Big Picture Medicine

Dr Patrick Malone is an MD, as well as having a PhD in Neuroscience. His research focused on computational cognitive neuroscience and AI applications in radiology. In 2020, he joined the investment team at Northpond Ventures where he invests in early-stage health-tech and deep-tech companies. Patrick put together a viral Twitter thread on his transition from Medicine and Research into Venture Capital. In 40 tweets, he detailed his high yield advice on networking, communication and which skills are useful to develop. Essentially a Bible on some of the meta skills needed to have impact at scale in healthcare. In this episode we discuss that thread — and I ask Patrick to expand on some of those meta skills, and we also talk about his thesis on the future of healthcare. I think this is a super valuable interview — I hope you enjoy. Video interview on YouTube. You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

Niklas Rindtorff is a Physician-Scientist and one of the Pioneers in decentralised healthcare and life sciences. He has an MD from Heidelberg University and he received his Master's Degree in Biomedical Informatics from Harvard Medical School as a Fulbright Scholar. He is a founder of LabDAO, an online community of life scientists collaborating to increase the accessibility of life science tools both in the dry lab and wet lab. He’s also a Core Member of VitaDAO, a collective funding early stage longevity research. DAOs are Decentralised Autonomous Organisations and a staple of the ongoing WEB3 revolution. Investopedia defines DAOs as having no central governing body, every member within a DAO typically shares a common goal and attempts to act in the best interest of the entity. Popularized through cryptocurrency enthusiasts and blockchain technology, DAOs are used to make decisions in a bottom-up management approach. Or as Niklas describes them, DAOs are basically a WhatsApp group chat with an attached cryptocurrency bank account. In this conversation, I find out about how DAOs can be used in healthcare. From enabling rare disease research to fixing science’s publishing problems. I hope you enjoy. You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

Nikhil Patel is the Founder and CEO of Craniometrix, where they’re using innovative deep learning and digital health tools to diagnose Alzheimer’s Disease — and position themselves as the all-in-one Alzheimer’s care platform. Nikhil studied Computer Science and Economics at Yale University, before launching Craniometrix — which was accepted into Y Combinator and have raised $6M in their seed round. We talk about how he’s been able to build Craniometrix as a 22-year-old and get investors really excited about his vision, how a digital tool can unlock new levels of diagnostic ability and why Nikhil talks so fast. You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

Neil Daly is the Founder and CEO of Skin Analytics; a company which uses AI to detect skin cancer.  Neil started Skin Analytics in 2012 after working extensively in mobile innovation and strategy consulting. They’ve raised a total of $9M. If detected early, melanoma can have a 99% survival rate — which dramatically decreases the later it’s picked up — creating a very important opportunity for companies like Skin Analytics. But there are some important caveats to clear up. For example, I ask Neil: Whose fault is it when the algorithm misses a cancer? The doctor’s or the algorithm's? I also ask if algorithms are unfairly held to a higher standard than human doctors, and we speak about the making of the Skin Analytics algorithm — and how it broke away from conventional wisdom. You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

Gian Seehra co-founded Pebble Labs and Trait Biosciences — having raised a total of $16M. He was also a VC at Octopus Ventures, where he oversaw over $200M in funding. He led QuitGenius’s $12M Series A and also facilitated follow-on investments into companies such as Elvie, Big Health and Depop. He now takes his knowledge built from being on the other side of the table — to coach entrepreneurs on how best to pitch and tell their story in order to raise money. We discuss how to pitch to investors — good ways of doing so, but also common mistakes. We also discuss the core tenants of authenticity, logic, empathy and the X factor. Essentially ways of sidestepping the monotony of “here are the 10 things investors want to see” — and instead really getting investors excited about what your vision and what you’re building — and hopefully throwing money at you. I hope you enjoy. You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

Healthcare leadership advice from Sir Bruce Keogh, Dr Eric Topol, Dr Susan Thomas, Dr Fiona Godlee, Dr Ben Maruthappu, Dr Claire Novorol, Will Gibbs, Prof Pearse Keane, Prof Neil Sebire, Melissa Morris and Will Gibbs. All the greatest hits. You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

