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Bringing the Heart to Telehealth | Korion Health CEO Anna Li
27 Plays6 months ago
In this episode of The Healthcare Theory, we sit down with Anna Li, founder of Korion Health, to explore how her at-home stethoscopes are breaking down barriers to preventive healthcare.
Anna discusses the challenges many patients face, including the lack of access to essential tools like stethoscopes for home monitoring, which can leave critical health issues undetected until it’s too late. Korion Health addresses this gap by providing an accessible, AI-powered solution that empowers patients to engage in preventive health from the comfort of their homes. Anna shares how the platform combines advanced health monitoring with personalized insights, enabling early detection and actionable steps that improve outcomes. By bridging the gap between patients and providers, Korion Health ensures that even those with limited resources can take control of their health journey.
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Transcript
Introduction to Health Care Theory Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the Health Care Theory podcast. I'm your host, Nikhil Reddy, and every week we interview the entrepreneurs and thought leaders behind the future of health care to see what's gone wrong with our system and how we can fix it.
Anna's Background and Inspiration
00:00:14
Speaker
We have a guest today. My name is Anna. I'm a fourth year MD PhD student at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon, and I'm also the CEO and co-founder of Corian Health.
00:00:26
Speaker
Awesome. It's great to meet you, Ana. Thanks so much for coming on today. And before we get into Cori on health, I mean, you guys have made a lot of traction so far, but could you start by telling us a bit about your background and computational biology and how you got into healthcare in the first place?
00:00:39
Speaker
Yeah, I will say academically, I have a mixed background in engineering and biology. um i as ah As a kid, I kind of switched between being wanting to be a veterinarian and wanting to be a doctor. But then in high school, I had a close friend who had cystic fibrosis, um who who has who still has cystic fibrosis. um And it was really hard for her to find treatment. And I think that was my first real experience in seeing the limitations of what medicine could do. And since then, I've, I mean, even before then, I've i've wanted to make an impact, but I've been continually reshaping my my view of how best to do that.
Founding of Corian Health
00:01:13
Speaker
um So at that inflection point in my life, I was like, okay, well, medicine can't do everything. Why don't we think about research? We can push the boundaries of what's possible. And so I ended up applying to and getting into this MD PhD program,
00:01:26
Speaker
But as I continued through it, I started to realize that actually the the issue plaguing most people isn't that there aren't these, you know, rare disease treatments or anything. It's like 90 percent of it probably comes from upstream lack of access, to lack of access to clean food and drinking water, health care screenings, educational materials. And so that's what really started Corian Health.
00:01:50
Speaker
Awesome. And I know there's like a lot of ways to make an impact.
Balancing Entrepreneurship and Medicine
00:01:53
Speaker
I am research is a big one and eventually be transitioned to entrepreneurship. I mean, what was that like trend before you get into Corianne, like what was that transition like and how have you been in a managed like being an entrepreneur and then also being like a research student on the side? I can imagine it's a lot. Yeah, there there are ways in which they kind of like nest together. um I think whenever you're managing a lot of things,
00:02:16
Speaker
um You need to find ways to do things more efficiently, to like to like find more time in the day, while also taking care of yourself. um I really wish I'd taken better care of my mental health in college. I pushed myself very hard. So for any undergrads listening, just remember that you are important and your health is important. um So yeah, just something I wish I'd heard.
00:02:36
Speaker
But um I guess for Corian, obviously it's ah it's a health tech startup and I'm in medical school, so that gives me good context.
Medical Studies Informing Innovation
00:02:44
Speaker
I think it would be harder if I was in business school or something and I was like, now I need to understand the entire healthcare care system. But it turns out um that kind of nests well with what I'm learning in medical school. i actually built um our first ah kind of prototype during cardiology class as I was learning how to use it. So that's very helpful. um My PhD research focuses on bacteriophage engineering. um It's mixed dry lab and wet lab. So I'm at the bench a lot pipetting. And I don't know how many people listening have have worked at a ah wet lab before, but sometimes when you pipette over and over again, it's a little bit like driving. um And I sometimes call friends or or take meetings but when I'm driving. um
00:03:25
Speaker
which I still drive very safely. its I use the hands-free audio set. so um yeah so Sometimes when I'm pipetting, I'll just take meetings with investors or with partners. um and i I tend to think of it like my brain has different tracks. like There's the um reading track like for for medical school. Medical school is a lot of information. so You got to absorb it and you got to regurgitate it and pull on it quickly. and so There's like that memorization, but then sometimes my brain like gets it gets too tired of the memorization and i'm like okay well now i can take a break of that track by working on another track like the creative side like drying out what devices you might want to include in our kit thinking about how that would reach patients and then you know another track might be the analytical and mathematics side you know i'm working on computational biology so
00:04:10
Speaker
I'm taking some math classes and I need to make sure to understand like the linear algebra problems. And then there's like the social battery, right?
