In today’s episode, we chat with Shefali Shah. https://www.linkedin.com/in/shefalishahchong/

Shefali is VP of Commercialization and an Industry leader focused on evidence-based strategies for Digital Healthcare, BioTech & Pharma sectors. She is also a certified Yoga instructor. 

Digital health is a tech category that focuses on science and research to continuously develop new methods that empower humans to live their full lives, by making it easier and more accessible to people so that they can make informed decisions on their own on how to live better lives.  

We asked Shefali about the creative process for generating new ideas in their different teams: 

• For the product, the team is constantly working within the product teams to customize what the solutions look like based on where in the world they are and the needs of that region. 
• For research,  they look at the areas that make the most sense, where the patients are going to meet the biggest bang for their buck. While at the same time they are constantly developing new digital biomarkers.  
• On the commercial side, which is her department, she uses a lot of emotional intelligence where her focus is on bringing everyone into the mix and listening to their ideas, seeing a different perspective on the issue.

On a personal note, Shefali was born in India and came to the US for her undergraduate in Engineering where she was 1 out of 2 female students. Her ambition is inspired by members of her family who are Nobel prize winners, founders of big startup companies, and successful entrepreneurs. On the side, Shefali teaches a yoga class where she blends yoga and meditation with dance and music, this results in her students experiencing not just a yoga class, but also an education on the anatomy, physiology, and a creative flow from their brains to their entire body. 

You can connect with Shefali on LinkedIn: Shefali Shah

auto generated transcript

Welcome back friends to our podcast, unlocking your world of creativity. And there's so much excitement today in healthcare, new developments, new medications, new vaccines, some controversial let's don't wash over that, but so much excitement, and especially there's another category that not everybody knows about right now. And that's digital health and a lot of both solutions and record-keeping and even some diagnostic apps that are being developed. And we're gonna talk a little bit about the creativity and the pursuits in that area today, along with some other creative pursuits, but I can't wait to introduce you to my guest today. Shefali Shah. Shefali welcome to the show.

Well, thank you, mark. This is very exciting, indeed.

Yes. And Shefali has a long history of background in the life sciences and in the pharma industry. Currently, she's a VP of commercial operations at Huma, which is a digital health company. Tell us a little bit about what's going on over there for you these days. Shefali

Yeah. Thanks, Mark. Yeah, it's really an exciting space to be in, as you said. So Huma is a digital health tech company. And I like to say that we have really two parts to our company. One is the technology platform, but it's also very much backed up by the science and the research to continuously develop new methods so that we can really empower humans to live their full lives. So, like you, this is a very regulated space and we are dealing with people's lives. So we need to be thorough in the science and at the same time, make it easier and more accessible to people so that they can make decisions on their own and make informed decisions to live those better lives. So,

And clearly, a lot of this is our lifestyle habits, but there's a lot of data as well that needs to be collected and stored, and analyzed. I couldn't help, but love this phrase on your website that we're a hospital at home technology collecting some of this data where what's working behind what's working under the hood to make this happen.

Yeah, sure. So, that's exactly the concept is as during COVID, our hospitals were really reaching the edge of their capacity and how do you create more capacity? And that is really by taking some of these digital biomarkers, having patients stay at home in the comfort of their own homes, but they're being monitored remotely. Their blood pressure is being measured, their heart rates their oxygen saturation, all of these metrics were being measured remotely. And, and then you had the doctors who could look at the data real-time and then decide for themselves, which patient can continue to stay at home and which patient really needs to come into the hospital. And so, by extending the time of the patient at home, you, we, first of all, we're providing those hospital services at home, but at the same time, we were really extending that capacity for the doctors to really take care of more patients at the same time.

Yes. Well, this would not be without its challenges. Of course. I mean, yeah, there's the technical challenge of course, but, clinicians how well are they embracing it and patients, how well are they accepting this kind of remote monitoring?

Yeah. So you're absolutely right. There is the pre COVID world where this was, I think we were, it was a slow adoption and, and when, when COVID hit, it was, it was very difficult to keep up. And at least in the UK and Germany, the company was able to deploy this technology within days to hundreds of hospitals. And when you have all of those hospitals in a country being on the same platform, the adoption will be very fast. We, literally double the capacity of the hospital wards. We reduced re-admissions by a third and most importantly, we had very good outcomes and, physicians were getting this, these outcomes and results very, very quickly. So, the adoption was there because they were seeing results in real-time. And going forward, we see something similar in that there are certain categories where there is a lack of the ratio between the number of patients and the physicians and the healthcare workers are very skewed. And so whenever there are capacity constraints or wherever patients need to be monitored more frequently for better outcomes or lowering costs, there is that acceptability and, and I believe physicians and patients, and the FDA now is also they're all recognizing that there is value in this.

Well, I couldn't help, but sort of perk up when I heard part of the UK acceptance was everybody was on a similar platform. And so they were able to talk to each other you can't say that's the same, I know US hospitals. You can barely have the one iPad talking to the other iPad alone, everybody on the same platform.

