Finding Genius Podcast

Established just two and a half years ago, the Human Data Commons Foundation aims to address two primary questions: how do we make the best decisions around the best and most powerful sources of data available to us, and how do we put structures in place that encourage people to share their data in a way that protects their privacy and places them at the center of agency in how that data gets used? "Companies realize that the more data they have, the better machine learning algorithms they can produce…and that brings with it enormous power…and enormous peril…there's a lot of systemic injustice that can be perpetuated through these…and our intention at the foundation is to bring more attention to that," says Scott Nelson, founder, and chair of the Human Data Commons Foundation. One way in which they're doing this is by publishing annual "report cards" that review data usage, privacy policies, terms of service, and the amount of agency given to users by the top companies in wearable technology such as Fitbit. The ultimate goal is to democratize, make more transparent, and advance human consciousness and conscious evolution through the responsible and ethical use of data. Nelson touches on a variety of topics, including the main challenges to the implementation of new structures and processes in established company cultures, the role of blockchain technology in personal data protection, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and how a couple of German projects could pave the way for the implementation of open-source, ethical data platforms in the U.S.

The average annual turnover rate for sales reps is about 36%, and 70% of companies need at least six months to bring a single sales rep on board and up to speed. What if these percentages could be significantly decreased by a third party company's ability to quickly obtain and analyze all of an old rep's customer contact information and accounts so that a new rep could hit the ground running—essentially picking up where the last left off? This is just one use case of SigParser, a technology that employs machine learning algorithms to parse through business emails and extract the most pertinent information, including customers' first and last names, phone numbers, and addresses. Once obtained, the information is loaded into the company's customer relationship management system (CRM). Considering the fact that nearly 80% of contact information never makes it into a company's CRM system, SigParser is an invaluable tool for building customer relations and increasing sales. There's also a stateless API version of the product for companies that want to be able to grab contacts but can't have a third party processing and storing the data for them. Interested in learning more or finding out how SigParser can help your company? Paul Mendoza, CEO of SigParser, joins the podcast to explain all the ins and outs, so tune in and visit sigparser.com.

As the medical director of Gramercy Pediatrics In New York City, Dr. Dyan Hes specializes in what's become an epidemic over the past several decades: pediatric obesity. According to the CDC, approximately 19 percent or 13.7 million children in the U.S. are obese, and while it's true that genetics can contribute to this in some families, as a whole the genetics of the human population has not changed enough to account for it. And it's not just the U.S.—it's a first-world problem that's quickly spread to third world countries. So, what's the deal? Dr. Hes makes for an insightful and eye-opening conversation by sharing her expertise on the subject and the experiences she's had with her patients, who range from infants to young adults suffering from one or more conditions due to obesity, including pre-diabetes, high blood pressure, asthma, insulin resistance, irregular menstrual cycles, and joint pain. According to Dr. Hes, kids are being given too much of the wrong types of food and not enough of the right types, especially from school cafeterias. On top of that, many school districts don't have enough funding to provide physical education beyond 45 minutes per week. Add to the mixture an overall increase in sedentary lifestyles and reliance on technology, and you have the ingredients for this current epidemic. Tune in to hear the full conversation and learn how to take the steps to start turning this around. For resources, visit the Obesity Action Coalition and American Board of Obesity Medicine websites and seek out local wellness programs in your area. To learn more about Dr. Hes' work, visit gramercypediatrics.com.

According to David Moore, PhD and faculty member in the Psychological Field Group at Pitzer College, there's good reason to believe that "genes" as we've come to commonly understand them don't actually exist; they aren't segments of DNA which start and stop at discrete points, they don't fulfill just one role in one context, and their expression or lack thereof is not immune to environmental influences. In fact, most molecular biologists would say that there is no single agreed-upon definition of a gene. Dr. Moore joins the podcast to explore the topic of epigenetics: the phenomenon by which our experiences and environmental factors influence our genes and contribute to our characteristics. These environmental stimuli include the food we eat, how we exercise, the drugs we consume, our experiences in childhood, the level at which we socially interact as adults, and socioeconomic status. For example, a 2004 study conducted by Michael Meaney and Moshe Szyf showed an association between the level of grooming a pup receives from its mother and reactivity to stress in adulthood: the more grooming a pup received, the less reactive it was to stress stimuli as an adult. This finding, labelled by the authors as "epigenetic programming," has been challenged by many, yet evidence that supports it continues to grow. This is just a snippet of the fascinating conversation Dr. Moore offers, which touches on topics such as in utero epigenetics, whether epigenetic states can be changed or reversed once they've been established, how the most common antidepressants have been shown to produce epigenetic changes, and the controversial idea that epigenetic changes are inheritable. He also discusses his most recent research, which involves studying mental rotation in human infants—an ability considered the single biggest sex difference in cognition that's unrelated to reproduction. Tune in for the details and visit http://pzacad.pitzer.edu/~dmoore/ to learn more.

Alex Vincart, Ph.D., is the CTO of Enkidoo Technologies, a platform that's bringing small to medium-sized businesses and independent retailers access to the same AI and automation technologies harnessed by major corporations, benefiting them with better tools and better visibility for managing inventory. By connecting point of sale systems and aggregating large amounts of historical sales data, Enkidoo optimizes company supply chains and provides them with a reliable way to predict future sales. With each product offered through Smart Assistance, Enkidoo provides a streamlined and seamless process for business owners who want to do what they set out to from the beginning: foster the business itself without feeling bogged down by the constant operational demands. Tune in for a discussion about the ins and outs of Enkidoo services, what's rolling out in the next six months or so, and an interesting use case that combines IOT and AI. Interested in learning more? Check out enkidoo.ai.

