489 - The Next Generation of Connected Health

Quick one before we dive in, if you want the best of what's happening in Australian Digital Health delivered to your inbox each week, then jump onto the Talking Health Tech newsletter. It's free, easy to read, and it's where I share my hot tags from the week that you don't hear on this podcast. Head to Talking Health Tech.com/newsletter to sign up. Welcome to Talking Health Tech. My name is Feta Birch. I'm here at Hills, 2024 in Las Vegas, and I'm in the TMC Pavilion at the Foxo booth, and Foxo being locals in Australia, but I've come all the way over to Vegas to have a chat with the team. So, Marnie and Luke, thanks so much for joining me and having me here in your spot here. Thanks for coming over. I just to visit us. Yeah, that's right. There's a big trip to have a chat, but it's going to be fun nonetheless. Look, we've had a few conversations on the Talking Health Tech podcast with Foxo. It's been a little bit of time. There's, you know, it's a fast-changing environment. Maybe tell us firstly about Foxo where you're at right now and where the priorities are, because there's a lot more we can unpack about where you've been, but just firstly set the scene, the space you're playing in, and we can go from there. Sure. Well, I think, importantly, to reflect on where we were last time, we would have spoke about two years ago, and I think the heavy focus on radiology, yes, is still our foundation, but we've certainly grown a lot from that. So the work that we did in radiology with the platform, with the customers and with the partners kind of said the stage for us to grow beyond, because it's quite dynamic, the work in radiology. So for us to build out with, you know, our API and our platform and have that use case, the showcase was where capable of, we've now been brought into hospital, pathology, into pharmacy, across primary care and beyond, and that's because of, you know, the dynamic side of what we've built is really adaptable across other markets. Yes. So I'd say the last two years has been really about growth, and that's really pushed us into other areas, and now we're looking at the annual markets. But, you know, like we really kind of, when we first started having these conversations a few years ago, it was around the secure communication within the healthcare setting, particularly in the radiologist side. Are we still like channeling hard into that, or is expanded out even further beyond that? Well, I still think that's a big part of what we do. It's the foundation of the platform, which is secure communication. But from that, it's all been about customer-led design, and where they want that communication to go, and where it starts as well. So, you know, that's taken us into very different workflows and functionalities, but at the end of the day, it's still about the transmission of secure information, and that could be document sharing, could be video, and it can be messaging. But it's all about how we've innovated around a lot of the challenges in the industry. So, you know, many in our every day, we're working with customers, partners, and large entities that are working up against the system of bureaucracy and policy. And for us to get to where we need to be and do what we need to do, we can't just follow the the trot and path. We've got to do things that haven't been done before. That means innovating around these challenges. And that can be, you know, change management on adoption. It can be integrations and, you know, accessing information. And the way that we do that is just through, you know, pure R&D and working out how we can get people to use the platform without knowing they're using the platform and share information securely in a means that's really accessible and more friction. Interesting. Well, you know, very applicable in Australia, but money we're in the US. Tell me a little bit more about the relevance of these kind of problems to solve in the US and I guess the scale of it as well. Oh, that'll be great. So, yeah, one of the things like Luke just mentioned is how do you innovate around some of the restrictions or blockers that prevent change? And so, with a platform when a provider is wanting to real-time communicate, the challenge was always they needed someone on the other side to technically be in the same platform. So, we said what if we could change it that the recipient, the patient, the provider, the external physician was in what they're already using in an SMS, in an MS teams, in a different environment that they could securely come in and have that conversation in a compliant way. So, essentially, you've solved the change. And so, we had a great dialogue with Oztrade and they said we feel that you have something, you know, really tangible. Why don't you reach out? And so, they made connections into Texas Medical Center. We went impeached and went through their bootcamp and out of hundreds of companies we were chosen to have this six-month accelerator with eight other companies in Houston. And so, that's really set us on the path. And what was really interesting is they're setting the same challenge in the US. So, the perception is that all of communication sits within hospitals, but only 30% of the hospital workforce actually in healthcare is in the hospital. 70% of the healthcare workforce is outside of the hospital. So, you're trying to communicate and that statistic was the same in the US or whether it was Australia. And so, being able to have a provider who can now communicate with anyone in whatever platform they're in was solving a common challenge. Very cool. It's great to see, you know, FOXO in amongst all these different providers solving particular problems here at the TMC stand. How have you found that transition of dealing with, say, you know, the Australian healthcare ecosystem? If you're very familiar with the public-private and our patient hospital space and then entering into the US, we look at it from a distance and go, well, that looks big and complicated and different. But you mentioned those similar problems to solve. Added complexity, I assume. What are those kind of nuances and differences you've noticed? Yeah. So, I think, so in terms of similarities, there's kind of two. So, Australia is this wonderful testing ground of innovation. And so, where we integrated in radiology was with a lot of global partners. So, we have integrations in radiology with Intellarad. We have integrations with Agfa. So, those are players that are in the US market. So, it becomes this almost seamless path to be able to enter North America. But, in terms of, you know, where there's differences, I think the US have, what we would say, like a greater risk appetite. They're always wanting to listen and hear about innovation and fine parts to get in. But, accelerated programs help that as well. Well, that's, yeah, that is a really good point in terms of, you know, leveraging ostrade, going part of programs rather than feeling like you're going in totally cold. So, that makes sense. But, Luke, one thing that money mentioned that piqued my interest was the partnership. So, the partnerships with global providers from Australia