One of the bits of secret sauce for the strong venture outcomes in my day job leading the NYU Healthtech Venture Studio is that I push my teams hard to do clinical pilots as soon as the tech is useable and safe.
In addition to the obvious goal of proving that your widget "does what it says on the tin," I've found that (particularly in digital health) implementing early clinical pilots create a forcing function for new teams to align with and course correct for the actual needs of institutional stakeholders, patients, and families that they will need to work with if their widget is to ever succeed.
David Putrino PhD, Director of Rehab Innovation for Mt. Sinai Health System regularly designs and implements early pilots with medical devices, brain computer interfaces, and digital health interventions originating internally at Mt Sinai and from outside companies. He is also a key stakeholder brought in to help determine whether the health system will pivot with startups.
The format for the workshop will be as always
- 45 minute lecture by David as to what matters when designing and executing early pilots.
(snack break)
- A fireside chat with stakeholders who often get pitched by startups and have to make sense of alleged validation.
Evan Huang was the cofounder of Caresignal, which he eventually exited. In that role, he established a 5k patient umbrella IRB under which they ran clinical studies on all of their programs and published many towards establishing both ROI and clinical efficacy for new customers.
Samrat Kulkarni previously Lead Director of Clinical Analytics at CVS. Samrat owned causal inference and outcomes measurement for various clinical care management programs across Aetna & Caremark LOBs. Experience developing relevant clinical, financial and operational metrics to study pilot effectiveness & inform strategic investments. Led team of data scientists, biostatisticians and health economists.
