What does your role at Esurgi entail?
As the CEO of the company, I am responsible for everything, starting with having a vision and strategy for the company. I make sure that we are working on the right problems and solving the problems the right way. A lot of that involves talking with people such as key opinion leaders (KOLs), users, and people who are affected by the problems to which our products respond.
What impact do you hope Esurgi will make on the fields of medicine, technology, and business?
In terms of the impact, we are using technology and common sense science. I am hoping that we and a number of other companies will change the way we approach medicine. One of the biggest challenges of healthcare delivery is the availability of resources. We are automating what resources do right now, therefore we hope to impact delivery to make sure it is more accessible to everybody.
What are the most rewarding parts of your role?
We are essentially a healthcare technology company, so we do a lot of common sense science. We do not produce the results, but we follow the literature and figure out what is the consensus element of science that impacts us. We also get to use technology to build cool things.
What led you to start Esurgi, and what is your vision for the company?
I have experience in medical research and technology leadership. It was both the logical next step for me to found a health technology company and the best time to do that. If you look at your cell phone, for example, the cell phone probably has about a dozen sensors. It automates and quantifies what you are doing and that is essentially what we are doing with the field of medicine right now. The qualifications of sensors, automation, and algorithms are growing faster now than at any other time.
What do you think are the biggest challenges in your role?
There are lots of things we are concentrating on getting right. One of the areas where we haven’t made a lot of headway is in connecting with stakeholders and KOLs for us to show them what we have and get feedback from them to form strategic partnerships.
What is going on at Esurgi that makes you the most excited?
At a strategic level, changing the way medicine is done through health technology. At a higher level, being able to measure things in real-time. When I spoke to a lot of injury experts, one of the things they kept on telling me was that they spend 20-40 years of their lives on a particular injury, like ACL or hamstring injuries. Every time they think they have a solution, the number of injuries doesn’t go down, it goes up. We expect that we will turn the tide on injuries because injuries happen during real-world and real sport situations. For example, the research on injuries and the training to avoid injuries come from laboratory or drill settings using preset actions, experimenting with different jumps and falls. But with the use of technology, we are actually taking the research and prevention to where injuries happen in real time.
One of the ways we are doing this is with the BioStabilizer. One of the things that I love is when I go to physical therapy facilities and see that the physical therapist can push a button and walk away -whereas right now they have long setup times and have to coach the patient through the exercise activities. Another one of our products, the JointSpy helped turn the tide on ACL injuries by using real-time feedback to better understand and prevent ACL injuries.
We also have a real-life use of biomarkers in Alzheimer’s Disease. Currently, the way the progression of Alzheimer’s Disease is tracked and how the diagnosis takes place is using PET scans and spinal taps. This actually leads to catching the disease 10 years after the initial physiological change in the brain. It turns out that eye pattern changes are present as soon as the physiological changes are happening, before the commonly recognized markers or symptoms are even present. The same thing happens with the disease’s progression – when you go to a neurologist, you visit them 6 months later, but your disease may progress. The best step to manage Alzheimer’s Disease is managing symptoms and adopting the quality of life based application of medicine. If there is a way to alert the neurologist that the disease has progressed, the patient can have improved quality of life and decreased healthcare costs. We are currently working on a solution to catch an eye pattern and therefore the disease faster than physicians can right now. This has a lot of implications. To name one, pharmaceutical companies will be able to build off of our work and develop products that will prevent Alzheimer’s Disease as well as help neurologists and patients improve quality of life.
What would you say to someone interested in joining Esurgi?
We are an early-stage company, and there are two groups of people that would be interested in joining us. The first group is our advisors. To them I would say that we are doing impactful science and technology, and they should join us to be able to impact the world. To the interns, I would say that they will have the ability to create an impact. Compared to your average internship, the jobs at Esurgi are more exciting and consequential.
What would you say to a medical, technical, or business professional looking to get involved in Esurgi?
We always want to hear from you. We would like to talk to you and get your thoughts on the solutions we are developing that will impact our field. We would also like to talk to you to form strategic partnerships so that when the products are ready to go, you are at the leading edge of health technology to improve your practice.
Is there anything else you would like people to know about the company?
To touch more upon our company vision and mission statements, our vision is delivering real-time healthcare worldwide to improve lives. Our mission is to use evidence-based science and common-sense application of technology to improve healthcare delivery, increase accessibility through reduction of overall costs, and improve quality of life through our products. Our mantra is to be impactful, realistic, and scientific. Our target users are healthcare providers (physical therapists, kinesiologists, or neurologists), researchers, as well as people in the sports field like coaches, trainers, athletes, or parents of young athletes.
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