Yeah. And as you know our healthcare system is very fragmented. Not only that our electronic health records are also very much customized to different sites. And so it's not very easy to connect everything in the United States. And that's why we recognized that we needed the expertise in the market, and we needed the expertise in figuring out where in the value chain we're going to fit and how we're going to deploy this very amazing solution for patients in the US. So, it may not look exactly the same as it does in Europe, but we are certainly looking at different avenues. So for example, we are working with life science companies to monitor patients who might be on treatments that require a REMS program, we are starting in different ways. But I think ultimately the power will be in connecting more and more of these dots together to form as much of a picture as possible.

Yeah. Well, and certainly thinking about patient access, I mean the some of the scenarios you've been describing, but I, I'm also out here in Idaho, there's a hospital where you live on every corner. Yeah. In my part of the world, they can be few and far between. And so having patients have access to providers seems like this kind of telehealth, this kind of telemedicine could be a real benefit in rural areas.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And rural areas, urban areas. I mean, I think that there is, even in urban areas where you have such disparities of care in this country can we leverage this app or this platform to bring about some of that equity? Because now we have ways of collecting not just the telemedicine, but collecting the actual data over time, and that should help patient physicians make better decisions as opposed to relying on just, Mark, how do you feel today? And you have forgotten the six months of history between your appointments on how you really feel, and you give what is just on top of mind and not really what is really happening over that long period of time. So this allows us to help physicians, help patients make better decisions and have better outcomes and reduce cost and reduce the distance between people. So this is why it's so exciting.

That's so good. Well, Shefali, this is also a creativity podcast and maybe people don't appreciate the kind of creativity that goes into this kind of programming and app development and digital health deployment but give us a behind the scenes, look take us inside, maybe the conference room, the company, the zoom calls that you're on, what sort of creative process are you guys going through and really coming up with the new ideas, both the, technical ideas, but also the marketing and commercialization ideas. Yeah,

Yeah, absolutely. And I would put them in three different buckets, really. There is the technology, the research, and also the marketing and commercialization. So in terms of the product itself, I mean, within that, there are, again, there two different components. One is, are we meeting the healthcare standards? We don't wanna be a wellness-grade platform. We wanna be a medical-grade platform. And what that means is that we wanna make sure that we comply with the FDA regulations, the data, privacy regulations HIPAA, all of those need to be very much robust. And that includes security permissions. We can't have patient data leak out. So we need to have many different permission levels within the app. It's, actually pretty complex in that sense, but on the flip side, when you look at it from a patient perspective, the patient should have a clean user-friendly front end that is intuitive.

And that is design-based and our founder, is absolutely obsessed with that user-centric design. So we, you have these juxtaposition of this very, very complex backend, but very simple and clean front end. So that's on the product end. And we are constantly working with our product teams to customize that, to fit the needs of the local markets, because, let's face it, how we receive healthcare in the US and how we experience healthcare in the US is very different than what patients experience in, in Europe, for us, some of the issues are around affordability and access and quality of care and that fragment. So some of those issues are different. So that's on the product side and that's the creative process there. On the research side, again, there's so much to solve for how are we going to pick the areas that make the most sense where the patients are going to have met the biggest bang for their buck. And right now Huma has over 60 or 70 digital biomarker modules, and we're constantly developing more, but there's always a puzzle between the teams on what's really going to have the biggest impact.

So listeners, if you think your company is the only one having to cross hallway conflict it's happening everywhere.

It does, it does, but I think it's very healthy and we definitely have a culture where we can really duke it out because it's important to do so. And then finally on the commercialization side the creative process there, at least for me, it's really been shaped by my experiences early in my, in my adulthood. I, I came, came to the US from India. I grew up in India and I came here as an undergrad in college. And at that time when I came to the US, well, I was the only person from India directly in the undergraduate class. And I was one of two women in engineering. So I really had to learn to integrate myself, but I also realized that it is very important for me to listen to people.

And so my commercial strategy is really shaped by that feeling of the odd one out. And how can I bring everyone into the mix and listen to the ideas from different perspectives? So it's this yin and yang of like that engineering, technical problem-solving curiosity. And on the other hand, just making sure that I'm really taking the person into consideration and am I listening to the best ideas from different people? So those are the two I consider myself a connector of ideas. Probably not the best coming up with a brand new idea, but when I listen to three different ideas, they seem very disconnected, but I'm able to pull them together.

Yeah. That's a whole different kinda strength. That's very valuable. Yeah. I wanted to pick up something you said about coming to the US from India, but I also read another interview that you had that talked about even the sort of in your childhood, or, in your development, this drive for academic success, but which comes with the drive to being right. and in the real world, I'll call it, it's hard to be right all the time. Isn't it?

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. In fact, you want to allow other people to be right and okay, to be wrong yourself. And in some ways, I found that it was a hard transition. Thanks for reading my article. But to be growing up in a very, very ambitious family where we have Nobel prize winners and big startup companies and entrepreneurs, and then to, find a place within the family itself to be assertive. I think it was, a difficult transition to go from that to being very humbled when I came to the US and being so different and not being heard very much. So I really had to take, take all of those ex experiences and shape them to where I am right now.