Mission and Innovation at Corian Health
00:04:17
Speaker
So like talking to people, like maybe I'm tired of working in my room and just like um you know doing all these math problems, but I'm happy to chat with some of our partners who I really admire and appreciate. um And I think if you surround yourself with people who energize you and lift you up, it becomes like much more fulfilling. So I guess if it makes sense, I kind of jump between tracks so that even when I'm procrastinating or taking a break, I'm kind of still being productive. Definitely. That sounds great. Yeah, it's good that you're making that work. And of course, like, I mean, you were a student when you started Corian or Corian. And so what kind of brought you into this space, right? I mean, you had a problem that you knew was there. I mean, can you kind of elaborate more on what was the problem with like heart disease and what was the real issue that Corian was trying to solve?
00:05:02
Speaker
Yeah. Um, so let's see. I, so if I ever graduate med school, I'm hoping to go into emergency medicine. So I do spend a lot of time in the ER and that's also where you find most of the people who are falling through the cracks, unfortunately. So during, um, during cardiology class in my second year of medical school, uh, I was rounding on in the ER with the cardiology consultants and I noticed that there were, there was one patient who really touched me, but there were several I met. who had a preventable exacerbation of congestive heart failure. um Here at UPMC, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, we it it's is an it's an enormous medical center. so We serve like the surrounding five states and many people drive in hours to get care. um and Sometimes they can't drive in those hours and then they they don't get care.
00:05:45
Speaker
and so um there There are situations where if you catch it earlier, you can treat it medically. um But if you wait too long, you know your your heart pumps blood, which carries oxygen to your cells. And without oxygen, they start to die. So you know I've seen amputations. I've seen emergency surgeries being done. um it's And i i've I've seen people lose their lives for reasons that I think didn't didn't need to happen.
00:06:06
Speaker
So it's all very heartbreaking, no pun intended. um And at the same time, I was learning in cardiology class how to auscultate, how to like use a stethoscope. So you know you go to the doctor, they take a stethoscope, they listen to your heart and lungs. It's a super basic part of healthcare exams. And I kind of put two and two together. I um started med school in 2020, so that was right in the middle of the pandemic.
00:06:32
Speaker
And that's when telemedicine was doing really great. But I noticed that a big limitation of telemedicine is that we can't do a physical exam remotely. There are some things you can do, like you can take your temperature, there's thermometers, you can buy it like Walgreens or CVS. There's home blood pressure monitors. But listening to the heart and lungs was something very difficult to do. so like like ah Like a good engineer. um I started breaking it down into its pieces. and so you know to To do the heart and lung exam, you have to hold the stethoscope. Most able-bodied people can do that. You have to know where to place it. um Most people don't know how to do that unless they have training. But I think we can teach them how to do it um through augmented reality.
00:07:13
Speaker
i don't know if ah you've ever used like snapchat or instagram but they have like filters you can turn on and you know they they find your face and they do something fun like you know overlaying a cat face or or giving a cowboy hat um but we can use similar technology to actually locate the exact positioning of the heart valves and the lung positions and then um ah you know once Once it detects that the stethoscope is aligned with the correct position, it records. um so One of my favorite engineering engineering professors used to always say, the best engineering doesn't assume people are smart. The best engineering assumes that people will make mistakes and then make sure to engineer um so that those are not likely to happen. um so That so that kind of fixes the location issue and then you also need to know what to listen for exactly. so For now, we have a microphone embedded inside the stethoscope so you can collect those sounds and then send them to
00:08:04
Speaker
a trained cardiologist to to analyze analyze them or or any doctor. um But long term, the goal is to use this as a platform for machine learning um and create like automated analytics. Okay, that's really interesting. And I think like preventative health, right, is that it's it's really important and being able to make sure you solve problems early on. But of course, when the solution is expensive, it's hard for people to get incentivized to like, again, I guess utilize preventative health, which is kind of defeats the purpose in the first place. I mean, I know with your product, you guys have a really big focus on the accessibility and making sure that patients get this product early on so they have
Challenges in Product Development
00:08:41
Speaker
preventative health. I mean, how do you guys balance? Like make sure you have a great technology that's effective, but also affordable at the same time.
