Episode 17: Expanding Health Data Access & Fighting Sepsis

Join host Gene Cunningham for a special roundtable conversation with Eric Doherty, Dr. Ted Conklin, and Dr. Joseph Colorafi about PERSOWN’s mission to transform global health and health data access.  

Eric is the President of PERSOWN. Eric has nearly 30 years of healthcare-related executive leadership experience in starting and reorganizing businesses in the areas of medical devices, pharmaceuticals, biotechnologies, biogenetics, EHR Systems, disposable medical equipment, and consumer goods.

Dr. Conklin is a seasoned health care executive and entrepreneur with over 32 years in the industry. He founded a start-up company in the virtual health care space and has also served in officer roles for two major health plans for over 10 years.

Dr. Colorafi has a body of experience in the creation and use of cloud-based big data platforms and is a thought leader applying advanced analytics to improve healthcare quality and financial performance.

View Guest Eric Doherty’s LinkedIn

View Guest Dr. Ted Conklin’s LinkedIn

View Guest Dr. Joseph Colorafi’s LinkedIn

Transcript

Voiceover 

SLU International Business Now Conversations That Matter is a podcast developed by the Boeing Institute of International Business in Saint Louis University's Chaffetz School of Business. Special thanks to founder Doctor Seung Kim for his grant to support the launch of this podcast. 

Gene Cunningham (Ad Read)

Bunzl North America, based in St. Louis, Missouri, is the largest division of Bunzl plc, an international distribution and outsourcing group headquartered in London.  Bunzl owns and operates more than 200 warehouses that serve all 50 states and Puerto Rico, as well as Canada, the Caribbean, and Mexico. With more than 8,000 employees, Bunzl supplies goods and services to food processors, supermarkets, non-food retailers, and convenience stores across North America generating revenue of over $9b annually.

Gene Cunningham (Intro)

A warm welcome to our listeners from the St. Louis University Boeing Institute of International Business. I'm your host, Gene Cunningham, bringing you Conversations That Matter. For this episode, we have a special opportunity to examine how several companies are collaborating to develop a new analytic capability that monitors patients for deadly sepsis infections. Currently, they have introduced this capability in the U. S. But they plan to move into global markets shortly. We'll discuss the current state of their business and the steps they are taking to enter into international healthcare markets. 

My guests today are Eric Daugherty, president of PERSOWN and a dual MBA grad from SLU. Dr. Ted Conklin, the former chief medical officer for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida and Dr. Joe Colorafi, currently clinical faculty at the University of Washington. and former clinical data science officer at Common Spirit Health. Together, they've created a capability to reliably identify sepsis conditions in patients while improving patient quality of life. Gentlemen, it's a great pleasure to have you with us today. We've got a lot to talk about, so let's get started. 

Eric, can you briefly describe for our audience, the health risks associated with sepsis and what PERSOWN is doing to minimize deaths and increase patient quality of life? 

Eric Doherty

Gene. Good afternoon. Thank you very much for the opportunity to present our company and present what we're working on.

You know, definitely sepsis is something that has been around for decades, if not centuries, you know, the importance of finding a way to minimize and hopefully find a way to access a patient from a health standpoint to prevent them from going into a sepsis related issue is something that we're really driving toward here in the marketplace within the United States, as well as globally. You know, sepsis is the body's extreme response to an infection and if it's not identified and treated quickly, it may lead to serious medical consequences and ultimately to death. You know, sepsis is actually one of the most deadliest medical conditions with over 49 million, and that's a M, million cases. and actually more than 11 million deaths around the world.

It's the single largest cause of death in hospitals and every hour that passes before sepsis is treated, the risk of death increases by close to 8% which is huge. It's complex. There are many possible viral bacterial or even fungal strains that can cause sepsis and it can be caused by a scratch from an infected, you know, tool or infected play yard piece of equipment and identifying the infection source can quickly lead to really critical condition within both the hospital setting or in a home setting.

