Transcripts For CSPAN2 The Communicators 20130129

One cant count the times of americans say we are the best country in the world. Of all the countries in the world. Its pretty good. Why do we have to believe that we are the best . What does that mean . Why do we have to assert it all of the time and what does it mean to other people who consume it . We teach people not to like this. Author and activist and transafrica founder, Randall Robinson takes your phone calls and emails and tweets wee hours on sunday on cspan2 on booktv. Host here on the communicators is Consumer Electronics Show International. This is part of the Convention Floor that you are seeing. This is only about one fourth of what is available. The largest trade show in the world, about 100,000 people attend the show every day. Today with us we have Andrew Thompson who is president and ceo of proteus Digital Health. What is proteus Digital Health. Guest it is the worlds best digital medicine company. We created a platform that we call eight Digital Health system in the main and the main components of that art and ingestible sensor that turns on when you swallow and communicate to your body. It sends information to a wearable patch that you wear on your torso. And send information about the medicines that you swallow and your heart rate and respiration and a great deal. Where is the sense are stored guest it is not stored in the body. Let me just spend a minute here and describe what it is. It is made with the ingredients that you find in food. Its the first days foodbased platform. Host can you show in your hand . What is the green thing . Guest it is a fake pill, that is the whole device. Host is that what someone would swallow . Guest yes, it is. When you swallow it, it turns on. This is a very interesting piece of technology. There is no battery or radio or antenna. If you ever thought about this, it is a device he put a little magnesium in a potato and then you can create a life. In this case we have copper and magnesium and that is the element. And we have about 7 micrograms of copper. You need about 1500 milligrams of copper per day. So its a tiny fraction and the magnesium. When you swallow the device, you become potato and you turn it on. So its powered by you. The unique identifier for your body that can only be detected by the thing thats on your body, which is the patch. So it says, hello, i am here, i data that we collect. Host how do you get that data into this . Guest essentially the way we work is when you swallow it turns on. So if you go on and off the 64 times, you get 64 strings of information. That is the basis of information host where did you come up with this idea . Guest we are a lucky company. We had a team of incredibly smart scientists to work with us. The most important are the first people that were into this technology and it is a very customdesigned system, which is how we solve the problems associated with the massive problem. Host how does this help . Guest moving away from this and talking about the problem statement, we dont have a health care system. We have a sick care system. If you have a chronic disease and you live your life, you were on your own. So we need to build a health care system. There is a lot of dementia and depression and diabetes. So point number one is that we must connect to the internet. It is one of the most important things on the planet. There are 36 Million People with a mobile phone. Point number two is that it has to serve the Largest Group of Health Care Workers in the world. They are outnumbered 10 to one. Our kids and our brothers and our sisters, thats the group we have to address. And the number one engagement transaction is swallowing this daily pill. So if you think about these massive digital transitions that have occurred, the key is to find a transaction that consumers engage in and did something that they want or need to do, just like financial services. We didnt have people swallow the medicine can see that data show. Host how does one wear one . Guest it is about 2. 5 inches and it looks recommended. Has some very Nice Electronics inside of it to basically give you medical data. Host is a permanent patch . Guest it is designed to wear for about a week. He do anything in it, you can run a race. One of the things i would like to show is that we build a team that is very conscious about building a desirable program. To help us do well with this design. Host what does the name mean . Guest it is the name of a greek god and also part of the movie an incredible voyage. I went to Cameron University and i came to Silicon Valley after a couple of years and started to become involved in entrepreneurial activity in the valley. I have been on entrepreneur for many years. Host what is your personal interest in health care . Guest i am on a Purpose Driven Team and i want to be doing something that can have really important social impacts. When im building an organization, thats what i want to do. Our company is tremendously focused on the enormous positives of the social Economic Impact that we can bring to solving this huge problem so that many more can get access to health care. [inaudible] when individuals that we Want Health Care for everyone, now is a great idea. I would like to have something a little bit more ambitious. Something that is health care for everyone everywhere. Gerri host he began in Silicon Valley. Other countries or product that you invested in early on the been on the market today that we would be