s begins in New Jersey, where […]
An accomplished linguist who planned to take a job after college with a Russian oligarch (but rethought the notion after the man was nearly assassinated), Ari Caroline’s journey has taken him from language to economics to business to his current role as Chief Analytics Officer at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC), where he sees […]
Growing up on Capitol Hill in a Washington, DC political family, Sarah Iselin did the obvious thing, at least to her, by rebelling and going to art school. But when her practical self realized that was going to make for a hard living, she eventually found her way to healthcare through an internship at the […]
An accomplished investment banker who transitioned to become an accomplished executive at leading tech companies including eBay and Google, Stephanie Tilenius has now set her sights on an even more difficult challenge. As CEO of Vida Health she is focused on improving the health of the chronically ill with evidence-based coaching. Along her remarkable journey, […]
Dr. Carla Pugh does a lot of things. She is trauma surgeon, entrepreneur, researcher and educator and is officially a professor of surgery at Stanford University School of Medicine (she also went to UC Berkeley so Go Bears!) and also Director of the Technology-Enabled Clinical Improvement Center at Stanford. Born into an entrepreneurial home, Carla […]
Medical technology thought leader by day, computer gamer by night, Dr. Simon Kos, Global Chief Medical Officer of Microsoft, is a physician, business strategist and technologist who by his own admission is drawn to “bright shiny objects.” But a commitment to make medicine safer and better through technology has been his career guiding light. Simon, […]
When Harvard cardiologist and geneticist Sek Kathiresan was promoted earlier this year to full professor at Harvard Medical School (he also has an appointment at the Broad Institute), he shared the news in a poignant tweet that basically said, ““from India to Pittsburgh public elementary school to this – what a thrilling ride in this […]
If Alex P. Keaton was from Texas, went on to med school, and then trained in oncology, he might have emerged looking something like today’s guest, Dr. Brad Hirsch, an MD/MBA with a doctor’s heart and a businessman’s head, who’s now busy integrating both of these qualities as CEO of SignalPath, a company trying to […]
A capitalist colored by a deep streak of social consciousness, Marcus Osborne, the leader of Health Transformation at Walmart, grew up in the South and planned on a political life. But experience in the White House and later at the Clinton Foundation made him realize that entrepreneurship more effectively matched his internal clock speed and […]
Story teller, writer, drug developer – Sam Blackman is all three, a philosophy major who became a pediatric oncologist and then a creative drug developer with a penchant for imaginative solutions to translational challenges. Although he was the son of a doctor, Sam’s journey to the leading edge of translational research was far from inevitable. […]
Owen Tripp, Founder and CEO of Grand Rounds, was brought up by parents who taught him that you could do whatever you chose to do and that there was not one clear path to the right door. Owen has taken this to heart, starting adult life as a Spanish major and working his way through […]
He’s one of those tech people that came to healthcare to find a career of significance, but Matthew Stoudt has actually been destined for the health tech world since his youth. Matthew Stoudt aspired to be a lawyer, then a senator, before he realized he was an entrepreneur at heart. A foundational experience of losing […]
Dr. Molly Coye comes from a family who was obsessed with innovation and had a high tolerance for risk. They also had a history of commitment to anything that would disrupt unjust social paradigms and passed that down through the generations. Molly has packed all of these qualities and more into a healthcare career marked […]
Raised in a small town in Maine, and passionate about infectious diseases in the developing world, Noah Craft may not seem like your typical health tech entrepreneur – but on today’s show, we’ll hear how he’s channeled his passions into Science37, a high-flying startup the brings clinical trials to patients.” Growing up, Noah might have […]
In the course of his fascinating career, physician-scientist Amalio Telenti has had the opportunity to work in two imiscible centers of excellence in genomics: Eric Lander’s Broad Institute and Craig Venter’s Human Longevity Institute (HLI); on today’s show, we’ll learn what he’s taken away from these two exceptional and distinct organizations – and why he’s […]
Scott Barclay is a nearly ubiquitous presence around the healthcare IT world, standing at the intersection of technology and health since 2005. He has journeyed down the data stream from CVS to startup whisperer to venture capital investor over the last several years, always searching for ways to combine information and empathy. But it wasn’t […]