I think in terms of patients who have potentially a surgical procedure at a hospital, they go home, and within one, two, three days they develop a high temperature. They have issues with their heart rate and unfortunately they're going into probably septic shock. So, it's something where we feel it's a huge need from our standpoint to bring a technology to the marketplace that can ultimately hopefully improve lives around the world. And I really again save those moms, dads, sisters, brothers, etcetera, from having this issue. 

Gene Cunningham

So that takes us to the state of health care. Dr Conklin, can you talk to us a little bit about the future of health care and how hospitals are trying to lower their costs, lower the cost of health care, and how does the PERSOWN solution really help. The healthcare environment and how does it fit in? 

Dr. Ted Conklin

Thanks for the opportunity, Gene. Appreciate the opportunity to be here. I think we'll all agree that the future of healthcare needs to include a forklift upgrade on the use of real time integrated data, as well as increasingly leveraging predictive modeling to inform evidence-based decision making and monitoring at the point of care.

This is really critical. And we have been in the dark ages in terms of being able to actually leverage real time data. to inform our decision making. Early identification of sepsis is a perfect example and being able to intervene before somebody gets sick. And obviously minutes matter in this realm.

So, our hope is to create a new ecosystem. And we think this is absolutely critical for accelerating improved outcomes measured by, you know, quality, cost, and experience. It also provides the opportunity for continuous quality and process improvement in healthcare. So, adding efficiencies as well as improved outcomes.

And I think that's going to be very important for the economics of healthcare as well as improving outcomes. 

Gene Cunningham

Thank you, Dr. Conklin. 

Dr. Colorafi, Google just announced how they propose to use AI technologies to monitor individuals with heart disease. Can you help us understand how analytics and AI benefit healthcare?

Dr. Joe Colorafi

Sure. In fact, we're using Google's platform for large language model, which is called Med-PaLM, and its actually open source and available and we're using it at the university level. I'll give a detail about that in just a second, Gene. I think. It's a matter of what AI can do with the help of humans. It can't do it alone.

And I think we should also point out what it cannot do, and certainly what it can do with the help of humans is to be able to validate something. In other words, any model that you build, anything mathematical, does it actually predict the target outcome? For instance, like sepsis, how good is the model?

If you don't do that, you're going to miss sepsis cases. People are going to die because the mortality rate, as Eric was intimating, there can be over 40% in elderly people. You also have to not bother the folks, the clinicians, like us. You can't create a lot of false positives. You can't over alarm. Cry wolf too often because they'll ignore the signals and the decision support coming from a model.

So, you really have to polish up that model and that's what we mean by good statistical validation. So, Med-PaLM, and other chatGPT and other generative AI programs and a stack, like we use at PERSOWN on SAS Analytics platform can certainly help use the data to find a better statistical model. What AI can't do is deductive reasoning.

We're taught, you know, year in and year out as medical students and then residents during our training, what this diagnosis isn't. It's almost as important to exclude what this isn't than what it is, and AI is really good at sensitivity in summarizing huge amounts of different sources of data on what this probably is. And it's pretty good at that. What it's not is excluding what it isn't. It's not very good at finding those false negatives. The clinical mind, well trained, is much better at doing that. 

 Gene Cunningham

So, it's the connection between using the AI but having the physician to be able to interpret what is being analyzed. Is that correct? 

Dr. Joe Colorafi

Well, before you want to release a model, it needs to be validated by subject matter experts those are usually clinicians, then you can let the model run with the credibility and the insurance that it's not going to miss those very sick patients and it's not going to over alert the end users.

Gene Cunningham

Eric, back to you, Smash-H the sepsis monitoring and alerting system for hospitals and homes. This allows patients and their doctors to monitor a patient for signs of sepsis outside the hospital. Sounds like a great capability to have. But what are some of the challenges you face bringing this into the U.S. healthcare market? In addition, can you talk about how you plan to generate revenue and meet compliance with HIPAA regulations?

