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The Health Transformer Making EMS COVID-Ready · StartUp Health NOW Podcast

• 0:00
  [on-hold music] For Jonathan Feit and Christian Witt, the founders of Beyond Lucid Technologies, the pain points needing to be addressed in emergency medical services are incredibly personal.
• 0:16
  Witt lost his own father and sister in an automobile accident three hundred miles outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico.
• 0:23
  That day, Witt recalls, the EMTs weren't able to communicate the situation clearly to the receiving hospital and activate a triage team before their arrival.
• 0:34
  This tragedy drove a deep dive into EMS, where communication problems cost the industry about three billion dollars in additional costs each year.
• 0:45
  Witt and Feit founded Beyond Lucid Technologies as a way to connect first responders with each other and with their receiving hospitals.
• 0:55
  If this is your first time joining Startup Health NOW, Witt and Feit's journey to launch Beyond Lucid Technologies offers a glimpse into the types of stories we share on this podcast.
• 1:06
  Stories about the most innovative health entrepreneurs, the health moonshots they're trying to achieve, and in their case, the origin stories that drive their life's work.
• 1:17
  At Beyond Lucid Technologies, their software-as-a-service platform brings together all of the relevant information needed by EMS and fire department crews before they arrive on scene.
• 1:29
  It transmits vital patient information to the hospital while the patient is en route via Beyond Lucid's proprietary MetaView platform.
• 1:38
  You can imagine then how this type of pre-hospital exchange of information can be critical during COVID-19,
• 1:47
  which is why one day after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 as a global health emergency and pandemic, Beyond Lucid Technologies announced that it would be appending its MetaView platform,
• 2:00
  adding the ability to receive and sort fire and EMS encounters involving patients suspected of suffering from or being exposed to the deadly coronavirus.
• 2:11
  At the 2020 Startup Health Festival, Feit shared how his platform is transforming emergency medical services in over half of the United States.
• 2:20
  His fireside chat with Startup Health's partner and director of Startup Health Network, Katia Hancock, offers a sort of preamble to Beyond Lucid Technologies' latest evolution to capture COVID-19 elements in their patient record system.
• 2:35
  Take a listen. So Jonathan, Beyond Lucid has been part of Startup Health portfolio for how many years now? Since the second- Oh, I think his audio is on. I still know the answer to the question- There you go...
• 2:50
  even without the mic. Uh, since the second cohort when I met- Second cohort... we met Steve in Unity in South by Southwest. Yeah. So it's been awesome to see you just s- growing and scaling a business.
• 3:04
  Um, why don't you tell people what you do, a little bit about, you know, how big it's gotten? You, you're, you're really just killing it. Sure.
• 3:12
  Um, so Beyond Lucid Technologies, uh, actually wrote down some, some notes to make sure I got this right. Okay. Um, so we've been around for 10 years.
• 3:20
  Um, we actually had our 10th year birthday this year, uh, last year, um- Happy birthday. Thank you. Uh, it's kind of a-- I hear it's kind of a milestone. It is. Um, we've, we now cover more than half the United States.
• 3:30
  We work with fire and EMS agencies of all stripes, uh, so pre-hospital care providers, uh, in over half the United States.
• 3:36
  We work with 115 hospitals, actually more than 115 hospitals on our pre-hospital health information exchange network today. Um, and we are unusual in that we actually turn a profit. Yep.
• 3:47
  Been profitable for a while now, right? Mm. We try to, we try to keep some of those details a little close to the vest. Yeah. But the- But we, we do. We're a healthy company, strong company.
• 3:55
  Um, and, uh, you know, of course, we, we owe it to the, the stakeholders, uh, our team, um, our, our investors, and of course, our- the care providers that we serve and their patients that we help take care of.
• 4:05
  And the origin story starts with a, a personal experience, right? You wanna tell that story? Yeah.
• 4:10
  So, um, I think, I think the, the, the part that really gets me, um, everybody, everybody who stays in pre-hospital care has a personal reason for, for getting into it and then, and then staying in it.
• 4:23
  Um, I think for us, what we actually find incredibly compelling, you can go out onto the streets of San Francisco and see, um, from Connecticut to Colorado, uh, South Carolina, Texas, Arizona, um, the places that, that-- W- O-Oklahoma, um,
• 4:43
  rural, urban, et cetera, what we have found, and this is where you guys have been actually a huge resource to us, uh, we owe a lot and a debt of gratitude to Startup Health, uh, for a lot of guidance and, and inspiration.