Eric Leuthardt, MD, is quite the Renaissance Man. An accomplished neurosurgeon, inventor, playwright, book author, clothing designer and father of two, Eric has built a career with and around brains in a way no one would have imagined early in his life. Teachers thought he was a slow learner, but it turns out they just […]
Katherine Chou is in many ways the quintessential Googler – super smart, a passion for computer science, an engineer through and through. On today’s episode of Tech Tonics, we’ll learn how this rock star at Google decided to turn her talents to healthcare, and hear what she’s discovered about healthcare, and herself, along the way. […]
Although his dad was a prominent politician who eventually became Speaker of the House, AliveCor Founder Dave Albert always knew he wanted to a career in medicine – it was the passion he discovered for engineering and entrepreneurship that took him, and his career, by surprise. While Dave chose a very different path than his […]
For a skydiver who’s motto is “Just jump out and go”, the journey from chasing down Sandanista kidnappers to driving Disney strategy to genomics pioneer sounds sort of rational. Lisa Alderson, founder and CEO of Genome Medical, is one of those special someones who thrives on adrenaline and channels it to great effect. Lisa went […]
The daughter of a commercial airline pilot and the oldest of two kids, Gini Deshpande grew up in Mumbai and told her parents that by the time she was forty, she wanted to own her own car, house, and company. Check, check, and check. After completing college and a competitive masters program in molecular biology […]
Deborah DiSanzo had a plan. She was going to be a stockbroker and make a ton of money to rise out of the rough circumstances of her childhood and make it big. When she realized she hated the role, but loved programming, she cast around for a new way to exercise her tech skills. Despite […]
Iya Khalil is a woman who’s always been ahead of her time. In middle school she was captivated by the writing of Stephen Hawking. After graduating school at Cornell with a PhD in physics, while colleagues were heading to Wall Street to be quants or to Silicon Valley to launch the next Webvan, she was […]
Tech Tonics has shared many stories of digital health pioneers who were passionate about health and computers from a young age, and fell effortlessly into a career at the interface of these interests. David Van Sickle, on the other hand, was most passionate about drumming. When he graduated from University of California, Santa Barbara, David […]
A self-proclaimed optimist who calls himself “a change-agent with a funny foreign name,” Amir Dan Rubin has spent his career shaping and reshaping healthcare delivery systems. Today, Amir is the CEO of One Medical, a company focused on making primary care personal, accessible, and affordable. Amir joined One Medical after a brief stint at Optum […]
While most of us spent our early teens dealing with the drama of middle school, Daphne Koller was in Israel simultaneously completing high school and college. She was a computer science prodigy on the fast path to a career as a leading AI researcher, an entrepreneur, and now the Chief Computing Officer at Calico, a […]
In what might be one of the coolest government roles you could find, Dawn Meyerriecks job is to bring the latest and greatest science and technology to the Central Intelligence Agency –she gets to be a modern day Q in a world of data, drones and DNA. Dawn’s path to technology and intrigue was anything […]
We have had numerous guests on Tech Tonics who went to medical school only to find their way into non-medical roles. But Ken Tarkoff, whose original career plan was to follow his father into medicine, chose the long way. Ken took the road to the dark side early into investment banking, joining a pretty legendary […]
An infectiously exuberant champion of science, sharing, and entrepreneurship, Atul Butte is the Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg Distinguished Professor at the UCSF School of Medicine. Among the questions we explore on this episode of Tech Tonics: can the irresistible force of Atul Butte overcome the immovable object of health data silos? Atul was born […]
If anyone can bridge the gap between technology and health, it just might be Amy Abernethy , oncologist and technologist, who has led the charge, first at Duke and now at Flatiron, for rethinking the way we collect and analyze clinical information. Born in Houston and raised by her mom in Orlando, Amy learned math […]
Dr. Christine Cassel never set out to be a doctor but a chance encounter between a kindly navy corpsman and her unexpectedly broken leg took her down the road to medicine. Over the years she has undergone an evolution from “Accidental Doctor” to the one of the nation’s most accomplished and recognized physician leaders, after […]
For many, music as medicine has long been put in that category of things that seem nice but not like “real medicine” We all know that music can make us feel better individually, but there is an accumulating body of scientific evidence demonstrating the clinical value of structured music therapy. The world is beginning to […]
