117 – The Shocking Truth About Health Tech Startups | What’s Really Happening w/ Guest Sheila Philcil

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[00:00:17] Vic: Okay. Welcome everyone to Health Further. Today, we have a guest for the show, Sheila Fasil. Sheila, thanks for doing this. Really appreciate it. 

[00:00:25] Sheila Philcil: Thank you, Vic and Marcus. I'm really happy to be here. 

[00:00:28] Vic: So we have caught up over the last couple months, but for the audience, maybe give a little bit of your background.

[00:00:34] Vic: You're a social change futurist and health equity expert, but what does that mean in real life? Like how does that, how does that, um, manifest in, in your work you do day to day? 

[00:00:46] Sheila Philcil: Yeah. So, um, I was a health equity expert, I guess, before being a social change futurist. My background and change and training is in public health, um, as well as financial economics.

[00:00:58] Sheila Philcil: So I've had a 15 [00:01:00] year career in healthcare. you know, solving big problems, running like complex operations, doing strategy work. And my last role was director of innovation for a health equity accelerator. And, um, throughout my professional and personal experience, I keep running into some of the same problems, um, in healthcare that I think are kind of ubiquitous, um, when it comes to solving for social issues, where, um, I think technology can play a role in solving it, but it definitely needs to be people and human first.

[00:01:32] Sheila Philcil: So as a social change futurist, I am very curious, interested and driven and thinking about how do we bridge that gap between what's possible with technology while also not losing our humanity, but actually unlocking our humanity through our shared experience and stories to really shape how we solve problems.

[00:01:52] Vic: Yeah, excellent. And that's part of the reason I wanted to do this conversation is I think many of us got into health care to [00:02:00] make a difference in people's lives. But then the day to day, the systems, the infrastructure, all the status quo sort of, uh, not knocks us off course, but, but pulls us into other things and we maybe lose the story.

[00:02:16] Vic: I want to, um, start in your background. You're a first generation Haitian American. And I think you were thinking about medicine as far as being an MD. And the practice of medicine. And then you had an experience in Haiti that sort of changed the course. Maybe talk through that. What, what happened in Haiti and tell us about that experience and your change in director.

[00:02:38] Sheila Philcil: I love sharing this story. Anyone who's a first generation, like Caribbean or African descent, you can really, um, your path has kind of chosen for you, you're told you could either be a doctor, a lawyer, engineer. Um, my dad did give me a fourth option, which was to be a politician. Um, and I did choose the doctor route just because I.

[00:02:59] Sheila Philcil: I [00:03:00] had this innate desire to help people. Um, I grew up with a mother who was very like community oriented and altruistic and would have us watch, uh, a lot of the, um, television programs around like missionaries and doctors in foreign parts of the world and in Africa in particular, like helping people, um, you know, you know, improve their health and wellbeing.

[00:03:22] Sheila Philcil: So I always thought that that would be my path. Um, and I was, you know, pre med all through undergrad. Even, you know, did my MCAT, um, and I went to Haiti, um, in, uh, 2006. And it was definitely a life changing experience. I went actually as a medical volunteer with a group that was doing rehab medicine, because that was the domain that I thought I would be going into.

[00:03:47] Sheila Philcil: And this was before the earthquake. But what they were doing was in the central part of Haiti, Port au Prince were offering services to families who had Children or themselves were [00:04:00] dealing with disabilities. Um, these could be cognitive or physical disabilities or people who had injuries. So they were developing prosthetic limbs, uh, giving people wheelchairs, teaching them how to use crutches.

[00:04:12] Sheila Philcil: Um, it was a very, uh, kind of like real time on the ground, giving people like this great access to healthcare that otherwise wasn't available. Um, while I was there doing this great work, noticed that many of the families who had traveled many long hours, days, uh, to get to this clinic were returning the items that they had been given, like the crutches and the wheelchairs and everything else.

[00:04:38] Sheila Philcil: Um, and the volunteers and myself were like quite perplexed because it was like, well, you know, we brought all this equipment, you know, came all this way, people came all this way. Like, you know, we're using our vacation time, all that good stuff. Like what, what's happening. Uh, and I think the initial instinct was to think that, you know, people were just ungrateful.