• 4:53
  Um, but we con-- we started out in the access to care- Mm-hmm... moonshot, so to speak. Um, we've transitioned to the trying to address the addiction crisis moonshot, um, because they come together.
• 5:06
  And I think what we find in all of the places that we work, and I've, I've gone in the truck into the home, um, where there are people, you know, there's so much, uh, stigma around addiction.
• 5:18
  But when it turns out that you live-- When you live in a crack house because you can't afford anything else, um, and so the assumption is that you are addicted, therefore you are sort of put into a bucket.
• 5:32
  When you live in a county in California that burns every year, and so you lose hope, and you literally self-medicate the pain away.
• 5:41
  Um, or you live on the streets of one of the wealthiest cities in the United States, but you don't necessarily know how to find the people who care for you, um, so you find a way to, to survive by putting things in your body that don't belong there.
• 5:55
  Um, we have,
• 5:58
  we have been at the forefront of the transition of emergency service to first to which w- uh, first caring for chronic care patients, uh, what is often called community paramedicine or mobile integrated health.Um,
• 6:11
  to what I've called community paramedicine 2.0 first, which is essentially a data-driven approach to the same thing.
• 6:17
  Um, not changing the mode of care, it's, it's all about making sure you give the patient the care they need, but knowing what their needs are before they get there, and utilizing all the tools and technologies talked about at this conference to make sure they do that.
• 6:28
  And the next phase where we're really focused is the folks who are addicted and who, uh, are chronic but acute at the same time, right? They are in crisis. Mm-hmm. And yet they're seen over and over and over again.
• 6:40
  And so the idea that you can, uh, engage with them like a chronic care patient, but keep them from dying, uh, and use data to do that, that intersection is where we live- Mm-hmm...
• 6:52
  and it's a really, uh, exciting explosion right now.
• 6:55
  And I want to make sure everyone understands what exactly your platform does, because you're out there, when you say you're in the truck, you're providing the communication platform to the first responders, um, who are really, you know, the first responders are, are the first and last line of defense for someone who is, who is overdosing- That's right...
• 7:14
  as an example. So we do, we do, basically have three parts. One is we can provide a record system to folks that need it. Um- Like EMS. Yes. E- EMS, that's right.
• 7:24
  EMS and fire providers, uh, both on the ground and in the air. Mm-hmm. Uh, so folks who need to actually take, take notes on their patient, assuming that's something they need. Take the city of San Francisco.
• 7:32
  The city of San Francisco has three EMS providers, one of which we work with directly. Uh, and they actually use another platform, uh, an executive of which is actually sitting on the other side of the room right now.
• 7:41
  I can see him from where he's sitting right now. Um, and, uh, and they like it. They love that platform. They didn't wanna take it out of their hands. They didn't wanna have to replace it.
• 7:49
  So one of the things that we did was we actually extract- sort of abstracted our pre-hospital pipes, as we call them, from the record system, and opened up a jaw so that no matter what the folks in the field are using for their documentation, we can get that data into a pre-hospital health information exchange where it can be analyzed, where it can be shared, where it can be, uh, aggregated.
• 8:09
  So you could basically imagine dropping a net over a region and be able to see patients as they move around the system, no matter what system they're using in the actual truck.
• 8:22
  Um, so it basically turns competitors into partners. Right. Um, because we take their data and we make it useful, and we make them sticky at the same time. That's incredible.
• 8:30
  So one of the big challenges with homeless populations, um, addicts, et cetera, is just tracking them. That's right. Right? Where they are. That's right. What's going on. That's right. Are they relapsing?
• 8:42
  Um, and so you're really solving a critical part of that challenge.
• 8:46
  A- and that's sort of the third, the third bit of, of this platform and where we're really excited about the idea that technology is moving faster than, uh, healthcare. Go figure. Mm.
• 8:54
  It's pretty, pretty used to that, right?
• 8:55
  But there is an opportunity as we talk again about people coming back in, um, to know who you are before you get there, to be able to use things like biometrics, for example, which I've written and published quite a bit about, to identify, right?
• 9:08
  Why is it we talk about patient identity, yet if you have a finger, a toe, or an eye, I have a positive ID match every single time. Mm-hmm.