00:08:48
Speaker
Yeah, that's a really good question. And it's something I've struggled with um for a long time. so So just to give some context, when I first yeah saw these patients, I wasn't like, oh, let's form a business. I was like, oh, let's just create like a little stethoscope for them to use at home. This seems easy. So I like went to the maker space in the engineering building of fit and just started 3D printing and and soldering and putting some components together.
00:09:10
Speaker
i I somewhat naively tried to just give it to my patients in clinic. And then I got in trouble because, um, you know, the the attending was like, what are you doing? And I was like, like I'm just giving them these electronic stethoscope so they don't need to drive two hours. Like I wouldn't drive two hours. Um, and is it FDA yeah cleared? And I'm like, no, I just 3d printed them. And he was like, Oh, you can't do that. And I was like, Oh, um I can't like so complicated. Um, so, so that was the moment I realized like to make a bigger impact, you couldn't just like,
00:09:39
Speaker
Like it can't just be me. I also volunteer in the free clinic and the the need always exceeds the human capacity. And at that point, like do you continue straining yourself to the point of burnout like like many healthcare care providers do, unfortunately? Or do you find ways to re-engineer the system so it is more human centered? And so that was the turning point for me of like, I need to find a way to make this scalable. But i I don't have a business background at the time. I still didn't really know how to do that. And turns out in real life or in business, um It's very different from from the classroom, right? Because suddenly you're not working on one project, you're working on multiple projects. So you need to align several tracks. Like you said, the cost-effectiveness, the impact, and the high-quality product is are like two of the tracks. um But then there's also the regulatory approach, the go-to-market strategy, the fundraising strategy. And all those need to come together toward your mission. And it can be hard to think about so many components at once. So I guess I'll talk about um kind of each one briefly.
00:10:37
Speaker
um So for the product itself, um you know, there's the cost to manufacture and then there's the cost. um that you sell it at. So we want to keep both of them low because there's many medical devices out there that have a very low cost of manufacture and then mark up the prices to make more profit. And so this was not an easy problem to solve um because I'm a protein engineer, not ah not an electrical engineer. um And I do think a ah big part of starting a business is kind of being willing to jump off a cliff and hope someone will catch you and and trust that someone will.
00:11:08
Speaker
And I think that's what happened for me. I was kind of floating around trying to solve this engineering issue for a while. And then I ran into this group called Hellbender here in Pittsburgh. um They came out of Carnegie Robotics, just a brilliant, diverse, wonderful group of people. um They're also a Pennsylvania benefit corporation, and they ended up being really like the perfect partner for us to work with. And I'm i'm so grateful I found them. And they they have brilliant engineering minds and have really been able to bring down the cost and efficiency of how you build it.
00:11:38
Speaker
Um, so I knew there is, uh, I guess to draw a parallel, there's a lot of heterogeneity
Profit vs Mission in Business
00:11:43
Speaker
in medicine. I think people outside the system think it's like, Oh, there's like the standard of care, these things, but actually like the doctor that you get and the, um, department that you go to like can really matter and make a big difference for your, um, your outcomes. And the same thing is true with any industry. There's not a lot of standardization. Um, and so we, we just got really lucky to meet this really brilliant group that was also willing to take a risk on us and, um,
00:12:08
Speaker
like I didn't have any money at the time. And I talked to their CEO, Brian Byer, and I was like, Hey, I really want to help these patients. I'm struggling here. um You know, if you have any tips, you know, I'm happy to be mentored. And he, and then he was like,
00:12:20
Speaker
and help you I think I don't know if he just took pity on this med student who was clearly like overworked and stressed. And um and he was like, yeah, I think we can help you. and And he didn't charge me anything at first. you know He was like, you know we're we're just happy to help with this mission. um But that's something that's very hard to find in the business world. So really grateful for that. um And then the second part is how do you actually market it at a low price, right? um So this is going to be partially dictated by who's on your board of directors in the company.
00:12:48
Speaker
so it depends like so like Whenever you take funding from someone, um I guess you might be familiar with this as a health tech investor, um but different funding groups have different goals. right um so If you're working in VC, like that's really a super profit-oriented industry. um their Their goal is to drive a 10x return to their investors and they have fiduciary duty to to try their best to do so. and so i've I've talked to a couple of friends who maybe started off more mission-oriented and then took VC funding.
00:13:17
Speaker
and found that it got pulled into a more profit-focused direction than they really wanted it to be. And don't get me wrong, I totally see um you know that that profit is a necessary part to increasing human impact. But there's a huge difference between making and enough profit to be sustainable and impact more lives versus like you know so someone who's marking up drugs, 10x the cost.