Eric Doherty

Yeah. Thank you. You know, our platform is on a Microsoft SAS Viya setup. And so from a HIPAA GDPR compliance standpoint, because of that, we've resolved that issue. So that's, that's a benefit for people to understand.

You know, what we're doing is providing a data stream. So, it's not something that needs to be FDA or CE approved, which is also beneficial. We can actually really use it more for research purposes going forward, but really in the U.S. healthcare marketplace, what we're running into from a concern issue is the number of silos that are up, you know, amongst the electronic health records companies where they don't like to really normally provide or give access to their data. They want to hold it within their siloed type of environment. And so, where we've kind of been able to kind of cross over that that fence is to connect into these health care data API companies, which basically move the data from the EHR system, the electronic health record system into the hospitals.

And so, through that health care data API company, we can access the data. Anonymize it and then actually move it then through the analytical capabilities over to SAS. And so that has been something we've been able to get over a little slower than I had wanted. But in general, we are in the process of doing that.

So really, we'll connect into one healthcare data API company, get our system set around that and then move to the next. So, it takes a little longer, but it will work, which is great. You know, the other aspect of it is the number of touch points that we'll have to actually connect into. You know, the, the opportunity is there, as you mentioned, between the hospital and home setting.

But think in terms of the intermediaries. There's the long-term care facilities. There's the rehab facilities. There's the hospital at home setting, which is a little different than just monitoring a patient at home. There's some other aspects that have to be tied into that hospital at home patient. And so, to be able to connect into all the different devices, all of the different monitors and the applications that are involved, that's a heavy lift.  It really truly is. But we're looking towards connecting into health care groups that are part of the consultant integration kind of partnership setting and allow them to kind of lead that structure. And so as we move forward into, you know, more and more networks around the country, and then literally globally, the aspect of having that integration partner will be a huge value to us.

As far as the revenue goes, everything that we're doing is reimbursable. And so that's a value. So, when it comes to Medicare, Medicaid, and through insurance payer platforms, the elements of, you know, data and the elements of remote patient monitoring, etc. are all reimbursable events. They vary, yes, but in general it is a revenue opportunity for us as a company, but it actually is a revenue opportunity to hospitals as well, where they will actually be able to basically reimburse the elements of what we're putting in as a platform and then get obviously reimbursement to cover the costs of our platform in that environment.

Gene Cunningham

Got it. You mentioned SAS and their analytic model and the massive amount of data that they're going to be churning through 10 minute response time for patients and physicians. What prompted SAS to join up with PERSOWN on this whole process? What do you think was the key there? 

Eric Doherty

Yeah, great question.

A lot of that had to do with our outlook on the global marketplace. You know, a lot of their business from a data analytics standpoint comes from the first world company countries. So, you know, areas like the United States and North America, Europe. And so, they looked at us as, you know, the opportunity to get data into the lower to middle income countries around the world.

So going into Latin America, going into Africa, going into the APAC region. And the ability to connect into countries in those parts of the world where there isn't really great health data, there's not really great electronic health records, etc. And so, the ability to tie into our system and allow people to basically set up their own health records as we move forward and then get that data configured and moved over to SAS for data analytics is really the true reason why they partnered with us.

You know, we added Dr. Robert Redfield. the former CDC director to our team. And so with his connections globally, obviously with the CDC work, but a lot of the work that he did with HIV under George Bush number two, and really bringing in therapeutics and hoping to really kind of minimize the effects of HIV, you know, he still has a lot of relationships in those countries.

And so, the aspect of drawing upon that connectivity that he has and obviously some of the SAS connections that they've already built in will allow us to drive into those countries pretty quickly over the next couple of years. 

Gene Gunningham

Got it. Dr. Colorafi, with the continuous monitoring of the data and the data management involved in this process, how does the healthcare provider networks -- how do they benefit from this constant data management that's going on?

