Geekwire Health Tech

A new generation of cutting-edge vaccines could dramatically accelerate the global response to future outbreaks such as the current coronavirus epidemic. On a special episode of GeekWire's Health Tech Podcast, we go behind the scenes with two University of Washington scientists pursuing these vaccine breakthroughs. Dr. Deborah Fuller is a professor of microbiology and a vaccinologist at the University of Washington School of Medicine, and Dr. Jesse Erasmus, a molecular virologist working on new RNA vaccine and therapeutic technologies.

Dr. Thomas Lynch is in his first week as the new leader of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, but he already has a four-point plan to help guide the Seattle-based institute in its quest to treat and ultimately cure cancer. Given his new home, in the middle of one of the country's hottest tech hubs, it's no coincidence that one of those points heavily involves on the technology industry. "The intersection between tech and data and science is something we are really well-poised to be able to understand and exploit here in the Seattle ecosystem," Lynch said in an interview with GeekWire this week. He cited the quest to "look at very large data sets of electronic medical records, genomic data, proteomic data, and begin to understand who gets cancer, and why do they get it." Fred Hutch currently collaborates with Amazon to mine and decode medical records using artificial intelligence, and reduce the processing time needed to analyz the microbiome. It also partners with Microsoft on a Pacific Northwest

It has been nearly two decades since scientists accomplished the first complete sequencing of the human genome. This historic moment gave us an unprecedented view of human DNA, the genetic code that determines everything from our eye color to our chance of disease, unlocking some of the biggest mysteries of human life. Twenty years later, despite the prevalence of genetic sequencing, considerable work remains to fulfill the promise of these advances to alleviate and cure human illness and disease. Scientists and researchers are “actually extremely good at reading genomes, but we're very, very bad at understanding what we're reading,” says Lea Starita, co-director of Brotman Baty Institute for Precision Medicine’s Advanced Technology Lab, and Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Genome Sciences at the University of Washington. But that is changing thanks to new tools and approaches, including one called Deep Mutational Scanning. This powerful technique for determining genetic var

Melissa Mulholland was 16 weeks pregnant with her second child when her doctor noticed something unusual in an ultrasound scan. It was a condition called posterior urethral valves, PUV, and it meant her son wouldn’t survive the womb without medical intervention. She was fortunate to have a doctor skilled in detecting the condition and intervening to address it, and the good news is that her son, Conor, is now 5 years old.  But the experience left Mulholland thinking about the families who aren’t so lucky to have such expert health care. She wondered if technology could be a solution. She’s not an engineer, and doesn’t have a technical background, but she works at Microsoft, so she’s familiar with the latest technologies in her role working with the company’s cloud customers and partners.  She asked a question that not a lot of people would ask: could artificial intelligence help? The answer was yes. What happened next was a case study in the potential of machine learning and other forms of artificial intel

A lot of us are using apps and devices to get healthy. But these are just the beginning of a wave of technologies that promise to give our smartphones health superpowers. On this episode, we’re talking to Shyam Gollakota, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Washington. Shyam has been doing crazy things with smartphones and smart speakers like Alexa — turning them into sonar machines that can detect heart attacks, opioid overdoses or even something as simple as an ear infection. 

Artificial intelligence is at the center of many technology discussions today, and perhaps nowhere are the implications more meaningful than in the world of health care. So where is AI making an impact in health? What does the future bring, and how should healthcare providers and technologists get ready? On the Season 4 premiere of GeekWire's Health Tech Podcast, we address all of those questions with three guests, Linda Hand, CEO of Cardinal Analytx, Colt Courtright who leads Corporate Data & Analytics at Premera Blue Cross, and Dr. David Rhew, Microsoft’s chief medical officer and vice president of healthcare. This episode was recorded on location at the dotBlue conference in Seattle, hosted by our returning sponsor of the show, Premera Blue Cross.

Kristin Anderson has already fought cancer in more ways than one. She's a cancer survivor whose battle with breast cancer started when she was just 28 years old and pursuing a doctorate in immunology. And as a researcher at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, she's investigating ways to use our body's own immune system to attack solid tumors. But Anderson has a new plan to fight the disease. She's climbing Mount Kilimanjaro as part of a fundraising effort that has raised $1.4 million and drawn 28 climbers, several of whom are biotech executives and investors. The effort is led by Luke Timmerman, a veteran biotech journalist and founder of the Timmerman Report. Timmerman previously climbed Mount Everest in a similar effort and raised $340,000 in donations for Seattle’s Fred Hutch. Timmerman picked Kilimanjaro with the idea that he could raise far more money with a group of climbers than he could on his own. That thesis bore out, and the group easily beat their $1 million goal. The money will go t

Peek into a random hospital room in the U.S. today, and you might see something that makes you cynical about technology. The classic scene is of a provider talking with a patient as they face the opposite direction and take detailed notes on a computer. In other words, the patient's only face-time with their doctor is spent staring at the back of his or her neck. Beyond the loss of human interaction, the long hours spent entering these notes at the end of the day have placed a well-documented burden on clinicians, leading to elevated rates of burnout, depression and suicide. "The average clinician spends two to three hours at night, after hours doing mundane data entry work. We've turned physicians into the highest paying data entry people in the planet," said Ryan Plasch, vice president of growth and strategy at Saykara, a startup that makes a voice assistant for clinicians. On the latest episode GeekWire Health Tech podcast, we have the second episode in a two-part series on the rise of voice assistants in