[00:04:57] Sheila Philcil: Um, but, you know, being Haitian myself and I speak [00:05:00] the language, I started talking to people and I began asking them questions like, what's going on? Like, why aren't you using the equipment? Why are you returning it? And what I learned from those conversations where people were telling me that, you know, they had to cross a river and we told them that they couldn't get it wet.

[00:05:14] Sheila Philcil: They lived in a shantytown where there was no wheelchair accessible ramps. Um, they had to like crawl through very like, you know, narrow crevices. So it was easier for them to crawl than to use a crutch. Um, and of course, like for me, after hearing those stories, it became very obvious like, Oh, well, clearly we did not think about your living conditions when we were designing these solutions.

[00:05:38] Sheila Philcil: And it became very obvious to me right then and there that. Um, we're very limited, even with great technology, we're very limited in helping people if we don't truly understand their lived experience. And I think we probably had been better given some of these people's skateboards, um, than crutches, right?

[00:05:56] Sheila Philcil: Because at least they could like pick it up and keep moving. Um, so [00:06:00] that experience really, uh, it was actually right after that I made a shift and decided to go into public health as I wanted to better understand the systems like poverty and access to, you know, education and good food and healthy living situations that really lead to overall like, um, people's well being and health.

[00:06:20] Vic: And, and so you are in Boston now. Did you, did you start your career in Boston? 

[00:06:25] Sheila Philcil: I did. So I moved to Boston to go to Boston University, um, where I started my degree in public health and have pretty much stayed put and have worked in various like healthcare settings in my career here. 

[00:06:39] Vic: Okay. And so, uh, you touched on your interest in stories as a way to guide, uh, public health and health equity issues.

[00:06:49] Vic: Um, we talked about your grandmother's story in the past, but maybe weave your grandmother's story and sort of her cancer journey with how you think about using stories to really connect [00:07:00] with people. Because I think that's something that was really valuable in empathetic healthcare and public health in any kind of care.

[00:07:07] Vic: That sometimes, uh, in our technology driven world, we, we forget. So, maybe talk about your grandmother's story and stories in general. 

[00:07:14] Sheila Philcil: So, my grandmother, um, was diagnosed with, uh, stage 2 breast cancer, and I actually found out about it at my grandfather's funeral. Um, my grandfather had actually died from Parkinson's and, His death was actually quite tragic.

[00:07:29] Sheila Philcil: I literally watched him waste away, um, because neither myself or my family were able to get him access to, uh, treatments and medications that were actually available at the time. Um, and also, um, Uh, I was happening to work at Dana Farber Cancer Institute, uh, one of the best in, you know, leading health, you know, cancer hospitals in the world, really.

[00:07:54] Sheila Philcil: So, by that time had been several years into my role and really understood [00:08:00] from the inside how cancer works, like how do you get diagnosis, um, What are the differences between a specialist, like a medical oncologist versus a radiation oncologist and a surgeon? Um, I had even helped implement a lot of, um, projects around access in clinical trials and other things.

[00:08:18] Sheila Philcil: So I knew the battle that my grandmother was up against. However, she was on Medicaid. Um, uh, my grandmother was at the time well into her old age. deep into her 90s and she didn't speak English. She, you know, lived in Haiti and, and came to the States, you know, as an old woman with grown children. Um, so I knew that her journey was going to be incredibly difficult if I had not stepped in.

[00:08:46] Sheila Philcil: So I really became like the primary person negotiating with insurance, making sure I transferred her care from a local hospital in Orlando where my family lives. to the Moffitt Cancer Center, uh, in Tampa, which is one of [00:09:00] the best, um, available in that, you know, part of the country. And actually, it was because of some of my connections working with cancer, uh, doctors that I asked them to, you know, connect me with, uh, the specialists at the Moffitt Cancer Center.