familiar with . Guest one of the very First Companies that helped start was acquired by the Worlds Largest medical device company. This company has pioneered a great deal. If you have had a specific treatment, that was likely done by a related company was not host what is the path for a collaborative it is a clear product by the usda and the spots are ready to go to market. This is not some future testing that could happen in a few years time. It has an incredibly positive safety profile and its very accurate. There is a great efficiency for this. Host where he located at . Guest we are in hayward, california. The goal is to make billions of these products accessible. Host is that its almost ready for market. What would this cost somebody . Guest that is an interesting question. One that i cant answer. Its what it costs me to make that is the cost. There are a lot of different ways to think about the Business Model that you would deploy here. Giving you the more general framing idea, many people think this is an instinctive product. However, they represent only 10 of the total spent on health care. The real opportunity is not to spend more or less on pharmaceuticals but to have them do their job. To give us out of the hospitals. We dont spend the other percentage. So we need to save the systems money. Host you need medicare and medicaid approval of this product to make it successful . Guest no, its their job to pay for things. So we have clearance and it is our job to build evidence, particularly economic evidence that the use of these services really make sense. Im going to emphasize here the benefits that you get from providing patients and families with that. Just imagine that you have a son that is 20 years old and has bipolar disease. That was the case, you would be a boring guy is very worried dad. Anyone know that he needs to be on medication every day and that you have to be careful about his sleep patterns. He you might develop depression and you might want to know about his friends and who he is talking to her. If you have an application on your device that allows you to see that my son is on drugs, but hes sleeping okay, and the socializing, he would be a happy guy. Thats nice, but what that gives him back his powerful system. You get very strong emotional responses. So an old lady would say this makes me feel safe. And if you are a tb patient that would otherwise have to go to a clinic, he would say okay, i would like some dignity. There is a lot of emotional benefits associated with these Health Situations and be able to appropriately use medicines and able to do the jobs that we were designed for. Host when you think about the growth in health care technology, what are your general thoughts . I think one of the most important lessons we can learn is the definition of the word innovation. Innovation being delivered so that products are cheaper every year. In the world of health care, we built a Business Model in which innovation is defined as more expensive and less available. The job is to embrace the idea of the process of innovation is to make things better and cheaper and more available for everybody everywhere, not just the rich people. Host one of the conversations that we have been having the last couple of years is about Electronic Medical records. And also privacy issues. What are your thoughts . Guest it is a very bad place to start in terms of thinking about this in health care. You will notice that there are two Big Companies who have tried to do that. Now, the problem is that thats not a good idea, but going back to financial services, i dont think we would be successful ina changing behavior in regards toa Bank Statements. Most people to do with their Bank Statements ever. At that point, you can go a lot of places. Electronic Health Records are not the hinge. They will emerge once we have figured out the reasons why people will shift their behavior. And by the way, this is a very major trend. In the 20th century, everything is about Building People and you go to a bookstore and you find a book. In the 21st century is about software and mobile platforms. So it creates a radical shift in availability in all kinds of really good things and how. We know that it will happen. Its only a question of when. And what the important transactions will be. Host have you address privacy concerns when it comes to this . Guest privacy is a very big issue. It will be an issue for a very long time. But the way we frame it as many think this will be a big deal with financial services. Many people thought that privacy would be a big deal when it comes to certain types of activities on the internet. So its a very big issue. But what we have learned about it is that if you can provide sufficient benefits, people are willing to take certain risks. As a company we have to be very specific about mitigating all the risks. This can be done. Aaaaaa host would you sell it to the Drug Companies to insert in their medications . Does that work . Guest what we have is the worlds first and so far only fda cleared ingestion sensor that enables a platform to digitize your health care. One way to think about it is to say it is a drug that we are making something in a digital content. Apple did it with music or they did it much more customizable than any others. Drugs are nice, but they are part of the 21st century. Its really important is what will happen in the 21st century. Data will have analytics and that is what will be the product. So it is transformational. We