Voice assistants are coming to the hospital. Last month, Amazon Alexa announced a new skill that made the platform compliant with HIPAA, a set of privacy rules that govern patient data. Not far behind in the race are Google, Apple and Microsoft, which are also positioned to bring their voice assistants to healthcare settings. On this episode of the GeekWire Health Tech Podcast, we dig in with the first of a two-part series on the latest technology sweeping the industry. We’ll hear from innovators at two major health systems about how they're using Alexa in healthcare today as well as their predictions for the future of voice assistants.

Nanodropper, a startup created by a group of University of Washington students, has developed an adapter that makes eye drops smaller. It’s a way for people with glaucoma and other eye diseases to waste less of their medication and save money. The idea was inspired by an article published by NPR and ProPublica, which pointed out how pharmaceutical companies make eye drops that are larger than what the human eye can physically absorb. 

It has been more than a year since the healthcare joint venture between Amazon, JPMorgan Chase and Berkshire Hathaway was announced. Since then, we haven't heard much — until now. Last week, the venture finally got a name, Haven, and on its new website, the joint venture shared where it will focus within this $8 trillion global industry. And earlier this month, 300 pages of unsealed court documents offered additional clues about Haven’s plans. On this episode of GeekWire's Health Tech podcast, we catch up with health tech entrepreneurs, 98point6 CEO Robbie Cape and Wellpepper CEO Anne Weiler, to get their take on the joint venture's ambitions.

Beth Kolko's superpower may not seem that out of the ordinary. She can't see through walls, but she can see what's wrong with the things we use in everyday life — problems that never occurred to the experts who built them. As the CEO of medical device maker Shift Labs, Kolko has focused that superpower on health care. Specifically, she wants to solve the problems that arise when an industry makes medical devices almost exclusively for patients in hospitals in rich countries and ignores almost everyone else.

On this episode of GeekWire Health Tech, we look at how portable ultrasound devices are changing the medical landscape – building on the technology’s roots in the Seattle region. Ultrasound is going far beyond obstetrics  to allowing physicians to diagnose medical conditions more efficiently -- in the field and the clinic. And increasingly, it’s being used not just for imaging and diagnosis but for actual treatment of disease. Our guests are Mike Bailey, an engineer who focuses on ultrasound research and development at the University of Washington, along with health journalist Kellie Schmitt, who writes about the evolution of ultrasound in a new GeekWire article.

This episode features highlights from a special event, kicking off Season 3 of GeekWire's Health Podcast, on location at Premera Blue Cross, the sponsor of this new season of the show. The discussion sets the stage for the topics we'll be exploring this season, looking at the many ways technology is changing the healthcare landscape. We're joined by Ranjani Ramamurthy, principal physician scientist at Microsoft, who has a background in both medicine and engineering, as an MD and a computer scientist; Oron Afek, CEO and co-founder at healthcare technology startup Vim; and Robbie Cape, CEO and co-founder of startup 98point6, a Seattle-based entrepreneur who sold his previous company, Cozi, to Time Inc. The discussion is kicked off by John Espinola, executive vice president of healthcare services for Premera Blue Cross.

Twenty-one years ago, Claudia Mitchell arrived in a new country to start her doctorate program — with a 4-month old baby in tow. She is now a geneticist, an award-winning entrepreneur and the leader of Universal Cells, which was acquired in January for $100 million. Claudia shares her entrepreneur's journey with us on the season two finale of Health Tech, including the game-changing impact of universal donor cell technology.

In 2000, rotavirus killed more than half a million children every year. Not many people had even heard of the disease. Then an unlikely alliance of international scientists, policymakers, one inexperienced entrepreneur and the richest man in the world teamed up to take it on. We tell the story of what happened on this episode.

Nine years ago, Stephanie Florence was diagnosed with incurable blood cancer. Today, she's cancer-free thanks to a new treatment called CAR T immunotherapy. This treatment is the golden child of cancer research today — but it wasn't always this way. Find out how CAR T went from an underdog to a cancer killer on this episode of Health Tech.

The U.S. healthcare system needs to change. But how? Can the system be 'fixed' the way that Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase want to fix it with their new healthcare company? What would 'fixing' the system even look like? We explore answers to those questions on this episode of Health Tech. 

Dr. Dan Low wanted to know how his patients were doing on a new drug. Getting the data was so painful, he decided to found his own software company to make it easier. On this episode of Health Tech: Dan's journey from career doctor to startup CEO and back, and what his experience says about the state of healthcare data.

Su-In Lee's father passed away from incurable cancer. Now she's using her expertise in artificial intelligence to help cancer patients find the most effective treatment — based on their genetic data. On this episode, we follow Su-In's story and explore how precision medicine is increasingly using health data, AI and other technologies to fight diseases from cancer to Alzheimer's.