The healthcare industry has seen a major rise in technological advancements in recent times. It has evolved much more than it used to be, and now includes systems that can provide data based on wireless patient monitoring, remote specialist services, and communications between facilities.
However, this digitalization is incomplete as the data involved is not fully utilized. Incomplete and fragmented data oftentimes leads to inadequate information for healthcare providers to correctly access the situation and make the most accurate decisions.
With the primary focus on workflow automation, artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to address some of the challenges set out above. While healthcare is not yet close to replacing doctors with robots, the role of AI in health care is definitely growing.
In the following interview, Dr. Leon Eisen, Founder and Executive Chairman of Oxitone Medical Ltd. shares his take on the role of AI in healthcare, how the organization is using AI to find solutions to complex chronic diseases, practicing an innovative business model called Clinical Reporting as a Service (CRaaS), and how hyper-personalization is going to be the future of the medical world.
Please brief our audience about your company, its values, mission, and the aspects that make it a global healthcare brand.
Oxitone® is a digital therapeutic startup that combines AI-integrated continuous medical data analytics, complex disease therapeutic indexes and advanced FDA-cleared multi-parameter biosensors to solve complex chronic diseases challenges at home.
The company’s mission is to augment and empower the new generation of clinicians with actionable, hyper-personalized patient insights, and help them to provide critical clinical solutions to individual challenges of patients at risk in a proactive, effective, and economical manner.
The company’s goal is to become the most scalable, trusted, reliable and adaptive home care platform for the prevention of poly-chronic disease complications.
Oxitone was featured in The New York Times, MobiHealthNews, MedCityNews, and other media outlets. We were on a list of Digital Health Global 100 2014 and have awards from Cleveland Clinic, NODE.Health, Tech Tour and Hello Tomorrow.
Tell us more about your offerings and the aspects that make your company different from its competitors.
Skyrocketing prevalence of complex diseases drives healthcare spending up. 12% of the population has 5+ chronic conditions and spend 14 times more on health services (41% of total healthcare spending) than others spend.
Poly-chronic conditions are the largest drivers of long-term disability claims. The state-of-the-art multi-devices screening and monitoring solutions merely provide episodic data and produce fragmented care that leads to decision-making based on incomplete information, resulting in clinicians’ burnout and medical errors. There is an unmet need to equip the new generation of clinicians with modern AI-integrated medical systems and solutions.
Oxitone developed an innovative business model called Clinical Reporting as a Service (CRaaS).
We offer an annual subscription for Oxitone Package of tools and services for screening and monitoring of poly-chronic patients that include:
Revolutionary FDA-cleared multi-parameter PPG Ulnar Holter Oxitone 1000M that continuously measures blood oxygen, pulse rate, HRV, skin temperature, respiratory rate, actigraphy, and soon, we will add cardiac output and blood pressure.
An AI-integrated data warehouse that transforms millions of continuous medical data points into actionable insights.
Decision-making supports software portfolio with multi-level clinical reporting, predicting complications, and smart alerting systems.
Secure API tokens for integration into third-party virtual care platforms and processes.
Specifically, we developed a new, fundamentally distinct method and medical device for acquiring and processing information called trans-illumination PPG biosensor. This replaces a spot check, multi-device patient monitoring kit by a single multi-parameter PPG Holter that is located at the wrist Ulnar Joint. Therefore, all PPG-related physiological parameters can be simultaneously, accurately and continuously acquired. 40 patents worldwide were granted on the technology and devices.
This enables our customers to reach fantastic results in a wide range of applications such as risk and severity classification and prioritization of patients with multiple chronic conditions, post-COVID complications and recovery management, Sleep Apnea and psychological stress assessment. In addition, among our customers are pharma companies using Oxitone solution for personalized therapy applications and pharmacokinetics monitoring.
Dr. Eisen, please brief us about your professional journey in the healthcare industry, and your contribution towards the company’s success.
My background is quite simple. I have a PhD in physics from Weismann Institute of Science and more than 15 years of experience in the development, implementation and commercialization of innovative medical solutions and systems alongside the development and implementation of regulatory and business processes and applications.
Being passionate about healthcare transformation, I invented the world’s first FDA-cleared Ulnar PPG Holter and led fundraising, product development and its commercialization including FDA and CE certifications.
What is your opinion on the impact of the current pandemic on the global healthcare sector, and what challenges did you face during the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns?
The current pandemic dramatically accelerated digital healthcare development that finally will have a positive impact on healthcare cost and accessibility. It helped to change the mind of historically conservative healthcare providers and made them more acceptable to new technologies and services.
Specifically, for Oxitone, the current pandemic played a positive as well as negative role. Lack of face-to-face meetings broke conventional business and sales processes and forced to look for unconventional alternatives. However, the growing demand for digital health solutions helped to accelerate our market penetration. Now, we are focusing on post-COVID screening and assessment that opens incredible opportunities considering the size of this emerging market.
With constant development in technologies, in your opinion, what could be the future of the healthcare industry, and how are you planning to adapt to that future?
Oxitone with its innovative solution is on the top of the current trend towards healthcare global digitalization. A holistic approach to patient care alongside of hyper-personalization will be fundamental issues that will define future healthcare delivery. Multiple chronic conditions challenges will become the main driver of the changes applied to care processes, which will become easy adaptable to specific patient needs.
As an established leader, what would be your advice to the budding entrepreneurs and professionals aspiring to venture into the healthcare space?
Great question. First, it is needed to learn the fundamentals of the healthcare business. Then, to identify and apply specific, evidence-based metrics. Finally, to experiment with different customers archetypes to figure out an exact product-market fit.
How do you envision scaling your organization’s operations and offerings in 2022 and beyond?
We plan to add more medical parameters into our multi-parameter platform such as continuous measurements of blood pressure and cardiac output accompanied with the AI-based clinical reports. This will enable to help patients with hypertension and kidney diseases and scale up into a much-demanded area of healthcare.