[00:09:13] Sheila Philcil: Um, they probably, I don't know if they would have seen her otherwise, considering that she was on Medicaid. Um, but I definitely used every privilege and every access that I could to guide her through, you know, she did oral chemo, had surgery and radiation, um, and even negotiated with the insurance. to have her get rides to and from Orlando to Tampa every day for her radiation therapy on Medicaid because my family did not have the means to be able to support her, um, beyond, you know, essentially like her basic necessities.

[00:09:46] Sheila Philcil: So her survival was literally dependent on her getting these treatments and completing the cycle of therapy. Um, and again, like, I had to make sure to coordinate having someone [00:10:00] with her, making sure that there was an interpreter, speaking with the doctor, um, being on the phone to kind of relay her symptoms and some of the things that were going on to make sure that things were not getting lost, um, in translation.

[00:10:13] Sheila Philcil: It's one thing to be an administrator, Who's making decisions and policies and, you know, thinking about access from an abstract point of view. It's very different when it's someone that you love dearly. 

[00:10:26] Vic: Yeah. And so there's a change in your career going from Dana Farber, Director of Oncology and Patient Operations, to then shifting to Boston Medical Center, Director of Innovation for Health Equity.

[00:10:38] Vic: Uh, did your grandmother's story and your experience with her affect that? Or what, what was that transition in your career to move over to Boston Medical Center? 

[00:10:45] Sheila Philcil: So, uh, it was a couple of steps that led to that, um, but it was actually, um, a bit of a reckoning with my own, um, career and my intentions and the work that I was doing that came right around the [00:11:00] time when I was helping my family.

[00:11:02] Sheila Philcil: mother, my grandmother managed her cancer treatment. Um, you'll probably remember car T cell therapy came out and it was a big deal because this was a potential cure. Um, but it was also a very, very, very expensive treatment. Um, my responsibility, um, was to figure out a way to essentially throttle the number of patients that were coming to our hospital for this treatment to make sure that, um, the hospital would be able to Bring on patients who had the insurance that could pay for it, essentially.

[00:11:33] Sheila Philcil: Um, and so I'm an excellent at my job. I'm a great project manager. So I helped design essentially a system, um, where insurances were flagged as either red, meaning like. those insurances would not cover it. Therefore, we do not see those patients yellow, meaning they might need some prior authorizations and green.

[00:11:51] Sheila Philcil: Um, and what I noticed after this got implemented, um, I looked at the patients who are coming in to receive the treatment and they [00:12:00] were all white. There were No black patients that we were treating and it was, uh, it took a while, but after a while I've realized like, Oh my God, I implemented a system that essentially cut people out who needed this therapy.

[00:12:16] Sheila Philcil: Now, who are the people that are on the red? list, right? These are their insurances like Medicaid insurances, like the one my grandmother was on. So thinking about it as someone who's fighting for my grandmother's life, and I'm making decisions that is essentially blocking people from accessing this care.

[00:12:35] Sheila Philcil: And it was a serious like moral crisis for me to the point where I had intended to write an email to the CEOs of the Dana Farber and Brigham Women's Hospital because I was reporting up into both of those. And I stopped to talk with my boss at the time to ask for her advice because I was like, this is wrong.

[00:12:53] Sheila Philcil: Like, we are literally implementing inequities in the way that we're doing this. And yes, I'm part of that, [00:13:00] but I want to change it. And the advice I got was like, you could do that. Uh, but you have to think about your career. And I chose not to say anything. I chose not to send that email and it haunted me.

[00:13:13] Sheila Philcil: Um, when I got the opportunity to transition to Boston Medical Center, my first role was actually as a director for the neurology department. So I had even more direct responsibility for the care of patients and for the environment that we were creating for providers and teams. And I just made a commitment to myself that I was going to do it differently.

[00:13:31] Sheila Philcil: I was going to approach this with people first. with equity. I would say the hard things. I would do the hard things. Um, and that's essentially what led to my evolution as transitioning then to director of innovation for health equity because I brought that, you know, fervor in the work that I was doing.

[00:13:49] Sheila Philcil: It was noticed. Um, in my first year at Boston Medical Center, I was awarded the BMC Leadership Award for my leadership around, um, health equity and DEI. Um, and [00:14:00] I was able to have a sit down conversation with the COO at the time and essentially pitched this role, Director of Innovation for Health Equity, and the position was created for me.