Dr. Joe Colorafi

They're going to benefit if they see the validation. I just watched an old favorite movie of mine, Jerry Maguire, and it's just if you're not validating going back to that again, and I know I'm pressing this, this topic again, but it's very, very important. It will not resonate with clinicians, unless you can show that the statistical performance is very good and it's also easy to absorb the information, not break their workflow.

So, if you're seeing 30 patients, 20 to 30 patients a day in the hospital, you can't stop and look something up. It has to be in your natural workflow. And in these days with technology and more advanced EHRs and other interoperability type programs called APIs. We're able to be able to do that. So, you don't want to start off with, you don't have me at hello, because the statistical validation isn't very good.

And physicians and nurses know something about statistics. They're certainly not all statisticians. They don't. teach biostatistics like some of us do in medical school, but they can understand information. And if it's visualized that information for them in the right way as well, that's very helpful. As far as costs, you from business school know that there's a difference between something showing up as net income or EBITDA versus cost avoidance.

A lot of times in medicine, when we do good for patients, we avoid costs. We keep them out of the ICU. We stop them from dying. That's why we went to medical school. That's what we try to proselytize. However, when it comes down to EBITDA, That's very hard to, to codify, right? And so there are ways where an organization can actually turn analytics from a cost center and, and maybe even projects that are cost avoidance to actually revenue generating.

We produced at least six patented models at my large integrated health network system that I worked in that can be used on marketplaces and could possibly be licensed in the future. PERSOWN is, part of its business model is to help license existing models that exist and get it interoperable in any type, agnostic types of platforms. So, it can be looked at as also a revenue generator and something that actually produces intellectual property. 

Gene Cunningham

So, do you see this as a way to break down some of the barriers that were mentioned earlier about healthcare providers guarding their data or not wanting to, to share their data as much?

Dr. Joe Colorafi

I don't think it's a matter of wanting to, it's just very time intensive, and if you're not doing, if you're in the research community, if you're doing clinical trials, you have the staff, the statisticians, and probably the engineering background to be able to do that, but a large group may not have the ability to, they have a lot of locked in data.

It's either in free tests, free text in a lot of notes. It could be an imaging, but these large language models now that we referred to before, Gene, can really ingest any form of that data. So, it really is an opportunity with some of the provisos that I mentioned earlier. 

Gene Cunningham

Dr Conklin, how does this actually help improve the patient treatment that is going on. And to that point, this is a group of relatively small companies, smaller activities, trying to get together and bring something into this U. S. marketplace. And in fact, the more complicated global marketplace, what are some of the challenges that are out there, for all of them? 

Dr. Ted Conklin

I think that you know the intrinsic challenges historically have been we have not leveraged the data. We have not had a check and balance system that's real time that allows us to pivot in terms of how somebody is being managed. So, it's extremely important for us to get out of our silos to be able to look at the continuum of care from outpatient to inpatient and back to outpatient again and to look upstream. And we all need to be on the same page. So, you know, the introduction of care pathways and care algorithms has helped us to actually use evidence-based medicine more efficiently but historically, there's essentially been a wall between inpatient and outpatient management. So, when you think about, you know, where does all, where, where do all the inpatients come from?

They come from outpatient. And where do they go? They go back to outpatient if they survive their hospitalization. So, we need to embrace the entire continuum of care. We need to get on the same page as far as care pathways and care algorithms. And we need to understand how a patient is doing so we can support them upstream before they, you know, suffer the consequences of an exacerbation or a worsening of their condition.

And sepsis, again, is just a perfect example of there being some key indicators that suggest somebody's at risk. Being able to identify someone who's at risk and intervene early on the outpatient level is critical. And obviously, when someone enters the hospital and is showing warning signs of sepsis, minutes matter.

I mean, they matter profoundly. So being able to escalate and have front of mind, create a front of mind situation for clinicians who are managing these patients, create alerts and get them on the care pathway for early sepsis management in order to help reduce the risk of severe sepsis and sepsis -- septic shock. 