00:13:42
Speaker
um just to increase profits. I hope that I always continue to live humbly and and try to put everything I can into Koryan and actually impacting people and and not be like... i don't know like I don't know. I should toss anyone under the bus. But let's just say there's some CEOs who maybe don't act with the highest level of ethics, and I don't want to be that. ah um Yeah, so I guess that being said, like the people controlling your company, including you, like have to have their hearts aligned in that direction. So um we've been hesitant to take VC funding so far. We're open to it in the future if it could really help us scale. um i I think this whole journey and the personal growth for me has really been about
00:14:20
Speaker
kind of marrying my idealism with what's realistic. Like previously, as an undergrad, I was just like, free and open source, everything is how we solve things. And then I realized, like, that's not really the case. If you just publish something on GitHub, it either languishes or um or maybe like a big company scoops it up and marks up the cost. And sometimes the free and open source method does work. and And I hope we can move toward that. But this was one situation where I wasn't convinced that it would.
Funding and Mission Alignment
00:14:45
Speaker
um Most of my other research projects I do put put up their free and open source. um ah Yeah, I but have a deep personal belief that knowledge should be accessible to everyone. um But anyway, so all that being said that like, ah to keep it accessible, you also need to take funding. um You know, we we needed like $2 million dollars to get FDA clearance. So we did need to take funding. um I don't I certainly don't have that in my own bank. um So we ended up taking funding from like the American Heart Association, the um Richard King Mellon Foundation, like these other foundations that are really committed to the same impact cause.
00:15:18
Speaker
Um, and who could also partner with us to help us get to market. Um, so yeah, I mean, there's, there's a lot of unknowns. It's, it's a complicated world. You're no longer living in a classroom. You're living in the real world now. Um, but there, there are ways to do it if you keep an open mind. Definitely. It's kind of interesting. I mean, you started like as a researcher, someone who had a lot of knowledge in your space and now you all of a sudden have to become like a CEO and understand everything about the business side. It must be intimidating. And I grew up with a point about the VCs actually. I mean, they have a good, definitely an incentive to find like.
00:15:49
Speaker
to grow a product as quickly as possible. And oftentimes like timing's an issue where you force growth on a product that's not fully developed yet. I mean, if you go back in time, would you still approach that period where you made the product, you kind of started trying out and then eventually kind of walked into a great situation? Like how would you re-approach that if you had kind of that hindsight on like what went down for you?
00:16:12
Speaker
I probably would have started applying for grants earlier. I think non-dilutive funding is the best. um Keep in mind that it's always great when you can make profit. I think the the ethical questions come in when you decide where that profit goes. Does that go back into the community? Does it go toward people who can't afford the device so you can actually um support the people who are most in need, or does it go back to your wealthy shareholders? um Like where do where where do you direct the flow of money? um So I will say like, yes, it was it was stressful um kind of chugging along, like limp limping along with like me and my co-founder, Xayah, and trying to make it work. And it's scary because because nothing is guaranteed. um you Like I said, you you kind of have to jump off a cliff and hope someone will catch you.
00:16:56
Speaker
And I've been very lucky to to have been caught by many wonderful people. but there was a time when I was falling and I was like, man, I hope I just don't hit like the bottom. um There were ways to be smart too and hedge your bets. Like I was still in medical school, I had a scholarship. um So like if it really flopped, like it it was kind of okay. I would have wasted a lot of my own time and and I wouldn't have reached my dream. And I think I wouldn't have been able to make good on my Hippocratic oath um to really do everything I could to help um my patients. so ah
00:17:27
Speaker
ah for for like a little bit of context. There's a standard Hippocratic oath, but ah my med school class actually ended up writing our own oath. um And that oath really was centered around um values of equity and accessibility and just acting in an ethical and and kind kind manner. um And it was it was just frustrating to see my patients come in for things that could have been prevented. And I i did think it was part of my my role as as a med student and as a future physician.
00:17:55
Speaker
to build them the things that they needed if they didn't have them. So yeah, I don't think I would have done anything differently, but it's very easy for me to say that now since it did end up working out. And I will totally admit, it was scary and it was stressful at the time. Yeah, it requires a lot of trust, I can imagine, just so that your product will work. And I'm just curious, I mean, in your opinion, like, why do you think no one's done
Innovation in Telemedicine Stethoscopes
00:18:17
Speaker
this before? I mean, you kind of, I mean, you're a student, did it yourself. Obviously, you knew what you're doing, but like, how come, why don't you think like a larger company just kind of A telehealth company just made this product themselves. like What were the barriers there? And what did you do differently? Yeah, we actually do partner with a lot of telemedicine partners ah who who did try to do it themselves and failed. So it's it's pretty interesting. um I guess I can talk a little bit about the market space. There are other electronic stethoscopes on the market. um There are many others, but the vast majority of them are geared toward clinicians, not to laypersons. So that kind of rules them out as a telemedicine augmentation tool.