are delighted to work with with these companies. The whole idea is to build a very different category in the health care industry, which is about the digital feedback. The commendation of the medicines used to stay well with measured behaviors and feedback that can be turned into actual information and motivation that can keep you well. Host are there other products coming from your company . And how long have you been working on the sensor yes matt if you look at the Development Time through fda grants, in like eight years. Guest the product is managing everything and its coming very soon to the united states. We are working on platforms and Mental Health and so a whole series of initiatives will take this technology. Host Andrew Johnson as the president and ceo and cofounder of proteus Digital Health. He has been a guest on the communicators here in las vegas. And Consumer Electronics Show International is held every year in las vegas. About 100,000 people attended attend this every year. Its focus is on technology.   the communicators if youre focusing on technology. Here is more on programming. Joining us now is ron andrews, who is the president of a group called Life Technologies. Mr. Andrews, what is that . Well, Life Technologies is one of the Top Companies and has aggregated over the last 10 Years Companies who do everything to cell biology and genomics. It is a research community, academic and pharmaceutical they have a great prowess of doing Amazing Things in diseases and agriculture. My job is to take the expansive portfolio and aggregated toward some of the worlds most complex diseases, like obviously cancer and Neurological Disorders like alzheimers and parkinsons. So we start with the patient and we try to understand all of the components of a person and what they need to help make the patient a better outcome. When a patient walks in and meets with their position, that moment when they find out that they have cancer, emotions and questions really flow through their minds. Our job is to make sure that we use all of our technology to map these cancers and really understand how these cancers are actually being created within the body. And we transfer that go right into coaching him with their cancer and really give them knowledge that helps to be real about the disease and also hope. Because most of the cancers that we see today are treatable and clearly it is becoming more and more of a problem. Host you have referred to yourself as a supplier of this. What do you mean by that . o o oo guest for instance, in our Disease Research in cancer, if a Pharmaceutical Company would be looking for o it genomic signate so they can see where they are trying to lie to that patient. We supplied him with instruments and technology that helps them do their research and do their discovery. So obviously with that comes a great responsibility to be on the cutting edge of technology. Last year was a great opportunity and a Game Changing product. It will allow us to actually map the genome and for us, and disease, it allows us to take diseases like cancer or the dna of those cells and do a map of it, which tells us how that cancer is actually being created host were we looking at here . Guest is a microchip that has been utilized and configured to create beads and wells. And those are little beads and wells. We have attached antibodies as part of the dna code. When they cannot, it creates a signal and reports out and electrical ion in the current comes out and we can read it. It allows us a sequence. Host where is this connecte them placed . Guest is little desktop box that you open up and you put this in it. It is right here on this chip in that report that information out into a very sophisticated computer that has good soft good software. The chips are manufactured some of the largest chipo oo manufacturers in the world in asia and what we do is manufacture this technology. Host where are you headquartered . Guest we are headquartered in carlsbad, california. We are a Public Company on nasdaq. Host ron andrews, being here at Consumer Electronics Show International, there seems to be an exponential growth in the health and technology sector. What does the future hold . Guest you know, we have had all of these incremental and amazing changes over the last five years, and now we are really poised to make some great eats in these complex diseases. Cancer has dwarfed the last 25 years and in the next 10 years, we are really trying to take advantage of this. Using these digital chips that identify the unique signature, and then to be able to monitor and the blood the treatment of cancer. We will then be able to look for changes so patients get treated and they come out a year later. Then we can draw blood and we will be able to catch the cancer before reoccurs and we can monitor and use it so we can have the appropriate therapeutics. Host in your keynote speech, you are reported as saying we are rapidly making progress to ultimately create the google maps of this treatment. Guest thats right. If you can imagine a los angeles highway and a blueprint being developed at a Downtown Los Angeles Architectural Firm and then you are manufacturing at laguna beach. So you go and hit the highway and the traffic and the blueprint has to get the manufacturing to get the proteins made. So its really being able to look at this and take this example and put it on top. Thats where the blueprint of the cancerous. The rna follows the protein system, which makes these bad