• 9:14
  Um, so the idea that if you're an unconscious patient, if you're having a major episode, if you're OD'ing, I can know who you are and know some of your health history, and again, feed that information into a platform that others can access.
• 9:25
  So, you know, we talked about collaboration, and this, obviously the theme here. Um, we are trying to make that the heart of our, of our technology, right?
• 9:33
  Is the idea that no matter if the information, in fact, the, the pre-hospital record is almost the smallest part of our business. It's because the, the record system's a commodity.
• 9:43
  It's what you do with the data that has value. Right. And so the idea of getting that record system or that record, no matter who created it, into the hands of the people who are going to act on it- Mm-hmm...
• 9:53
  that's our business. Um, so and we're pretty excited. I mean, it, it's an odd thing to work in an industry where as things go badly, business goes well. Mm-hmm.
• 10:03
  Um, but you know, over, over New Year's Eve weekend, uh, or New Year's weekend, um, CNN published a really compelling article about how the opioid addiction crisis has landed in Asia.
• 10:14
  Um, and they essentially described it as about to go boom. And the idea was that in the US, we have a, a, we have some forums to discuss this. We have StartUp Health, right? We have the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference.
• 10:26
  We can talk about crisis. Where there is stigma, there is still pain. Mm-hmm.
• 10:32
  Um, but that doesn't mean that there's an avenue to address it, and the sheer volume of people who can become hooked on things that shouldn't be in their bodies to begin with, um, is a real problem, and it just landed there.
• 10:44
  So when we look at sort of where we go in the future, this platform scalability is really critical to our future. So there's no geographic, uh, limitation for where you can go. No, it's an ironic thing.
• 10:54
  Um, you know, when you talk about emergency service, it's, it's one of those things where you're... And I, I talk to EMS and fire providers about this all the time.
• 11:01
  Like, in an ideal world, we'd be completely obsolete, right? Mm-hmm. You don't want to have crisis.
• 11:06
  You don't want to have people getting stuck in cars and houses burning and, you know, people having, having medical distress. But as long as humanity continues to have problems, we will. Mm-hmm.
• 11:17
  Um, and so, um, as the, you know, we, we have exported a number of things from this country that are wonderful, and apparently we're also exporting certain types of negative things.
• 11:27
  Um, and our job is to be there to, to be there now that we see the problems happening and people are talking about it, is to be there before the problem becomes intractable. Mm-hmm.
• 11:35
  Um, so we've built our architecture in such a way that it can be, uh, layered in other platforms. Oh, I wanted to make sure I mentioned some news. It's very exciting for our industry. Sure.
• 11:44
  Um, we have been long asked to create an iPad-based application of our software. Uh, it came, uh, it comes out officially today, so this is the official announcement. Fantastic. Um, thank you. Thank you. Yeah.
• 11:55
  Um, a- and the reason why, why it matters, and not because building an iPad app is such a special thing, it's actually because building one that works offline is really hard. Right.
• 12:03
  Um, and the places that took us a long time to get it that way, where we can keep the data secure, we can keep the data interoperable, but we can allow it to work offline.
• 12:11
  So if you are taking care of a patient who lives in a basement, you take care of a patient who lives under a bridge, you take care of a patient who lives out in the middle of nowhere, because there are people living out in the middle of nowhere, that the, the folks that we serve in the field, no matter what the color of the patch on their arm, they gotta be able to keep doing their work.
• 12:27
  Um, and if we can make it easier for them to do that-Um, a colleague of mine who was in the room yesterday asked us if we can get the timing down to 14 seconds to document that patient's care, and I will happily take that challenge.
• 12:38
  That's awesome. [laughs] I mean, w-what, what you're saying, it's so critical.
• 12:43
  It can often be life or death for you to get the right information to the emergency, emergency department before that patient gets there so they're prepared.
• 12:51
  Yeah, and w- in August of this year, we won our first statewide contract, um, which is in the state of Oregon. I got permission to talk about it today. Um- Please.
• 12:59
  Um, for anyone in the room who does deals with palliative care, it, w- uh, folks who might be familiar with the POLST form, uh, the portable order for life-sustaining treatment.
• 13:07
  Uh, in some places it goes by similar names. It's essentially a, a, a resuscitation order, uh, signed by a doctor- Mm-hmm... instead of a lawyer.
• 13:15
  Um, and we were granted, uh, a contract to re-engineer the registry in the state of Oregon.