And you've really highlighted this idea of listening, and other people might call it emotional intelligence. Some people might call it empathy, but a real customer connection, but also sounds like a person to person like listening to the person, whether they're across the table or across the screen, or your customer, that you're sort of putting yourself in their position.

Right. Absolutely. And sometimes, I consider everyone I talk to could be a customer, could be a friend. It doesn't matter. It's just, how are you really listening to that person? And giving them the time of day to tell their ideas. Right. So I think as I said, my power is in connecting three very different random ideas. For example, the other day we were talking about cognitive health and mental health brain health at a pharma company. And I really drew upon my experiences from meditation and yoga and it really fit, but I think it's having those diverse experiences, that connect things and that make things go forward. So,

And you've really highlighted, this idea of collaboration, and let's go beyond the walls of your company and talk about your collaborators, a development of deployment, again, commercialization, but in this podcast, we also talk about making connections to launch the work. What sort of connections and collaborations have you found and what else are you looking for?

Yes, that's absolutely right. So, as you said we're not gonna be able to solve everything. We need to be collaborating with different companies. So our strength is that we have this patient platform that can also be leveraged and we have the platform that can be used by physicians. When it comes to integration with electronic health records, we have a partnership, we have a partnership with a company called Pluto, and they have figured out a way of accessing patient health records based on some of the new laws that allow patients to access their health records. And, as soon as they give consent, they are able to pull the data in. So instead of going into every health system and connecting individually, we're working with a collaborator. So we are certainly looking for partnership within the healthcare continuum.

We are even working with startups that are delivering medications directly to patients because they also need a patient platform. So we have all of these different collaborations that we are exploring, but our primary focus is still on reaching patients through the life science companies because they have such a high need for reaching patients. They're developing these medications that require a lot of monitoring as they go into more and more complex diseases like autoimmune diseases and oncology require more monitoring. So we wanna partner primarily with the, I would say they would be our customers, but in order to support the like science companies, they need to make sure that we have the infrastructure built to support them in the right way. And so that is the collaboration and partnership we are seeking. We're open to a lot of ideas. We're, we're just small but mighty team in the US. But we are supported by a very large and seasoned team, in the UK. So they have been extremely supportive of all the endeavors and the crazy ideas we come up with in the US.

Exactly. That's what we love the crazy ideas,

The crazy ideas that's. So ...

We need the other crazy ideas and crazy people to join us. Don't we Well, on that note, Shefali, I think people are gonna wanna be able to connect with you and follow your work and learn more about what you guys are doing. How can we connect with you?

Oh, absolutely. So I am always on LinkedIn now I think this is that's the best way to reach me. And I have connected with a lot of people that way, and I think it's a wonderful platform. I'm all for it.

Sounds great. Well, we'll do that. So before we close, I wanted to pick up on a note that you had, one of the ideas, and how it connected with your yoga and meditation practice. But I wanted to learn more about your creative inspirations for you personally, what really kind of sparks and generates new ideas for you, like yoga and meditation, or maybe there's music or art or theater. What else do you enjoy? Yeah. That gives you the creativity of sparks.

Yeah. So thank you for asking. So for me, it's definitely yoga and meditation and just like I do in my career where I draw from the yin and the yang, I have studied yoga and meditation through a lot of scientists and physical therapists doctors. And so I have a very scientific base for that, but when I deliver it to my students, it is with a lot of infusion of my dance and music. And so when the students experience this, they are experiencing not just a yoga class, but they're getting educated on the anatomy physiology and also this creative flow that is different each time they come to my class. And I just love to see these sparks in my students when they go, wow, this is a complete mind-body experience. Because we are whole, we are not just biceps or triceps. We are every part of our brain and we are every part of our body and you connect everything. So that to me is, just the way I take three different ideas from different people in my work, I do the same thing, and it takes a lot of effort to create every single class. But I really enjoy that process of creating a class and giving that experience to my students.

Well, I couldn't help, but notice the kind of bright eyes that you have when you describe that, but also put together with the enthusiasm of the work. Are you able to bring that kind of body spirit, thought process into the workplace, into your career development, into the work that Huma is doing?

Yes, absolutely. I think that as I said, my life science work, my technical work and, when I see Humor, it is so much, it can, it can really take life sciences and healthcare into more of human empowerment. And to me, that is absolutely exciting. And so there are so many ways and paths by which we can get there. And ultimately it is about the patients having this fantastic experience with healthcare. It shouldn't be a burden, it should be something you are really empowered to be a part of your own journey. Right?

So I Love that word. I think that kind of encouragement has empowered us and listeners. I'm sure that you feel that too well. Shefali Shah has been my guest Shefali I can't thank you enough for being on our show.

Thank you. Thank you so much, Mark.

And as I said, bringing that not only the knowledge but that enthusiasm to the program. I really appreciate it.

Thank you

And listeners, come back again. Next time. We're gonna continue us around the world journeys virtually of course right now, but we'll plug our microphone in places all over the world to talk to creative practitioners like Shefali and how they get inspired with new ideas, how they organize those ideas. And most of all, of course, how they gain the confidence and make the connections to get the work out into the marketplace and into the world. And that's what our show is all about. So until next time, I'm Mark Stinson and we're unlocking your world of creativity. We'll see you soon.