Gene Cunningham

Yeah, appreciate that. I can attest to the fact that there is that feeling as a patient. You're the outpatient, you're the inside the facility patient, and then you're an outpatient. Again, there doesn't seem to be that real good continuum there. 

Dr. Ted Conklin

Yeah, and I think it's the economics of healthcare, which I think they have to. I mean, hospitals and providers need to be rewarded for outcomes. Outcomes are the best way to reduce waste in our health care system. Waste in our health care system comes from a combination of things that are performed that don't create any value and the lack of performing things that do create value. And we need to work much more effectively together as a team, looking at the same data at the same time and working effectively to bring our best foots forward. 

Gene Cunningham

Right. That underscores what Dr. Colorafi was, was pointing to in terms of the, the cost benefits that are out there of this whole process. So appreciate that, 

Eric, so you touched a little bit on where you saw this going in the global marketplace, but can you give us a little more detail on, on that plan? And as you look to moving into the international market, since this is an international business school conversation, do you have a particular approach for how you're going to get into those markets?

Do you plan on enlarging the consortium with partners or are you kind of going to go in on your own? 

Eric Doherty

Yeah, great questions. You know, from a global standpoint, obviously the U. S. marketplace is huge and we are based here in the United States. And so, our focus, you know, from a initial time frame is the United States area and then we'll move over into Europe and those other countries and continents, I mentioned earlier. I think where we see kind of the global expansion as well would be post sepsis. I know we're talking specifically about sepsis, but, you know, once you get the system into a hospital or hospital system, the ability to move that data into looking at other diseases is also hugely beneficial and would be, I would say, fairly easy. You know, the, the aspect of, you know, ramping up additional algorithms changing some of the context around the data needs and the data structures, uh, as you're moving it through the health system would be something that we could definitely look at other diseases like COPD as Dr. Conklin is a huge advocate of cardiology, looking at a patient, you know, maybe at a heart risk or cardiac, uh, heart attack risk. Thank you. You can look at neurology patients, endocrinology patients, nephrology patients. So as this is, you know, put into the systems, the ability to move into this other disease states is going to be, I think, a huge, huge win for the health networks and the patients and obviously for the global healthcare situation as a whole.

And then kind of the specific areas are obviously Europe got some great connections that have already been made, by SAS with some of the large health networks over in Europe because of the data sharing abilities that they're having a different than are being done here in the United States, where in the U.S., it's a little more constraint.

And so, the ability to move data in the European structures is more advantageous to what we're trying to do. And then ultimately it will be those lower to middle income countries. And so, the ability for individuals like Dr. Redfield, like some of the other folks that we've encountered within our past conversations to bring us into countries, you know, and like Botswana or Madagascar is something that we're going to be focusing on quite easily.

And over the next couple of years, because of the need that they have. For health care, both treatment and just really identification. And so, the ability to tie into universities like St. Louis University and others to be able to bring over those educational resources to folks to be trained on the use of devices and the use of some of the therapeutic tools I think would be hugely beneficial.

And then ultimately, it's really kind of, again, giving the, the patients the ability to drive up their own electronic health record system. And so, giving them their own electronic health records and the ability to tie in a longstanding ability of health records for not only themselves, but also their entire family.

Gene Cunningham

So, to be a little parochial about this, you mentioned St. Louis university. Can you talk to a little bit about what you're doing specifically with SLU and SSM healthcare? 

Eric Doherty

Yeah, we're actually having discussions with the NICU group at Cardinal Glennon. And so, in essence, what we're looking at is a project within the NICU at that hospital where we would be monitoring patients more at the hospital level and also at the home level.

So, patients, kids who are in the hospital, you know, watching their vital signs, watching some of the sensor tools, et cetera, that the unit is actually using with their patients there at the ICU critical care level, but also when those patients are discharged when they're sent home, you know, having some type of apparatus, multiple devices that that patient would be monitored on, and then basically running a project off of that.