[00:14:08] Sheila Philcil: So it was just building on my experiences and trying to correct some of what I had been part of, in terms of designing systems that were not working for patients. 

[00:14:19] Vic: And so what, what, tell, talk to me about what you learned at Boston Medical Center in that role, and maybe transition to the healthcare status quo topic.

[00:14:28] Vic: Like, uh, you've talked a lot about how much money we spend and, and how, How poorly it's utilized really is if you judge it based on outcomes and what were your learnings trying to push innovation around health equity at Boston Medical Center and then how can you relate that to the overall system? 

[00:14:45] Sheila Philcil: Yes, so Boston Medical Center is an essential hospital which essentially Means that it's serving patients with no insurance or public insurance.

[00:14:55] Sheila Philcil: Mostly that was our demographic. Um, more than 70 [00:15:00] percent of our patients were on some sort of like, um, public insurance or live below the federal poverty line. 30 percent of our patients spoke, uh, primary language other than English and, uh, Large proportion of our patients were black and brown, uh, so the imperative was kind of built in to the work that we were doing and Boston Medical Center was actually one of the first public hospitals in the country.

[00:15:24] Sheila Philcil: So there was kind of in the legacy of this place to really serve people and regardless of ability to pay. But obviously, when you're an administrator like myself and you're given budgets, um, and you have to hire doctors and you have compensation plans and you have to make sure that people are paid fairly and then you have to hire, you know, nurses and medical assistants and interpreters and social workers, like it takes a lot of people for healthcare to function.

[00:15:52] Sheila Philcil: And it was, it always felt like we could not keep up, like we could not keep up. and get the numbers to work so that we [00:16:00] could pay people fairly, not, you know, stress people out to the point of burnout, which we, we hear about a lot while also trying to provide the best care for our patients in a highly regulated environment with very few, like, really good innovation that's making it easier to do that.

[00:16:18] Sheila Philcil: So the way that I see from that experience, um, I've come to understand that hospitals in particular. Really service pass through entities. Um, you have health care insurance companies, um, that, you know, kind of collect money to, you know, pay for health care that goes to the hospitals where only a tiny margin is really going to support the staff and administrators and then the rest goes to biotech, med tech, health tech.

[00:16:49] Sheila Philcil: And then on that side of the ledger, you have billion. Companies that are worth billions of dollars and in the middle you have providers that are being increasingly squeezed to do more with [00:17:00] less and patients that are waiting months if not weeks to see the specialist that they need hours in the emergency room, delayed diagnoses, um, ineffective, highly, you know, expensive treatments.

[00:17:13] Sheila Philcil: It's overall like a sick care system that doesn't really work well for the individual. It's been my experience overall. 

[00:17:21] Vic: Yeah. And so I think just to rephrase, make sure I'm following, there's an infrastructure, a system that has grown up over 50, 60 years in the U. S. that maybe was well intentioned at first, but now it is, it is sort of has a lot of momentum and is going a certain direction.

[00:17:41] Vic: And I think what you have told me offline is that system is, is, you know, designed for sort of this, uh, provision of care across as many people as possible, but maybe not thinking about each particular patient as an individual story. And so it's difficult to [00:18:00] change. Is that close to what you mean? Is that kind of what you mean?

[00:18:03] Sheila Philcil: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, when healthcare first developed in this country, it was very centered around doctors, right? So, you know, um, and I think when we, we saw kind of a shift away from that with kind of curbing fee for service, right? Because that became one of the things we saw as a driving force behind the cost of healthcare.

[00:18:27] Sheila Philcil: you know, essentially billing for a lot of things because it was a way to generate more money. We've heard a lot of that with some of these like value based payment models and accountable care models and bundled payments. But so we've, we've squeezed that down I think as much as we possibly can. But at the same time, we're not, and we're not giving doctors and patients more tools that can really help them navigate, um, these illnesses and treatments because they're not really designed with the patient's lived experience at the heart of it.

