For you, what isArtificial Intelligence in a super short sentence? For me ArtificialIntelligence is the future, it is the transformation of many industries. Itsaves lives, changes lives, transforms lives, really. Hello everyone andwelcome to AI Heroes, a space where we discover the infinite ways in whichtechnology and Artificial Intelligence are transforming the future ofhealthcare.
We do this throughconversations with amazing people in this industry. I'm Laura Velazquez, I'mco-founder of Archangel AI and I'm your host. Let'sgo with the episode.
Dr. Martin, welcome tothis space. Thank you, thank you Laura for the opportunity and also to José whowas there following up with me to do this podcast. Nice to talk with you.
Martín, first of all Iwould love to hear a little bit about you, your story, how you came to be inthe healthcare industry and how you are now impacting so many patients in Peru.Thank you very much Laura. Look, I started in the health sector 14 years ago,in 2011.
I was working in thecorporate sector and in 2011 we decided with a partner to start in the healthsector basically to take occupational health to the next level and basically westarted with an occupational medical center and very quickly we realized thatwe had a lot of quality data and that medical quality data we started to sortit and work it and we saw that there was a great opportunity to transform occupationalhealth into preventive health.
From there we startedto work and we started to grow basically with occupational medical check-ups,analyzing the data and now when AI arrived, well AI has always existed but withthe technological application we have really enhanced it.
So it is a path thatstarted before the pandemic and during the pandemic we boosted all ourtechnological transformation and during and after the pandemic it has reallybeen a transformation of the company and we are therefore serving many people,basically workers in companies where our checkups really have a dual purpose,to help companies to remain productive, to reduce absenteeism but on the otherhand we change people's lives, With AI and everything we are implementing we detectdiseases early and where this work we do together with you and other startupsglobally can be reversed to change the history of these people and that is howwe have started, we have operations in Peru, we are in Chile, we started lastyear but our purpose is to reach all of Latin America and why not globally withthis model and we need these global startups to bring this model we are doing.
I love it when I hearsomeone who thinks outside the box and wants to take it to the world, I reallylike it because it's not that common, so I get excited. Ben, I would love toask you what do you do with AI and then we go to those challenges to startcreating these kinds of models.
With AI we do several actions, one of the mainones that we work on is all the chest x-rays that are taken from workers, wedetect early stage pulmonary nodules as you know in stage 1 or 2 this can bereversed because we work with healthy people, with workers and this reallymakes that in this year, in the more than 200,000 x-rays that we have taken wehave detected 50 people with pulmonary nodules, of which some are already intreatment and the others are in GIS.
hat is one, the otherone that we are working with Arcángel and CERTS, which is really for, withclinical laboratory tests we do everything that is detection of chronic kidneydisease and there we have hundreds of people that we are also really changinglives because they are people at risk that many times as they are healthy or donot have symptoms, they do not know what they have so that is really very good.A guide that we have our own is about metabolic syndrome which are thepredecessors of chronic non-communicable diseases and there we are also workinga lot to help people with lifestyle recommendations, such as nutrition, exercise,sleep management, stress and we give them recommendations based on the patternsof the condition or the risk factors of these people and we are helping themthroughout their work history. They have done many things, but what I like themost, what they are telling me is that you see results every day and that youare implementing it every day, that is really a step forward in Latin America.
In case you didn'tknow, congratulations. No, thank you. Yes, it's actually a model that we areworking with several institutions.
One is WIRA, the OpenInnovation. We have an Open Innovation strategy with WIRA and we have done asearch because we thought that our impact was at the Peruvian level but we havedone a study at the global level and they have told us that this is the modelthat you have working with healthy people and applying IEA. It really is apredictive, real system, because you are not working with people who arealready symptomatic or sick, but with people who are healthy or apparentlyhealthy.
It is a unique modelat a global level, so it is something we are really proud of because from anindustry that is very traditional, very regulated, which is occupational orprofessional health, we are transforming it into a predictive health, realimpact. Already when we save a life it changes everything. It totally makes adifference. Component that we are looking at a healthy population, come onlet's look for where the fault may be with these people who may later becomepatients.
So yes, it is reallyvery good for us and we continue to grow this model and that is why we are nowlooking for more startups that want to join and that have more AEIs to be ableto add to this what we want to build is a digital twin where it can bepredictive for people, they can have all this to predict and prescribelifestyles, recommendations and that is where we are working. I believe thatyou are going to reach a point where we are going to migrate to a verypreventive model, as you said at the beginning, for multiple pathologies. Let'ssay that in this case what we are doing is very focused on kidney disease, butsurely many others are going to migrate to this component that we are lookingat a healthy population, so let's look for where the fault may lie with thesepeople who may become patients later on.