And with the Sisters of St. Mary's group SSM being part of that. Obviously, it's a huge win-win for us because of the obviously context of the different health groups that they have outside of Cardinal Glennon that are part of the SSM system. So, it's a really great relationship that we've developed with the key clinician staff there at Cardinal Glennon and we're looking forward to some of the outcomes data that comes out of that data.

Gene Cunningham

So, do you see the same pattern of engagement as you move internationally that you'll work with universities and established health care locations? Or how do you see that going? Does it change by region? 

Eric Doherty

You know, I think we're pretty open. I think the aspect of the research element is huge. So, the ability for those health networks, health hospitals that have a research arm, you know, the aspect of collaborating and the access to all of the data is something that we've seen is hugely beneficial to those health care researchers. And so, as we move into a country, you know, typically will connect with the hospitals and or the hospital research groups and, you know, connecting with them and then move our project forward with that kind of focus, but we're open to, you know, the nonprofit hospitals, etc.

That would not have a research arm and have them connected as well within the system. 

Gene Cunningham

So, Dr. Colorafi, when you look at the data analytics and the actual scaling that Eric talked about, do you see any issues regionally as you move internationally in terms of trying to handle the scaling of the data and the access to the data?

Dr. Joe Colorafi

I don't have a lot of experience in trying to do that other than across the border in Canada, which looks a lot more like us than any place else in the world. I mean, there are advantage and disadvantages that. Probably other experts could tell you more about what I can say is that, for instance, in Europe, you know, the advantages would be or in Japan is they're really on a single payer system.

So, all the data really is in the same place, and they do have more of a longitudinal record. Where in the United States, you know, there are organizations that are like that, but it's more of the minority and the data is fragmented. So, a platform like PERSOWN is especially helpful in those areas where you have a fragmented data.

Eric Doherty

I can add to that too. So, you know, the ability of what we're doing is taking anonymized data. So typically, what we're looking at doing is setting up within a certain country the ability to keep the data from a personal standpoint in house so keeping the data, you know, within country so setting up you know servers within country and keeping that element of information, you know, on site within country but the ability to move anonymized data is, is more free. And so that's kind of our tactic is the tie in of, you know, servers, yes, on site, but then ability to move that anonymized data outside of country is kind of our focal point. 

Gene Cunningham

Well, this is an exciting activity. It's great to talk to you about what is going on with this project. I really appreciate the time you've taken with us today. Before close, let me ask if there are any additional comments from any of the guests. 

Dr. Colorafi, anything you'd like to start with or give us as a closing comment? 

Dr. Joe Colorafi

Yeah, a couple of things, Gene St. Louis University and your business school aren't doing it already. We had something very successful in our organization that we work with our business school affiliates with, and that was a big data challenge.

So,  took an anonymized healthcare data set that's HIPAA compliant and challenged the business school capstone projects to compete against each other in teams. To build the best model and that expertise in business analytics and it's something that not only obviously maybe you're doing already in St. Louis, but you've done between any folks in an area that have business school expertise, business analytics and healthcare, you know, education, graduate medical education. So, I just like to put that out there as an idea for anybody that has thought of that or wanted to think that would be a value in interdisciplinary way.

The only other thing I'd like to say is that, you know, healthcare leaders and organizations want to do the right thing. They want to improve quality of care. They want to improve patient safety and they want to contribute to the bottom line if they can, even though they're not directly responsible for that.

And I think platforms such as PERSOWN help to democratize that high value use case for data integration. 

Gene Gunningham 

I appreciate that. And the gauntlet has been tossed on the big data challenge. We'll be sure to pick that one out for you. 

Dr. Conklin. Anything you'd like to add? 

Dr. Ted Conklin

You know, I just think I'm cautiously optimistic that health care is moving in the right direction in terms of reimbursement. You know, in order to make change happen, we actually have to look at the economics of health care and understand how can we reduce health care costs on a national level by improving quality. Obviously reducing costs by not providing needed care is not a solution.

