Welcome to Health Amplified

Podcast Transcript

Will Morris, MD:  Welcome to Health Amplified. This is Dr. William Morris and joined with me, his cohost, Dr. Akhil Saklecha. Health amplified is a byproduct of Cleveland Clinic Innovations, a Cleveland clinic podcast. We intend to engage the audience around germane topics, the intersection of healthcare delivery and entrepreneurship, innovation, drug, and device development and therapeutics. Out of these conversations, we hope that the listener will understand what it takes to have a culture of innovation, but more importantly, the culture of collaboration and participation and alignment that is needed.

Akhil Saklecha, MD:  So Will I, I agree with everything you said there, although I would say I'm actually more intrigued in just talking to people. When I hear you talking about innovation and entrepreneurship and all of these different sectors. To me, it's, it's all about, let's find a way to speak with people who are much more learned in those areas, tease out the things that we can learn from them. And hopefully we can engage the audience in understanding more about the topics at hand and also hopefully stimulate ideas for the future.

Will:  So, great point. First one, I probably will be the exception to the rule of something that you'll learn by talking to me. But the second point is I agree you know, wow, what an opportunity to invite various leaders, innovators to the table, and really seek to understand and learn from them what makes them tick and what makes them driven and passionate,

Akhil:  I guess it makes sense right now, maybe just to introduce ourselves a little bit. So Will, tell me a little bit about yourself.

Will:  So I am a hospitalist, been at the Cleveland Clinic for 15 years. My background is in technology and thus, I kind of felt a natural alignment with healthcare delivery via digital tools and subsequently abandoned kind of that operational role within our Information Technology Division to really focus on, you know, what are the next big domain areas in which we can collaborate and partner to bring novel solutions, that frankly exist on the outside of healthcare, they're present outside. We merely need to listen in and incorporate in ingest some of these solutions in healthcare. But what about you? So here's an internist and an emergency room physician having a cordial dialog.

Akhil:  So yeah, for those of you who don't know, ER doctors and hospitalists tend to agree to disagree many times, but that being said I'm an ER doctor I've been one for over 20. Somewhere along the line I had a lot of interests in healthcare administration and I went that route. And then realized what I didn't like about healthcare administration was really all of the bureaucracy that existed within running a hospital and that organization. And I quickly switched to learning more about innovation. And as I dug into innovation, learned a bit about product development and also learned about startups. And as I dug into startups and was involved with a couple, I also realized that I didn't want to get involved in just one startup. And so I started understanding more about strategy, understanding more about financing. And now I'm, I'm heading venture capital here at Cleveland clinic. And it's an exciting time to be a part of this organization, part of innovation, part of leading these startups and getting financed and growing and ultimately solving world-class patient problems.

Will:  If you don't mind, let me ask you a question that's kind of perplexed me. From a venture capitalist perspective, which gets you more excited, the idea or concept or the actual leadership team?

Akhil:  You know, that's a, that's an interesting question. So in the beginning, it's the concept of the problem that's being solved and the solution, but then it very quickly turns to how do you do that? And then it's all about the team that's going to execute on that plan. And so in a way, the excitement is about the problem and the solution, but the tactics is all about the management team. And that's the way we look at it from venture capital. You have to have that, that team and skillset to really drive the value from the original concept.

Will:  Talk to us a little bit about just the ecosystem within Northeast Ohio or the Midwest.

Akhil:  Yeah, so that's actually a broader topic. But one of the, one of the things that I noticed quickly when I came here was there's no shortage of ideas, right? You have several world-class institutions here. You have a great educational system - Case Western is just down the road. So you have a nucleus of ideas and people. But the problem is that there's not that connection of getting entrepreneurial individuals who have the right skill sets to create these companies and work in these startups, and I think that's probably the biggest gap that we have here. Not only within Northeastern Ohio, but within the Midwest. a lot of the talent leaves here and they go to the coast. And I think the biggest thing we can do is create that, that formative nucleus of startups that keep people engaged, keep people wanting to stay here, join those startups, create value, solve those problems. And I think that's the biggest challenge we have. And it also makes it exciting to see how we can do it and solve it.

Will:  Well, perhaps one of the successful byproducts of this podcast will be a blatant advocacy for the Midwest as an ecosystem, as a rich, untapped ecosystem for startups, entrepreneurs, and ultimately healthcare solutions that can change care delivery.

Akhil:  I work at some of the root areas of where this development occurs. So that means working maybe in a more collaborative manner with help with institutions of education. So working with Case Western and working with Cleveland State, working with other colleges to get people more engaged around entrepreneurship, and maybe even starts at the high school level. And so you really need that, that broad-based support. It's not just the Cleveland Clinic, but it's the regional support around creating that interest in entrepreneurship.

Will:  Well, Akhil, we could talk for hours on this. But unfortunately I just got a page from the emergency room saying, admit to medicine. So we're going to have to cut this episode short, but what a blessing it is going to be working with you and collaborating again, this is Will Morris and cohost Akil Saklecha with Health Amplified, a Cleveland Clinic podcast.

Akhil:  And make sure you call that ER doctor within a couple of minutes.

Will:  I'm on it. All right.