Yes, that's right. Andwe are doing now, for example, we are already working with a startup foreverything related to cardiac risk analysis, liver risk, there is another onewe are working on, all based on IEA with data from clinical laboratories. Sothat is also helping and is part, as I said, of this digital twin that we arebuilding and we are really looking for innovations that are now in the market,adding to our services that we have now implemented.
So, it is something thatmotivates us every day because we are improving the lives of millions ofpeople. So, families, by having healthy people, healthy people, companies aremore productive, countries are more efficient. So, the impact and thetransformation that we are making is really very big.
And that is what wereally want, that this model can be spread throughout Latin America. Why not?Because in all countries we have a certain infrastructure gap or rural areasthat do not have access to health, quality health, and even less withtechnology. And I believe that technology is changing and is going to changethe healthcare sector throughout our region.
Very much inagreement. Martin, one question, what technological or cultural or economicbarriers did you face to be able to implement these smart models? Where are youdoing it? How did you start small and how did you scale it up? How did youovercome those barriers and how did you overcome them? Look, it's very much, asyou know, our physicians, our health professionals have been trained to dealwith disease and they have a paradigm of everything that is reactive health,right? In other words, you do the karma and I cure you.
And the entirepharmaceutical industry is focused on treatment, right? So, we saw the otherside of the coin, the health issue. And health is being well, healthy, healthyand prevention. So, the two sides of the coin, both prevention and treatment,must go hand in hand.
So, that is where wesaw the great opportunity. But if our people had that training, that paradigmthat addictions had to be when people present symptoms, the other barrier washow to digitize everything we had. And that's something also that we had towork with the systems, go to the cloud.
Those are like the twofundamental pillars that we worked on to address these barriers of our team'smindset. Physician is to start working with them. And there are alwaysphysicians who take innovation and incorporate it.
That's what we startworking with and we start working on pilots with them, right? So, we startedworking in one medical center and from there we started scaling it to all ourmedical centers and rolling it out with our customers. And they themselves weare ambassadors now for the new technologies. We are looking, our physicians arelooking at how to incorporate technology.
And with thedigitalization barrier, we changed systems. We also imposed that our peoplestart working with the systems, because from the appointments that were notmade in the system, the medical records. So we put all the systems in place andwe made them work with the electronic medical records, which allowed us toanalyze the data and have quality data.
From there you startworking and that gives you the basis. The mindset, the culture and the alreadyautomated systems give you the basis so that you can do what comes withartificial intelligence or deep learning, and do more things. And to make lifestyle prescriptions, recommendations.
So, it is somethingthat we have done step by step. How long did this whole process take? Because Ifeel that this step-by-step process has been very structured and it touches onbarriers that happen to everyone in the healthcare system. How long has this processtaken? Look, we did some studies in Colombia in 16-17 with my partner who is adoctor and with her we saw that what they were telling us was that we had toautomate and systematize and standardize all our processes.
And that, we came in2017 with that thought and in 2018 we started to structure everything on that.That is, from taking times, standardizing, measuring and controlling, writingdown the key processes. So, all of that we started to work on and we worked onan operational excellence model.
In 2018, 2019 westarted to structure all our systems. Then, we started the digitaltransformation in 2019 and the pandemic came in 2020. The first quarter of 2020already found that we were on the road to transformation and in 2020 weaccelerated the entire road to transformation with telemedicine systems,e-commerce platforms.
In other words, wereally accelerated all that and from 2021 we are already on a very, veryprepared path. We were caught by this, but it is a road that never ends. Yes,it is a constant growth.
It is constant growthand new things are coming. We put a lot of focus on cybersecurity. We continueto work on this issue and we are learning every day because technology isadvancing.
So, I would tell youit's five or six years of what we're working on. From 2018 to now, 2024, we arefive or six years. This journey, this transformation, right? They are a greatexample for many institutions.
Yes, but we werehelped by this program we did at Columbia Business, there in New York, whichgave us this structure of how to standardize part of this work, of this study.We made a study trip to India and we saw how cataract operations were performedin one minute in a hospital and thousands of people in one day, operations.Then we saw that it was possible to standardize in the health sector.
We had a lot ofmethodology and that really helped us a lot, didn't it? This methodology, thisstructure that Columbia gave us. You can send us the link of the program to putit here in the links to share. It would be really cool.
Yes, yes, I will sendyou the link. I think that now one is going to appear in Peru, but it is highlyrecommended. Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Super cool. Yes. Thetruth is that what you did is a great example for those who are just startingthis process.