From the frozen tundra of Wisconsin, to the desert of Arizona, to the Eden that is Palo Alto, to his current home in the greatest city on earth, Joel Dudley has followed his interests and instincts to become a pioneer in the thoughtful application of data science to biology and medicine. In this episode of […]
From tinkering with computers as a kid, to matriculating at Johns Hopkins while his peers were entering 11th grade, to his PhD in physics, to his current work at drug discovery at Regeneron, Jeff Reid has always embraced his inner nerd. Today, Jeff is head of genomics informatics at the Regeneron Genetics Center (RGC), which […]
Margaret Laws has been working at the intersection of the for-profit and not-for-profit healthcare world for many years. This world has had an explosion of activity to find solutions to major public health and personal health challenges; according to Margaret, these worlds are beginning to blur and the newest foundations and non-profits are actively trying […]
Deneen Vojta has played virtually every possible position in the healthcare world. She has at various times been a physician, an entrepreneur and a payer. Today it’s a hat trick, bringing all three of these roles together to bring new clinically valid, evidence-based technologies and services to patients through her current role as Executive Vice […]
The son of Eastern European immigrants, Zak Kohane was born and raised in Switzerland; he then came to the United States where he’s nurtured a passion for medicine and computers to become one of the nation’s leading thinkers, innovators, and mentors at this important and rapidly evolving interface. Join us this week as we discuss […]
Glen de Vries grew up in Manhattan, a nerdy kid who admired Richard Feynman, loved his TRS-80, and went to Carnegie Mellon University planning to study chemistry and computer science. A summer of molecular biology inspired him to switch his major to biology and, after graduation, he found himself in a lab at Columbia University […]
The medical device company iRhythm has been described as that rarest of all breeds – a digital health company with an actual, viable business model behind it. On today’s Tech Tonics podcast, we’re delighted to welcome Uday Kumar, the cardiologist and serial entrepreneur who started the company in his apartment, and learn what makes him […]
“I build stuff” is how data scientist Eric Perakslis modestly describes his breathless career, a journey that’s taken him from industry to academia and back again, with a brief stop at the FDA. Eric’s first job after college was at a small combinatorial chemistry startup in Boston, but he was soon recruited to J&J, where […]
When you ask Jan Bruce where she grew up, she says “in the media business.” Jan worked early on in the magazine and then digital media sectors, backing into the health and wellness category through opportunity. She planned a career as editor and publisher but always found herself gravitating to selling the advertising rather than […]
Jessica Mega, an accomplished cardiologist and now Chief Medical Officer at Alphabet’s Verily (formerly Google Life Sciences), says she joined the venerable Silicon Valley company to help patients. According to Jess, physicians who love patients need to lean into the tech world because great tech that doesn’t actually change care doesn’t have much of a […]
Deborah Kilpatrick grew up on a family farm in rural Georgia; her dad was a teacher and football coach; she describes life in her town as “very Friday Night Lights.” With a passion for math and science, Deb decided to becoming a Ramblin’ Wreck at Georgia Tech, continuing on there for a masters and PhD […]
Reports suggest that today there are between 1.2 to 2.6 million legal medical marijuana users in the U.S. But as we know, there is great controversy about medical marijuana as a “legitimate” medical intervention due to its history as an illegal substance and the lack of a large body of clinical trial evidence. And yet, […]
Chris Benko first joined Merck when he was but a lad of eighteen, rising through the ranks in HR and talent management to become one of the youngest VPs in the history of the organization, at the age of 34. But instead of continuing his ascending career into the senior ranks of biopharma, Chris opted […]
Susannah Fox eloquently described her job as U.S. HHS Chief Technology Officer – a role which just came to an end in the transition to a new administration – as “helping Health and Human Service (HHS) leadership harness the power of data, technology, and innovation to improve the health and welfare of the nation.” It […]
Many entrepreneurs and investors on our podcast advise would-be innovators to focus on the problem to be solved, rather than become wrapped up in a particular technology. “Your solution,” VC Dave McClure famously warned entrepreneurs, “Is not my problem.” On the other hand, many scientists – and students of science – have emphasized the pivotal […]
Rasu Shrestha, MD, is one of those doctors who found his way from medicine to technology. As he puts it, he rolled downhill from his birthplace in Kathmandu, Nepal, across many continents and into medical school in India. But Rasu kept rolling, finding his way to London, Los Angeles and then Pittsburgh where he now […]