[00:18:58] Sheila Philcil: Right. So we have a [00:19:00] lot of innovation as it relates to specific treatments and, you know, you know, different drugs and therapies and devices, um, but we still lack. real innovation as it relates to the nuts and bolts of how we care for patients, how we engage with them, how do we keep people healthy, um, how do we make it easier for the doctor and patient to have a really great relationship so that they understand what's happening and can, you know, pivot and make changes, right?

[00:19:30] Sheila Philcil: So I think that's really what's missing right now. 

[00:19:33] Vic: Yeah, and so coming up through this environment at Dana Farber and Brian Williams and then Boston Medical, you, you lived in the system, like you really understood the system, you understand the system. How, what are some specific ways we should try to rethink or reimagine how the system is designed really to maybe be?

[00:19:54] Vic: Be more patient centered or, or focus on the actual care being delivered to the patient. 

[00:19:59] Sheila Philcil: Well, I think [00:20:00] one place to really start is when we look at the kind of healthcare innovation ecosystem, um, we've got, we have millions of dollars that go from, you know, venture capital and other innovation kind of funders into healthcare startups.

[00:20:18] Sheila Philcil: Um, but 98 percent of them are failing and some of them are failing. Miserably, um, and even some of the innovation that's coming out, you know, again, I was one of those people that was being flooded. Part 

[00:20:32] Vic: D is an incredible innovation, but, but it may not be getting down to everyone. For instance, like an example of it.

[00:20:38] Vic: Yeah. 

[00:20:39] Sheila Philcil: Right. Exactly. It's not getting down to everyone. Um, you're having like, you know, these big, uh, uh, investments and risks in these kind of like innovation and clinical trial pipelines, um, where most of these products are failing or not getting to some point of efficacy. So the ones that are making it across the finish line [00:21:00] cost a lot of money.

[00:21:01] Sheila Philcil: Uh, whereas, um, I think if we started innovation with the patient's story and their lived experience, there's many more solutions that people already have and a very deep understanding of their own lived experience with their diagnosis that can really shape some of what we're coming up with and shape the solutions so that we have more successful remedies and treatments and health technology and all the things that would really lead to, uh, a more robust and comprehensive way for taking care of patients.

[00:21:33] Vic: Yeah. And so is that how you came across your, one of your new endeavors, Facilitate Change, uh, is really a new framework for entrepreneurs to think about creating or developing innovations. Is that sort of where you're headed? Is this Facilitate Change? a way to approach this? 

[00:21:53] Sheila Philcil: Yes, so Facilitate Change, um, is my, uh, startup, which is offering both advisory [00:22:00] and AI solutions, uh, for healthcare innovators, really with the intention of putting patients in, in the center, really being very radically patient centered.

[00:22:11] Sheila Philcil: Um, and the first product that I'm working on building is Compass Project. And Compass Project is intended to be a platform that is utilizing blockchain and AI to really help health tech, um, entrepreneurs and innovators to accelerate their time to product market fit, uh, through directly engaging with patient stories and their data.

[00:22:33] Sheila Philcil: And in this platform, we'll be able to generate various, uh, unique and deep insights so that as, um, the product is being developed, where the features that it includes, the way that it works. Even things like, do you have the appropriate, like, language of accessibility in your product? And, uh, are you thinking about the person in terms of their whole life, like, as a caregiver, not just as a patient, for example, right?

[00:22:59] Sheila Philcil: [00:23:00] Um, so those are the kinds of things that we want to bring into that innovation space. Um, because what I'm seeing as kind of like a broad failure is We're applying technology innovation principles into health care and health care is a very human space. So we need to have a different approach for social innovation that is people centered.

[00:23:19] Sheila Philcil: Um, it's nice to have like a Facebook or a Tesla where, you know, they can come up with these fancy products that we didn't know we needed, right? Like, and now we're walking around with. pretty much a computer in our pocket, right? Um, but when it comes to our health care, that is a very deep and personal experience.

[00:23:36] Sheila Philcil: And someone who's lived with diabetes, for example, for 15 years, they're the expert in how to manage and treat their diabetes. And we have to tap into that knowledge by honoring and centering innovation around patient stories. 