Caroline Klatt entered the world of ecommerce and retail when she was still in high school and quickly realized the primary objective: drive up sales by finding and encouraging consumers to make purchases. For decades now, companies have been trying to accomplish this by investing most of their funds in digital ads and then following up with potential customers via email. According to Klatt, however, this approach has not only become outdated, but ineffective; in a society where everyone is using messaging apps through their phones at almost all hours of the day, retailers must integrate themselves in consumers' lives in the same way—by messaging them directly. As the CEO and co-founder of Headliner Labs, Platt is giving retailers the ability to do this in a scalable and fully-automated way using artificial intelligence, and the result so far has been a 96 percent open rate, meaning potential customers are opening messages from retailers, communicating with them, and ultimately making purchases. Beyond the first layer of AI, retailers have the option of directing potential buyers to a live agent in order to maintain that ever-so-important personal touch and one-on-one communication. Press play to learn how you can benefit from the services offered by Headliner Labs and what to look forward to in the coming months. Visit headlinerlabs.com for more.

Approximately 120,000 people in the U.S. alone are waiting for an organ transplant, and there are many more who could benefit from one but haven't made the list because there simply aren't enough organs available. But what if the supply could be increased by utilizing the organs of another species? The process is called xenotransplantation, and its what Dr. Joseph Tector and his team have been working on for years now. As the director of the University of Alabama Xenotransplant Program, Dr. Tector explains the main roadblock to xenotransplantation: rejection by the receiver's antibodies. However, he and his team have genetically modified pig organs in a way that—in conjunction with immunosuppressant drugs—will decrease or eliminate the human antibody response, thereby preventing rejection. Ten people on the waitlist have already been tested and shown to have no detectable antibodies to the pig cells, making them candidates for transplant. Press play for all the details.

A shortage of about 100,000 physicians is expected in the US by the year 2025, which will force many people into long waiting periods and delays in the detection and treatment of potentially life-threatening conditions. In terms of providing health care in a timely manner to the growing population, we are reaching the limits of human capacity. So, where do we turn? According to the team at Geisinger, the answer is machines. Brandon K. Fornwalt, MD, PhD, and associate professor and director of the Geisinger Department of Imaging Science and Innovation, and Aalpen Patel, MD and Chair of the Geisinger System of Radiology join the podcast to discuss the problems with the current system of medicine and diagnostic imaging, how the implementation of machines and machine learning can help, and the specific projects they're working on to improve patient outcomes and help physicians to be more efficient. In a recent project, the team at Geisinger trained a computer model to predict death in patients by using over 700,000 videos of the heart. The result? The machine made predictions with an accuracy level far superior to that of clinicians, allowing for early intervention for heart attack and stroke. Tune in for a compelling discussion, detailed description of other projects in the works, and Geisinger's long-term goals. To learn more, check out geisinger.org.

Imagine visiting your primary care doctor and receiving a whole read out of your genomic data within 10 minutes for as little as $10, equipping your doctor with the information needed in order to deliver you individually tailored medical treatments and therapies. Thanks to the work being done at Roswell Biotechnologies, this is well on its way to becoming a reality. As the founder, president, and CEO of Roswell Biotechnologies, Paul Mola realizes the need to sequence genomes at scale in order to obtain the level of understanding and interpretation needed for making precision medicine a reality. What we really need, he says, is a "genomic encyclopedia" of genetic variances and corresponding phenotypic descriptions, treatments, and drug therapies. Until now, the high cost and slow process of genomic sequencing has stymied this development and kept enormous amounts of useful information largely inaccessible and unaffordable for the average person. Mola has discovered a viable solution by merging nanochemistry with CMOS technology (which is the same technology that's used to manufacture computer chips), which allows for direct electronic monitoring of the process by which DNA is copied. It's time-saving, cost-effective, and scalable, and there's nothing else like it out there. Rather than taking 24 hours and costing $1,500 to sequence a genome, the Roswell solution will take just an hour and cost $100, and packs a ton of opportunities for improvement down the road. Tune in for all the details and visit roswellbiotech.com to learn more.

Having practiced medicine for over 20 years now, Dr. Sandeep Jain has witnessed firsthand how the increasing predominance of electronic medical records has lowered the amount and damaged the quality of communication that occurs between doctors and patients and between members of a patient's health care team. He argues that electronic medical record keeping has not only made communication across systems impossible by limiting doctors to their organizations or hospitals, but also subtracted from the patient experience by forcing providers to document excess data rather than simply listen to the patient. The problem is only worsened by the fact that doctors are monetarily incentivized to document through this system in a particular manner. "Important, essential insight becomes a needle in a haystack, and doctors have to hide needles of information in a lot of hay because that's how they make their own hay…money," says Dr. Jain. But what if the needles could be shared without the hay and across systems so that a patient's entire care team could be on the same page at the touch of a button? These were the ideas that compelled him to found ListenMD, a secure, HIPPA-compliant app that allows patients and every member of their treating team to communicate with one another in real time, sharing those essential bits of information that would otherwise get buried in the excess. The app also allows providers to delay less important messages and prioritize urgent ones, which keeps disturbances to a minimum and lessens the barrage of data doctors already deal with. There are many other features and perks of the app designed to simplify, streamline, and improve patient care. Tune in for more information and download the app to try it for yourself.