then kind of create those bridges down to other parts too. So, that sounds like a really critical part. Like, building up those partnerships and those allies to be able to then leverage off-conservous existing customers, but also potentially help for growth as well. Am I on the right path? Yeah, absolutely. The partnerships are our accelerator. We can have them build into us or we build into them that immediately expands our footprint. So, the work behind the scenes at the APIs and the DevTens building, you know, these workflows that essentially ingest and push out, then it adds us new adaptability of our platform and also enriches the existing systems out there. Yeah, yeah, I got you. And building on that idea of, you know, enriching existing systems, and one thing I found in working in different settings, it gives the opportunity to bring some learnings back into like the existing core product. Has there been anything that you've gone, "Hey, we really need to do this to, you know, resonate in the US that we need to then, but that then adds a lot of value back to the core business?" Well, I think that the main issue is similar over here, which is change management and adoption. That's why the partnerships and integrations are essential. So, if we're built into a large EMR provider and we're simply just a workload that comes from that, then change management and adoption is solved. So, that's a lot of the work that we're doing over here. We're looking for those other vendors that we can simply build into, and that gives us that distribution path. Yeah, so, it has one thing on that too, so just to take this, because obviously change management is absolutely core, but it's also scale and volume. So, one of the use cases that we have, particularly in radiology, is 10% of all studies will need some form of interaction. So, the radiologists will have to push out to an administrative team or some kind of what's called core or concierge in order to resolve that challenge. And so, we have a case workflow, but it was like in the screen, you would have a certain number of cases. When we were talking in the US with an enterprise radiology provider, they said, "We get thousands a day." So, we really need your user interface to have a list mechanism to be able to do that. So, that's something that we've brought back. That was something Luke designed, which is now called power list, but that was a learning that we were able to bring back because to address scale, which was completely different to what we had in volume in Australia. So, Nate Luke can share on it. Yeah, Luke, I add to that, just by saying, you know, the Americans, as Mani mentioned, very risk of Earth. I mean, these act opposite. They are, they have an appetite for innovation and change in new things. And rather than looking for problems to solutions, they look for solutions to problems. And they saw our system, they're like, this is great. It's going to solve some of our problems, but, you know, rather than saying, but it's not exactly right. I said, if we can make this one change, yeah. You know, this will go, you know, crazy for us. So, we worked with them on, you know, some co-design of what the interface can do and some of the workflows. The outcome for that was power list and that has just been so essential for our platform. And now, we're rolling it out this week and we'll be back to adding that to all of our other customers as well. So, they've got access to that too. Amazing. That's a great example. And so, you know, that. But there are a lot of Australian innovators that are looking at building with global in minds and finding those right partners or pathways to enter into other markets can be tricky. I guess the story that you've just outlined is a good example of that leaning into some of these core partners like Ostrade and some core grants. Is there any advice or information you can provide to innovators at any stage? Because I imagine timing is a thing. Sometimes luck might play a part to how for those innovators locally in Australia think geez, there's a bigger opportunity globally, how do you make that next step? Man is probably best to answer this but I'll just say you've just got to commit. These things come along, they offer it out to you and if you go for it, you've got to go 100%, you can't just attend a few virtual meetings. Many of you know I spent so much time on flights, in hotels, attending these accelerators in person, building those relationships and that's helped us all across the business immensely. Yeah. And I was just going to say I think there is an element of luck and serendipity of timing and so when we were looking at creating this digital or effectively, you know, a pathway that anyone could engage, we had the opportunity and we were able to present it to Dr Simon Koster, Microsoft, Microsoft, we are a partner, we've got a co-design, Microsoft teams, Fox or app, but Microsoft has been very instrumental in Australia, which again is a global partner. So there's always receptivity in Australia for technology and innovation. So there also, we kind of really want to acknowledge and shanate Fitzgerald have really helped us on our path as well. Yeah. Love it. And so I imagine knowing you guys, there's always new exciting things you're building and looking with the future in mind and we're in a kind of environment where everyone's thinking about what we're going to be building next and what the cool technologies will be that we inject into health systems. What are some of the things that you're working on that we can look forward to seeing in Fox? Oh, where do you see the kind of ball going next? So essentially we've seen what starting radiology was about solving a provider and radiology being able to communicate with someone externally in a different system, silo. And so that's rolling out now in pharmacy. We've rolled out to 500 pharmacies in Australia, which is fantastic. And now we're rolling into pathology in New Zealand. We've got a dialogue in healthcare. So what we're seeing is everybody has, all these verticals have a similar problem. So in some, you know, it's exciting to see that move. I think the next frontier for health and if you're discasturised around here is AI. There's so much going on. We don't see ourselves right now in the next six to 12 months adding AI specifically to our roadmap. But the AI vendors are coming to us because a lot of the outcomes of an AI engagement, whether it's no passive listening or detection, there needs to be a notification, there needs to be a message, there needs to be a packet of data coming from that system, landing either to another system or to a human being to act on. And that's the pathway that we'll be solving. Yeah. Looking forward to seeing more progress. And I don't even know where I'm going to speak to you next, but I look forward to having you wherever we do that Luke and Marnie, so all the details with FOXO and the show notes of this episode. People can check it out on our website. I appreciate you making the time. Thanks so much. Thank you. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Talking Health Tech. 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