[00:23:50] Vic: Okay. So, um, let's dig into that a little bit more. Say there's a new startup in Cambridge, two founders at a coffee shop, trying to figure out a way to bring a new [00:24:00] innovation to diabetes, you introduced me to this new term, at least new to me, social listening, combining that with product development.

[00:24:08] Vic: How does that work? Like, what does it actually mean to the founders? How do you engage with them? What is social listening for the audience? And then how does that really help the founders? Make faster progress. 

[00:24:20] Sheila Philcil: So social listening, or you might even think of it as patient engagement, is essentially talking to people about their experience, right?

[00:24:28] Sheila Philcil: And learning from them what works and what doesn't. And today, what that looks like might be, you know, surveys. Or focus groups, right? Um, to collect people's lived experiences. So with your example of the two founders in a coffee shop, they might put out a serving on their website or talk to people in their network who have diabetes and say, Hey, I'm building this app, for example, these are the features it's going to have.

[00:24:54] Sheila Philcil: And this is what it's intended to do. Would you use it in yes or no type of thing? Right. [00:25:00] Um, is it similar 

[00:25:02] Vic: to customer discovery where we would talk in a. And started playing and talking about customer discovery, like trying to learn about your customers. Is that a similar concept? 

[00:25:10] Sheila Philcil: It is a very similar concept to customer discovery.

[00:25:13] Sheila Philcil: And it builds on it, um, in the sense that with what, with the current model, it's very limited sampling in terms of the number of people that you're able to survey. And also like, When you're collecting, uh, static data, uh, you're losing the context without the story. So let's say I want to develop this app for a newly diagnosed diabetes patient, right?

[00:25:36] Sheila Philcil: So you might be able to ask a hundred patients, you know, uh, when, when were you diagnosed and, and what was your A1C when you found out that you were, when you had diabetes, for example. But it's very different. Um, if I'm diagnosed with diabetes because I show up to my doctor's appointments every year and my doctor's noticing my A1C levels are going up versus someone who was walking [00:26:00] to work, their eyes got blurry and they hit the pavement and they showed up in the emergency room and found out they had diabetes.

[00:26:06] Sheila Philcil: That is two very different types of diagnoses, right? Uh, so. We really want to deeply understand the context and the story of people's experience so that we can really tailor the interventions around their experience, right? Um, so that we're not guessing, because what often happens is we might, you know, come up with our best guess of what we think the product might be.

[00:26:28] Sheila Philcil: need to function, test it with patients or people, and then we kind of iterate from there. But what often happens when I've witnessed this is that either you run out of money or the testing is still not robust enough to give you enough information about what really works for this particular segment or population.

[00:26:46] Vic: Yeah, and I think sometimes as you're serving 5, 10, 15 potential patients or customers, you end up losing a lot of the context, all the depth of the story is that. the empathy side of it, all that [00:27:00] qualitative stuff gets lost because it doesn't fit in neatly in the survey. And then when you roll it up to a summary, you get the static quantitative things, but you lose a lot of the power of the story.

[00:27:11] Sheila Philcil: Exactly. That is exactly what's happening. So how does your 

[00:27:14] Vic: tool help with this? 

[00:27:16] Sheila Philcil: So a compass project would first start with some sort of like quiz or assessment to help the startup founder or innovator understand where they are in their process. So I do have a framework and questions that you can fill out that help you understand where you are and where where's the next step for you in terms of developing your product.

[00:27:38] Sheila Philcil: Um, and then it's really making sure that you have a very clear objective and clear like problem statement, like what problem are you solving and what is the feature that you're really testing or bringing to the market, then compass would be able to go out and source patients to essentially like ask questions about their experience.

[00:27:58] Sheila Philcil: directly related to the problem that [00:28:00] you're trying to solve. Um, and the beauty about this is it's also intended to do this at scale to collect stories and data. So we're not talking about sampling a couple dozen patients. We're talking about a couple hundred or thousands. Right? So that you get really deep data and that we have deeply representative data.

[00:28:20] Sheila Philcil: Right? So we're not just looking at things like, you know, do you have representation in terms of gender or race, but also language, ethnicity, or even like if you were first born versus left handed versus right handed. Those kinds of like nuanced information we don't really get at because our sample sizes aren't big enough, right?