So, it really needs to be reducing costs by improving quality and as an example, if we take hospital reimbursement structures, you know, the CFOs of hospitals are all about margins, right? So, they're saying, okay, you know, how do I create new revenue streams? Well, you know, or how do I improve the revenue I'm getting?

And you know, the DRG payment model where a hospital gets paid based on diagnosis, if they can actually provide higher quality care at lower cost, they're going to improve their margins. So, being able to more effectively manage sepsis patients and to reduce the incidence or severity of sepsis is going to improve their margins.

So, I think that's a promising note here. The other thing I think they need to do is to reduce the risk associated with reduced revenue. So, if you take Medicare's reimbursement structure and the penalties associated with quality indicators such as readmissions and rates of sepsis, if they want to maintain revenue from Medicare, they have to perform. on that front. So, reducing the risk of reduced revenue. The other thing is many health plans now are pursuing payment approaches where they don't pay for readmissions. You know, preventable readmissions are waste and they're a very bad quality indicator. When a patient gets sick enough to be readmitted to the hospital, that's bad.

So, to the extent we've got payment methodologies that are aligned with reducing the risk of readmissions, that should also improve margins for the hospitals. And then finally, you know, I think operating expense is critical to hospitals, you know, how many staff does it -- are required and what's their cost associated with the provision of care.

When we can create more effective and efficient care pathways and algorithms that are across the continuum, inpatient and outpatient, some of the hospital's greatest opportunities for reducing operating expense are actually outpatient opportunities. So, we need for, for hospitals and outpatient clinicians to work effectively as a team to help reduce the amount of care that needs to be delivered and to make sure that that care is provided more effectively and efficiently in the hospital.

Gene Cunningham 

Yeah, so again, your focus is on a significant improvement in the care for the patient and being able to provide services, perhaps at a better cost for the providers at that point.

Dr. Ted Conklin

And that definitely comes with the availability and the use. A real time date. If that data is not accessible, they can't use it and that is rampant right now. And people don't know what they don't know. And they're looking at the consequences as their first notification. 

Gene Cunningham 

Excellent. Excellent. Thank you.

Eric. Final thoughts. Yeah, 

Eric Doherty

Gene. Thanks. You know, I mentioned earlier. You know that over 11 million deaths occur each year from sepsis, and as mentioned, it's the largest cause of death in hospitals, you know, with our Smash system and the caps project where we're connecting into all of these hospital network settings, you know, from the hospital itself to the long term care facilities, rehab facilities at home, and then all of the connect points in between the EHR, electronic health record systems, the lab systems, the monitors, IOT, the dot devices, wearables, et cetera. 

You know, if I can reduce that by 1 million, that's awesome. If I can reduce it by hopefully 4 to 5 million, that’s extreme from a data standpoint and obviously extreme from a life standpoint and so that's ultimately you know what we want to do and that's just in sepsis.

Now as I mentioned, you know, this will move into other disease states so think of, you know, from a heart attack or stroke or a patient with diabetes or kidney disease, you know, some of the aspects that we're looking at from a data composition standpoint and what that can really bring from an outcome end of things. for those patients. I mean, we're talking millions of improved lives around the world. So, you know, if, if we can do a little each day and then it ends up being millions over the next couple of years, that's, that's where we're headed. 

Gene Cunningham

Well, I appreciate that. And clearly the objective of saving lives is one that everyone can understand, and it sounds like As you branch from a U.S. market to the global market, the numbers start becoming increasingly more and more important in terms of saving lives. So, appreciate all of your efforts out there. And again, thank you gentlemen for your time. To our listeners, we hope you've enjoyed our conversation with Eric Daugherty, Dr. Ted Conklin, and Dr. Joe Colorafi as we looked at how they plan to grow an innovative health monitoring technology for sepsis into a global medical diagnostic capability. If you've learned something from this podcast, please be sure to leave a review with your podcast provider and join us next time as we continue to explore global market strategies.

I'm your host, Gene Cunningham, bringing you conversations that matter. 

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