Because you alreadyhave many tangible results from this, from artificial intelligence, from theadoption of new technologies, etc. Ben, it has been a super nice road. Iimagine there are many challenges, but also, what do you feel when you lookback and say, wow, you have achieved something tremendous? What excites you themost about this? What are you doing? More than making a business, we arechanging people's lives, right? So, we transform the lives of our people first,right? Because our people feel that they are working with a purpose and thatthey are going to help people stay healthy.
When you detect earlyon a person with a disease that can become very, very complicated, and that'sreally what pays for all this, what we have done, right? So, it is really nicewhat you can feel because you do, you feel that it is a company that does good,that the world needs more of this kind of companies that do. They do theirbusiness, but they also do good, in other words, it is a company with a purpose.Actually, as I told you, we started it as something to change a service and dosomething different, but along the way we kept iterating and we saw that we hadthe opportunity to transform regulated health into preventive health.
And that's where we'redoing and growing, right? Every day. Martín, could you talk a little bit aboutthe results you have had? Because I would like the audience to listen, tounderstand that there really are results, not just talk about the theory andthat's it. Ok, look, this year we have made more than 250 thousand X-rays, inwhich we have detected more than 50 people with pulmonary nodules, of which 6people are already in treatment, in stages 1 and 2, which are initial stages ofcancer, and they are probably going to recover.
Then the others arestill in follow-up. But the most impacting thing we have done is with theintelligence of ARCANGEL, in this project that we are working on, where we havebeen able to really have a database to be able to determine the risk that peoplehave of chronic kidney disease. And we have more than 400 people who are athigh risk of having chronic kidney disease, and we are working with the healthsystems to be able to reverse this situation.
But these are the oneswho are at high risk, but there are thousands of people who are at medium andlow risk, and we are providing them with healthy lifestyles so that they cantake better care of these two pathologies. Yes, it is a very nice thing. Hereyou are going to say, he is advertising, but it is really something verybeautiful when we see these results.
I always cry, it istoo beautiful. Yes, it is too nice because we are all patients here, because atsome point we are going to be there, so how nice it would be to be able toidentify in time so as not to suffer. We have that opportunity, hopefully wecan, this can go viral, it can be more inclusive, that is, not only forcompanies, it can reach the entire population, but it is something we areworking on, that this can be accessible to all people and not only for peoplewho work.
So this is the greatchallenge to continue advancing with preventive health. And preventive healthis going to help a lot to deconfigure our care and public health systems,because our systems are prepared to attend to diseases, to attend to people whoneed health and in a reactive way. So this is the other side of the coin, thatwe can deconfigure our hospitals with preventive health and where people cansee and identify themselves with professionals in the primary health system.
That is what we areworking on. I would say that Europe is a step ahead in everything related toprevention, because they have the public system incorporated into the issue ofprevention. The United States is migrating its system and is moving towardsprevention and prediction in Latin America.
It is what is coming,the future comes that way, it is the investment with the highest return you canhave. So it is proven that investment in prevention is always more than one.Yes, of course, it is much more efficient for all the actors, from the patientto the institution, to the insurer, everyone.
It is clearly moreefficient. Since we are talking about the future and we are talking aboutprecisely this, how do you perceive the future of technology-driven healthcaresuch as these intelligent models? Innovation and technology applied in thehealthcare sector will transform healthcare systems. I believe it is going tobe accessible and it is going to be mainstreamed.
It is a question oftime. There are early adopters who are already taking up the technology, AI,but this is coming. I say this is like a revolution that is happening.
AI is something thatis changing history and it's going to change human history. It's a matter oftime. That people, healthcare institutions, governments start taking it up.
So it is necessary toshow more and more examples and results so that it can be incorporated intopublic systems, because in the end, public systems, governments, are the onesthat manage health and education. So they are the ones who have to promotethis. And I think that I am very positive about the health issue, but alwayswith the issue of innovation and technology.
And our newgenerations coming from Mexico already come with the chip of having all thetechnology incorporated in everything they do. This is coming. A wave is atsunami of changes in all systems and healthcare is no exception.
Just now you weretalking about something extremely valuable, which was to reach regions or areaswhere there is almost no infrastructure. How has the process of implementingtechnology in those areas been? I believe that one of the fundamental aspectsis the issue of collaboration. Here in Peru we are working on a project with AstraZeneca,with regional governments and companies such as Arcángel, Cure, Spasat, to beable to put medical systems through the satellite Internet so that they canbegin to work in remote areas, which are probably people who have never seen adoctor or probably never will see one.