[00:28:40] Sheila Philcil: Um, and once we've checked a few boxes, we think we've talked to enough people, but you can really dig deeper when you get collect many more stories and data from patients. Then using AI, we can take those stories in that data. And roll it up into very deep insights, um, where you have the information, but it's [00:29:00] contextualized and you can kind of like go deeper into the layers of this particular profile or customer avatar, if you'd like to call it, so that you have a deep understanding of their lived experience and how they may interact with your, um, product or solution that you're developing.

[00:29:16] Vic: Yeah, that's pretty interesting. And then the, uh, there's benefits all around, like there's benefits to the founders because you're bringing additional users, additional patients there to make their customer discovery, their product evolution better. But then even if that startup fails, Compass is maintaining this database of all of these stories.

[00:29:37] Vic: So another diabetic startup in Florida came up. Is it right that they could also tap into these same stories? So you're starting to build up a, I don't know, a database of, uh, people that could be helped. 

[00:29:52] Sheila Philcil: Yes, and one thing I'll correct about that is Compass will not own the data. Patients own the data.

[00:29:58] Sheila Philcil: This is why blockchain is [00:30:00] going to be central into how this technology is built. I'm a firm believer in data sovereignty. I do think that that's where the disruption needs to happen in healthcare. Uh, because we do a lot of data hoarding right now. And to your point, that is very valuable that we collect a lot of this information, but it ends up dying with the founder or being awarded when these institutions, whereas this is going to be designed so that the patients own their data and they can consent on who accesses it and then compensated for it so that they are again the center of the innovation.

[00:30:35] Vic: Great. So yeah, so that's a good correction. So each patient can consent to kind of opt in to All the startups are on diabetes or only some of them or whatever they choose to do and there's a compensation mechanism around that. 

[00:30:51] Sheila Philcil: Yes, and this is becomes easier to scale because once you've, um, asked the patients these questions or collected some of the baseline information.

[00:30:59] Sheila Philcil: You [00:31:00] don't need to repeat the same questions over and over again. There might be nuances in the updates, right? But they essentially now have this, like, very valuable real time data that can be accessible to innovators. 

[00:31:14] Vic: Yeah, interesting. So when did you start this and is it? Working now. Is it in process?

[00:31:19] Vic: Have any startups used it? What's it like now? 

[00:31:22] Sheila Philcil: So I'm very much early stage. This is month five being a full time entrepreneur. I'm in the process right now, building the team, uh, to develop the tool. I already have interest in terms of beta testing and I'm actually starting, uh, by working with a few, uh, health tech startups as kind of my My first iteration of kind of collecting their stories as well in terms of what their experience is with their customer discovery and product market fit so that we're adapting our solution to their needs.

[00:31:55] Sheila Philcil: So a little bit of practicing what we preach. Um, but my [00:32:00] goal is to have a prototype by March of this year and a fully developed MVP by August. Um, and I'm looking for beta testers would love to talk to entrepreneurs. And, uh, folks that are, um, you know, connected with patients and, um, associations or social organizations as well.

[00:32:18] Vic: Okay. I think I understand how blockchain can help with the data sovereignty and the patients owning their data in an encrypted way that they can opt in or not. How are you leveraging AI? 

[00:32:31] Sheila Philcil: So the AI helps us with generating the insights. As you know, AI is essentially you know, mining data and large language models are, um, more ubiquitous now and accessible.

[00:32:44] Sheila Philcil: Uh, so when you talk about collecting stories, it's a lot of unstructured data, right? Um, actually one of my first jobs, um, while in my career while I was doing my public health was working as part of, um, a grant funded Center for Innovation [00:33:00] and Social Work where we were interviewing patients living with HIV and AIDS because we were trying to solve the problem of how do you keep patients, particularly those from marginalized communities, engaged in care and taking the medications.

[00:33:15] Sheila Philcil: Um, and what we did was we actually went and talked to patients who had HIV and specifically talk to those who are managing it well, transcribed the interview, went back and like highlighted to find the patterns, and then turn that into a curriculum where we're able to teach community based organizations how to integrate peers into their care models.