00:18:54
Speaker
And then I will say that having spent some time in the healthcare care market, typically groups find a niche. like they They find what they're really good at doing, so either you're a telemedicine platform um for people to use, you're an actual telemedicine company that connects directly with patients and maybe uses a telemedicine platform, or you're a medical device manufacturer and you create like electronic thermometers or otoscopes, but it's very rare that people are in all all of those spaces.
00:19:22
Speaker
um I think i think it's like it's a lot to handle, um and they all require somewhat different business strategies. um and so Then the question becomes, so why didn't one of those medical medical device manufacturers create a patient-oriented um electronic stethoscope. There are a couple others out there. There's like TIDOCARE and Stemoscope, but ah they each have some usability concerns. So for example, TIDOCARE has a stethoscope where you, you know, you can use it as a guide, but what happens is for us, we have our stethoscope, you put it on your chest, you look at the computer, you you navigate it and it's like mirrored, right? For TIDOCARE, they come with a screen, which already adds cost, so they're more expensive. um And then the screen faces away from you. It's meant to be done on you by someone else.
00:20:05
Speaker
And um it requires you to take off your shirt and kind of like go go go shirtless. At least for us, we have a light on the back of our stethoscope that shines through a shirt, so you don't need to do that. um I could be wrong. If I remember correctly, I think the founders were all dudes. So maybe it didn't occur to them that not everyone wants to go shirtless.
00:20:26
Speaker
i do think like When it comes to collaboration and finding the best intersection of things, the lived experience can is is very, very important, probably probably more than the academic experience. So so like i I'm the daughter of immigrants. I grew up advocating for parents who didn't speak English that well. I've been a patient myself. I was in a group in college with women plus who are survivors of sexual assault. like I think I really understand like the logistical but also the psychological barriers to accessing health care.
00:20:57
Speaker
and you know And many of the things that occurred to me as I was designing this, I think just haven't occurred to others. Like if you if you just say a patient-centered stethoscope, yeah, let's just give instructions and let's just give the electronic stethoscope, that's fine. um it's It's not the same thing as as being the person that you are building something for, right?
00:21:16
Speaker
um So i I think I just really understand the patient experience. I'm trying to think what other components might go into why someone hasn't done it before. There's also the millennial aspect, right? like I think for me, I was like, how do we teach people how to place it in a foolproof way? Snapchat. But many older people who are actually in an innovative field are like, Snapchat, what?
00:21:36
Speaker
what um And so it's like these experiences have to come together and you have to be able to find solutions to different problems in different spaces. And it's it's not easy. I think as you become a... So you need medical knowledge, right? But as you become a doctor, um you know you you start become like getting more entwined in the system.
00:21:55
Speaker
And there's less emphasis or less ability to do innovation. Also, if you did do innovation, the university would own your IP because they're paying you. Whereas if um but you're like paying money to the university um and it's not flowing the other way around, then you own your own IP. And so I got super lucky actually doing this in medical school. So I guess my point is all these factors have to come together. And if you do the back of the envelope calculation, calculation it doesn't happen very often.
00:22:25
Speaker
Yeah, I can imagine. it's It's definitely, I mean, it's great to hear the progress you made so far, though.
Conclusion and Further Resources
00:22:30
Speaker
um Being able to kind of make, first of all, be a student and then make a great product and now being able to scale that and hopefully seek FDA approval soon. I mean, I think it's super exciting to see where Brian goes and hopefully hopefully you're excited, too. But I just want to say thanks so much for coming on the podcast today. I mean, it was great to kind of hear your story, hear more about the product. And for people interested, I'll link the product down below and see if you guys can learn more about it. But Um, yeah, hopefully you guys all day. Everyone enjoyed listening and and thank you so much honor for coming on today. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah. Of course. Yeah. And you guys can, yeah, again, check us out every Tuesday. We'll have episodes just like this on the streaming service of your choice. We'll be active on Instagram, TikTok, with short form content. And thanks so much for listening.
00:23:16
Speaker
Thanks for listening to The Healthcare Theory. Every Tuesday, expect a new episode on the platform of your choice. You can find us on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, any streaming platform you can imagine. We'll also be posting more short-form educational content on Instagram and TikTok. And if you really want to learn more about what's gone wrong with healthcare care and how you can help, check out our blog at thehealthcaretheory.org. Repeat thehealthcaretheory.org.
00:23:43
Speaker
Again, I appreciate you tuning in and I hope to see you again soon.