Very remote areas sixhours away in cities that are very, very far from the capitals, from thesedistricts, from the provinces. This health issue is a matter of being able tocollaborate and make what is being done in one region, to start working inanother region. I believe that it is also a matter of mindset, that not asingle institution can do all this.
We have to collaborateand begin to infect all the divisions or departments that we have in thecountries. Yes, it is impossible to transform a dragon like health alone. Inother words, we have to work together.
We have to gotogether. And as a team. That's it.
And that really works.We are starting to make these pilots. The idea is to start this here.
AstraZeneca is alreadyimplementing it in Colombia, in Brazil, in Mexico. So, this is going to spread.And they are working with regional governments.
So, we are part ofthis ecosystem and we are proud of it. And the technology companies, by makingthis purpose of helping this to spread, are also contributing to this change.This beginning of the revolution, because you give access to people who, as Isay, have never had or have never seen a doctor.
And with telemedicinethey can see from an ultrasound, an X-ray screen. So, it changes their lives.And I believe that health does not have to be only for those who have money orare in some system.
We have to try to makeit accessible and democratize it. Yes, so far that has been the answer. Theremay be another way, but for now it is the answer.
See, I'm going to askyou a weird question. When we've identified these patients who are at mediumrisk, what do you do there? Do you call them? Do you tell them? Do you generatethat pathway with them? What do they say? Do you have any history behind there?Interesting. We did change some people's lives by helping them not becomejudgmental.
Don't go yellow, gogreen. So, we did give a lot of people access to these lifestylerecommendations. We give them a personalized follow-up to say, hey, you are, Idon't know, pre-diabetic and you can reverse it here with these nutrition andexercise recommendations and they are doing it and you need to follow thisprogram.
They do it and theyare very grateful to us. People, families, the workers' wives, we incorporatethem in order to help them because many times they are the ones who eat or cookfor their families and really the eating habits have a lot of influence onthis. So, we are working with them.
In Chile we havepeople who are in the locomotives that transport in concentrated wagons. Theyare sitting there for 8, 10, 12 hours. So, we have to give them a programbecause if not, the sedentary lifestyle affects them a lot.
So, we do some activebreaks with them, exercise programs to help them control these tendencies theyhave. It must be rare that someone calls you and says, hey, you are at risk ofbeing sedentary.
But it must be veryvaluable to receive that, that call. Yes, yes, yes, yes. No, we havesurveillance in the companies and that is where we detect.
We do clusters, we domedical examinations. We do thousands of examinations per day. So, fromdifferent companies and there we have all this with data analysis.
We have thedashboards, we cluster people who are at risk of obesity, fatigue, diabetes,hypertension risk, in other words, several. And then, our doctors who are inthe companies do the follow-up to prevent these people from becoming diabeticor at least extend their quality of life for an additional period of time untilthe situation is reversed. So, this is really a surveillance program that wehave in the companies.
It is very complete,in other words, what we are looking for. It is to take that step forward, asyou were saying. Yes, yes, we are working on that and we are very focused onhelping people to have a better quality of life.
That is our purposeand I think we are doing it every day a little bit. Martín, I would love to goback a little bit to the history of how this started to be created and for youto tell us stories that you say, here I am going to throw in the towel, here Ican't do it anymore, because sometimes I want to throw in the towel all thetime. How has that been? Because for many it may be surprising that you've comeso far.
So, if you can tell usthose stories where you say, this has been very difficult, that is, within allthis implementation, this has been very difficult. And if you can tell us astory there and also what has been surprising to see. Look, in pandemic we hadour laboratories that worked for companies and we are a company, I would say99% B2B, we work for companies.
But in pandemic, giventhe need that there was, we really left the possibility of installinglaboratories in the main cities of the country and we began to work with ourlaboratories, we installed molecular biology laboratories and we began to dothe COVID. We even won awards for everything because we provided accessibilityto COVID tests when people needed them badly. So, that is very good, but wewanted to leave this model, the B2C, because we sold to the final consumer.
In pandemic we didvery well, but after pandemic we no longer focused on this B2C sector, that is,it is not that we did not know, we did not know how to manage it. Because, ofcourse, there was a demand during the pandemic, but then it ended. So, it issomething that we really left during the pandemic or post-pandemic, but welearned a lot, that is, we said today we have done well during the pandemic,post-pandemic we want to leave it, we tried six months, one year and really thebusiness did not grow in B2C because it would have loved to.
So, we went back toB2B, to focus on B2B, but B2C really gave us a lot of learning, that is, thepath we took in B2C really gave us a lot of learning. We kind of turned it around and we learned.