[00:33:38] Sheila Philcil: And it was very, very, very effective. But now what would take probably Yeah, you can do that with AI, so that's going to really allow us to unlock the insights from the stories and the data from patients. 

[00:33:57] Vic: Okay, excellent. Well, it's exciting stuff. Talk to me [00:34:00] about what your hopes are for the future. Where do you see this going?

[00:34:03] Sheila Philcil: I would really love to create, um, a robust platform where every early stage entrepreneur or innovator in the healthcare space is, uh, able to access this and create solutions that are really designed around patients. But also, I think what would be really great for me is to work with startups and get at that early stage and be able to say, Hey, this is a good idea, but You need to change this feature or this is actually not a good idea at all.

[00:34:32] Sheila Philcil: Don't invest in this. Like, don't build this. It's not going to help anybody. Because I do think we have a lot of technology out there that, um, that just is wasteful and, and in some cases harmful to patients because they're really not intended to do, uh, to reach what. You know, the real problem at the root cause.

[00:34:50] Sheila Philcil: So I would really like to see less waste in this space so that all of these startups are much more successful because they're grounded in the patient experience. 

[00:34:59] Vic: Yeah, I think [00:35:00] that's a great, incredible vision. I mean, I think it's pretty widely accepted that maybe one out of 10, maybe less startups are successful.

[00:35:10] Vic: And that means that there's a lot of time, a lot of capital, a lot of technology, a lot of effort. That is wasted. And I would take the view that people are well intentioned, but they don't really know where their product doesn't fit with what the customers and patients need. They don't know if they should pivot in this direction or this direction.

[00:35:32] Vic: And if your tool could really help them get those insights more quickly, make their course corrections more effectively. Maybe we could get to five out of 10 and that would be a huge uplift in sort of the number of innovations, the number of solutions that can really help patients out there. 

[00:35:48] Sheila Philcil: Absolutely.

[00:35:49] Sheila Philcil: And we desperately need it for people like my grandmother, right? Or even going back to the story of the, you know, the work that I was doing in Haiti, if there had [00:36:00] been an initial Work to just go into the community, observe people's lived experience, understand their barriers, we would not have like shipped all these like expensive and heavy equipment, we would have been able to come in and use the resources effectively, right?

[00:36:17] Sheila Philcil: So that there would not be waste. And healthcare is one of the areas where we really need when we waste it is actually harm. Because that is dollars and resources that is not going towards helping people that really need it. 

[00:36:29] Vic: Excellent. Well, um, maybe give a hand up. Where should people, uh, go via website to learn more about Compass and, um, Facilitate change and so they can get involved, maybe, uh, be a patient or have a startup to contribute.

[00:36:45] Vic: Uh, where should they go to learn more? Yes. 

[00:36:48] Sheila Philcil: Yes. So you can go to my website. It's facil uh, ate, uh, so it's a play on my last name. Facilitate change. We'll put, we'll put a link in 

[00:36:57] Vic: the show notes. Get the spelling right. So. [00:37:00] Facilitate. Yes. Change. Um, 

[00:37:03] Sheila Philcil: yes. And there you'll be able to find all the information about compass project to connect with me.

[00:37:08] Sheila Philcil: Um, to sign up to get more information. Um, I'm, I'm really, um, interested in talking to patients as well as entrepreneurs as we're building this product. So looking for folks that want to beta test with us. Um, and people who have ideas in terms of like how to shape the technology as well. Uh, would love to talk to people and you can also find me on LinkedIn, uh, Sheila Fasil and love to connect with people and, and share and learn from others as well.

[00:37:36] Vic: Great. Sheila, thanks for sharing this. I'm super excited about the Compass Project. I'm going to be sending some of my companies to, uh, get involved. And I'd love to see it mature and get out there and help help more patients and more entrepreneurs. 

[00:37:51] Sheila Philcil: I'm really excited for 

[00:37:52] Vic: the future. Thanks for doing this.

[00:37:53] Vic: Really appreciate [00:38:00] it.