Tina Woods is Director of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Longevity secretariat and CEO of Collider Health; who work with private, public and third sectors to accelerate innovation and transform health with sustainable impact at scale She also leads the Open Life Data Framework and is the author of ‘Live Longer with AI: How artificial intelligence is helping us extend our healthspans and live better too'. She is also one of the authors of the influential ‘Levelling Up Health’ Report — which was supported by the Health Secretary and CMO. Essentially, Tina is someone who has a truly big picture view of everything needed to add five years of healthy life expectancy while minimising health inequalities. It’s easy for doctors and medical researchers to believe that their contributions are what will really move the needle in improving the world’s health — but really, we’re a small part of that picture. We talk about what we can learn from fintech, whether government is useless and it’s the Elon Musks of the world who will drive change and how to spearhead a movement and really make things happen. Tina is really fascinating — I hope you enjoy.

Dr Adam Bataineh is a Longevity Doctor in the UK and Co-Founder of Span Health, a data-driven health coaching company which was built to increase human performance. Span helped members optimise sleep, nutrition, and exercise with science-based experiments.  It was acquired by Eight Sleep in 2022 for an undisclosed amount.    Adam is really interesting because he’s a pioneer in Medicine. Longevity doesn’t really exist as a specialty in the UK but he’s creating his own niche. Improving the longevity and healthspan of people requires a broad and complete knowledge of human physiology, but it also requires a rich understanding of behavioural psychology and how to incentivise people to act today in a way that future them will be thankful.   Or put another way, instead of putting out fires — doctors like Adam are trying to stop or at least delay the fires from happening in the first place.  We talk about Adam’s story and how he approached building Span, his approach to optimising longevity as well as some of his personal testing stack.  I hope you enjoy.

Dr Joshua Landy is a Canadian Intensive Care Doctor and Co-founder of Figure 1. Figure 1 is sometimes described as Instagram for doctors — but it essentially allows healthcare professionals to share and discuss cases across the world. It’s been used by over 40% of medical students in North America and it boasts over 3 million users. They’ve raised a total of $23.5 million dollars. In this interview, we discuss the story of how Josh and his team built Figure 1, with a particular focus on how they grew and made money from it — as well as some of the big picture business decisions and directions they chose to go in. Josh is extremely open and candid about the whole process — and I think you’ll particularly enjoy this interview if you’re thinking of building and growing your own healthcare startup. I hope you enjoy. You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io

Dr Nir Barzilai is Professor and Founding Director of the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the Director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biology of Human Aging Research and of the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Nathan Shock Centers of Excellence in the Basic Biology of Aging. Essentially he is an OG (original gangster) in human longevity research. When describing him, David Sinclair writes “Not only is he a world leader in aging research, but also happens to be one of the best science communicators on the planet”. Barzilai is also the author of Age Later: Secrets of the Healthiest, Sharpest Centenarians. He has over 270 peer reviewed papers and also co-founded CohBar, a publicly listed biotech company developing mitochondrial therapies for ageing. In his quest to fight ageing — he has consulted or presented to institutions such as the Vatican, PepsiCo and Singapore’s Prime Minister’s Office. He also leads the TAME Trial which is looking at a cheap and commonly used diabetes drug called Metformin — to see if it can slow down the process of ageing. Metformin first gained interest in the longevity space, when people began to notice that diabetics on metformin seemed to have lower mortalities than diabetes on other drugs. In fact, diabetics on metformin had lower death rates than similar people — who didn’t have diabetes and so were not on metformin. Just to be clear, diabetics on metformin with a serious medical condition — which is one of the big four killers in the developed world — appear to have lower death rates than non-diabetics who aren’t taking metformin. That’s crazy. In his TAME trial he’s investigating if metformin can delay the progression of age related diseases in older adults. Barzilai is part of a movement in longevity research or geroscience, who aim to treat ageing as a disease in itself — instead of treating one disease, only for another to take its place. In a 1990 paper in Science, it was estimated that if we cured all cancers — we would extend the average lifespan by just three years. That’s not to say that developing therapies for cancers is wrong, but to really move the needle on health and lifespan extension — we need to think of tackling ageing and not just individual manifestations of ageing such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease and Alzheimers. You can find me on Twitter @MustafaSultan and subscribe to my newsletter on www.musty.io