Category: Devices

Shantanu Gaur has been inspired and driven by his parents, brilliant and independent-thinking immigrants from India. When it came time to choose between a career as a physician or as an entrepreneur, his mathematician father helped him calculate how many people he could help and what would happen if he failed.

As co-founder and CEO of Allurion Technologies, Shantanu has helped develop and launch balloons –not into the sky but into the stomach– where they help patients feel full and lose weight. The product is on the market in Europe and the Middle East, and there are plans for the US and China as well.

Allurion is succeeding where other weight loss balloons have failed. The company’s balloons can be swallowed and filled in an office visit –not an operating room– and are paired with nutritional counseling and a digital support system.

The HealthBiz podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, YouTube and  many more services. Please consider rating the podcast on Apple Podcasts.

By healthcare business consultant David E. Williams, president of Health Business Group.

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Glympse Bio CEO Caroline Loew grew up in England with the expectation that she could do anything. After all, her grandmother managed a hotel when she was in her 20s and her parents always supported her ambitions. And while for most students, organic chemistry is a weed out class for pre-med Caroline actually fell in love with the subject and pursued her PhD.

She then made her career in drug development at big pharma where she built a strong and broad foundation across multiple domains that prepared her to run a biotech company.

In this episode of the HealthBiz podcast Caroline shares her personal and career background and what it’s like to lead a high-profile spinout from MIT with prominent board members and investors. We also talk about sexism in science and business and I ask her to explain why she appears in so many podcasts.

Like  a few of my other guests, one of her book recommendations is the Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. She’s also a fan of General Stan McChrystal’s book Team of Teams. Recent recommended reads include Editing Humanity by Kevin Davies  and No Rules Rules by Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer.

The HealthBiz podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, YouTube and  many more services. Please consider rating the podcast on Apple Podcasts.

By healthcare business consultant David E. Williams, president of Health Business Group.

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As an anesthesiologist, Jon Bloom was distressed to participate in so many foot amputations for diabetic patients. He vowed to do something to consign this barbaric, Civil War era procedure to the dustbin of history. Eventually, he met up with some like-minded co-founders at an early Hackathon and the result was Podimetrics.

A decade later, the team has developed and deployed a technology and care management solution that is putting their goal in reach. Of course in the US healthcare system, amputations are lucrative for providers but prevention isn’t. So that’s an extra hurdle Podimetrics has had to clear.

In this episode of the HealthBiz podcast, Jon traces Podimetrics’ path. But we also carve out time to discuss high school marching band, why it took him 8 years to graduate from college, his dreams of being a punk rock musician, and what my son Harry Williams was like as a Podimetrics summer intern.

If your healthcare or life sciences business needs strategy consulting, I’d be happy to discuss. We have two decades of experience working with companies whose strategic opportunities and challenges are similar to Podimetrics. Contact us here.

Check out the rough (AI generated) transcript.

The HealthBiz podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, YouTube and  many more services. Please consider rating the podcast on Apple Podcasts.

By healthcare business consultant David E. Williams, president of Health Business Group.

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Vision impairment is the most common disability for children, and it’s usually very treatable if detected early. But pediatricians struggle with vision screening. Wall charts are cumbersome to administer and as a result practices take shortcuts and miss a lot of cases. Kevon Saber is on a mission to change that. GoCheck Kids, where he’s CEO, uses a smartphone based tool for easy vision screening that integrates with the electronic health record.

In this episode of the HealthBiz Podcast, Kevon traces his journey as the son of Persian and Mexican parents living in immigrant neighborhoods, through Santa Clara University, Stanford, Silicon Valley and now Nashville. Many of the kids he grew up with have struggled –some are dead or in prison. Meanwhile, Kevon is a proponent of diversity in healthcare leadership, and wants his team to reflect the communities they serve.

Kevon is re-reading (or listening to) a few books:

• Halftime: Moving from Success to Significance by Bob Buford
• The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business by Patrick Lencioni
• The Voice of the Heart: A Call to Full Living by Chip Dodd

The HealthBiz podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts and  many more services. Please consider rating the podcast on Apple Podcasts. Doing so helps the podcast reach more listeners.

Check out the rough (AI generated) transcript of the episode. Click on a word if you want to start the podcast from a particular spot.

By healthcare business consultant David E. Williams, president of Health Business Group

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I share my impressions of the Amazon Halo and Apple Watch in the latest edition of the HealthBiz podcast. Usually, I interview a guest but in this episode it’s just me.

I’ve gotten a lot of use out of the Watch over the past couple years and I’m not giving it up any time soon. But the Band adds some useful –and novel— features, making it more of a complement than a substitute. I’m planning to keep wearing both.

(January 3, 2021 Update: I have been asked about whether I’ve found a way to import Amazon Halo data into the Apple Health app. The answer is no. When I follow instructions from Apple to import data from other apps, Halo doesn’t show up, which means it’s unlikely to be compatible. I followed Amazon’s instructions to download my Halo data. Theoretically I could enter it into Apple Health manually but that would be cumbersome and not likely to yield much. I am going to explore this topic further to see what I find and possibly write a new post or record a supplemental podcast.)

The HealthBiz podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts and  many more services. Please consider rating the podcast on Apple Podcasts. Doing so helps the podcast reach more listeners.

Check out the rough (AI generated) transcript of the episode. Click on a word if you want to start the podcast from a particular spot.

By healthcare business consultant David E. Williams, president of Health Business Group

No comments yet