• 13:22
  Um, the excitement isn't rebuilding the database, it's that for the first time in the history of pre-hospital care, so, uh, for, for anyone who doesn't know, what a do not resuscitate order comes in, it's basically if you're having a cardiac arrest or some other major issue, do you or do you not do CPR and bring this person back to life or sort of do other medical things.
• 13:38
  Um, and right now, no ability exists for EMS to access that record unless the patient has it on them or it's, like, in their visual line of sight, so it's on a refrigerator, for example, or in some places they step away or have someone step away from the patient to make a phone call to a registry, and that's the state of, state of affairs in, you know, now 2020.
• 14:00
  Um, so we are changing that. For the history, for the first time in the history of our industry, we will enable querying that database, that POLST registry, um, to be as easy as logging into a website using Facebook. Mm.
• 14:12
  Um, or, you know, or paying with, with Amazon. We're building a widget that essentially will allow you to query that and pull in that information without disrupting the provider's workflow. Right.
• 14:21
  So when you talk about life or death, um, it doesn't get more life or death than whether do I resuscitate you from a cardiac arrest or not. Right, and the fact that someone's expected to carry a piece of paper with them.
• 14:31
  Well, exactly. So, you know, it's an interesting problem that, that the, the palliative care world has faced in that they're getting really good at their jobs, right? Mm.
• 14:39
  And so with, with, for example, a moonshot to, to eradicate cancer that, uh, Vice President Biden, of course, has advanced and, and whatnot, um, treatment are getting better. People are living longer.
• 14:49
  So you might get a diagnosis and sort of go through this process of creating your end of life plan, but you may still live another 15, 20 years after that if all goes well. So the, um, y- you know, the idea that your...
• 15:02
  You know, we talk about records needing to follow you. Mm-hmm.
• 15:05
  Um, at some point something goes wrong, and if the only access to records is from something that you've created 15 years prior before your life changed, um, again, you don't get a whole lot of, you don't get a whole lot of margin of error in that.
• 15:20
  Um, so we- Yeah... that's where we exist, and we sort of take on the challenge of ensuring that the crew that arrives on scene is informed. You asked about where our, our story comes from.
• 15:29
  My business partner, uh, his father and sister were killed in a car wreck about two years before we started our company, and there are few things that make you more motivated than realizing that those, that crew that showed up in rural New Mexico probably really wish they had as much information as they could at the time, know what was going on, and then know who they were gonna be able to convey that to and have the means to do it.
• 15:51
  Um, that's been our mission for 10 years, is to close the data gap, it's a chasm really, um, in pre-hospital care so that the folks receiving the information can act on it. Um- Yeah...
• 16:02
  and so now we're just touching other parts of the ecosystem. Addiction is a necessary part of it.
• 16:05
  Chronic care, where folks are calling 911 'cause they don't have anyone else to call or because they have a mental health issue and they're afraid and they know that someone will come and help them, you know, help them and be nice to them, um, or in the case where they're having the last moments of crisis and the folks arriving on scene need to be able to know what do I need to know right now.
• 16:22
  Yeah. That's where we live. Well, thank you for doing what you do. Thank you. I know it's not easy. It's, it's something- There's a mission. We are mission driven.
• 16:30
  We, we, we find ourselves using #missiondriven #entrepreneurlife kind of a lot. You sure are. So, yeah. So thank you and keep it up. Thank you. Got to. [audience applauding] Appreciate it.
• 16:39
  At StartUp Health, our motto has been, together we can. By uniting a global army of the world's top health innovators, we believe we can solve the world's biggest health challenges,
• 16:51
  including challenges like the one we currently face with the coronavirus pandemic. Earlier this month, we launched a pandemic response moonshot, our 12th health moonshot.
• 17:02
  To learn more about our commitment to invest in startups working on COVID-19 solutions, visit startuphealth.com. I appreciate you joining me today.
• 17:11
  Tune in later this week when I talk with Tim Gordon and Polina Hannon from Aequitas Partners. Aequitas is an executive search firm with a concentration of companies in the health tech space.
• 17:23
  I'll be talking with them about what it looks like to hire and build a leadership team during the pandemic. That's right, hiring and growth is still happening.
• 17:34
  Meanwhile, stay safe, stay healthy, and if you can, stay home. We're all in this together. [outro music]