Hey there. Welcome to the Healthy Enterprise Podcast. If this is your first time, welcome. And if you're back for more, well, I appreciate you coming back. I hope you enjoyed today's episode.
Heath Fletcher:I'm gonna be talking with Gautham Pasupuleti. He is a CEO and cofounder of a company called Biodesign Innovation Labs. He is a Forbes Ultimate 120 pioneers of change, winner of the Cisco Global Problem Solver Challenge and a building AI enabled precision medicine platform for cancer care. This guy's busy. He's got a lot going on.
Heath Fletcher:So it's gonna be an interesting conversation. So let's sit down with Hi, Gautham. Nice to meet you. Thank you so much for being on this episode. Why don't you start with introducing yourself and, you know, telling the listeners a bit about Biodesign Innovation Labs and all the variety of things that you've been working on for the last nine or so years.
Gautham Pasupuleti:Thanks, Heath. Thanks for having me. Good to connect. So what we are building is basically, you know, life saving medical devices and healthcare technology solutions, which can directly impact patients and really have high solutions that is really required for patients across low and middle income countries and then developed countries which are resource poor. So we've actually been working over the last over the last ten years, we've been working on various solutions from respiratory care, critical care, emergency care, ophthalmology, and, you know, including AI and machine learning applications for various health care applications.
Gautham Pasupuleti:One of the key projects that we have been working and have been successful in translating our research and development into commercialization is RespirAID and RespAP. These are the two different projects which are the medical devices that we have developed from a very idea stage to commercialized making stage. So my brother and I, we started this company back in 2017 in Bangalore in India. So we had initially support from ecosystem in India and in US to basically identify identify the unmet clinical need which patients face, you know, at various health care settings or the general public health problems that they have from, you know, lung cancer to respiratory illnesses to, you know, cardiac problems to diabetes. So there are so many problems that though, you know, the population at all faces that there is a need for innovation, there is a need for technology, and there is a need for the design thinking in such a way the the products that are built to specifically, you know, cater to those needs.
Gautham Pasupuleti:Right. So we've dev designed, developed medical devices such as Respirade, which is a safe, affordable, reliable alternative for manual ventilation. So what happens is
Heath Fletcher:gas That's called respiratory rate.
Gautham Pasupuleti:Called respiratory rate. What happens during emergencies medical emergencies for patients is that, you know, about forty to sixty percent of the cases, they are are they're having some kind of respiratory, you know, arrest or, you know, cardiac arrest, which is leading them not able to breathe, and this requires immediate intubation, ventilation, stabilization, CPR, and so on. Right? We've all seen that. So we've identified this problem in first hand at all, like hospitals across India visiting more than 100 hospitals.
Gautham Pasupuleti:So we've identified the bottleneck problems in looking how the patients are being, you know, being handled in those very high stress situations in ER, in Right. In ambulances, in hospitals, in ICUs, and so on. This was way back in 2017, early twenty seventeen. And we have
Heath Fletcher:So before COVID?
Gautham Pasupuleti:Yeah. Way before COVID. And
Heath Fletcher:Yeah.
Gautham Pasupuleti:And we've started designing, you know, our medical device, Respirate, which automates the manual intervention that takes place to stabilize patients, to to manually ventilate patients. So we've designed this patented it's a US patented technology, and it's also patented in India, Canada, UK, and other countries. So we have patented this technology after doing various, you know, r and d and, you know, a lot of clinical trials and publishing our clinical research. And and this product has impacted patients during COVID and post COVID. We started way back in 2017.
Gautham Pasupuleti:And, you know, COVID has started in 2020. So we took so every medical device, if it is a unique idea, if you're working on something very specific technology which is solving a pretty important problem, especially in health care, it has its own gestation period. It has because you have to go through multiple iterations in terms of design development, in terms of verification, validation, in terms of specification, ensuring the compliance and regulatory aspects. So what we did is, like, work with a whole bunch of engineers, researchers, doctors, and domain experts, and various other professionals, and design, develop our medical devices such as Respirate. And Respap is another product for Rich In Respirate project.
Gautham Pasupuleti:We have built this safe safer respiratory device for children with pneumonia. This actually provides oxygen therapy, which is based on a bubble CPAP concept. So bubble so you've heard of CPAP. So CPAP is used for, you know, during sleep apnea for so but CPAP is like continuous positive airway pressure. But this is for children with Right.
Gautham Pasupuleti:Five months to 58. What we have developed is affordable, easy to use, and reliable solution for resource poor health care settings across hospitals, you know, in the low and middle countries, I mean, even in US, such that they can easily use the bubble CPAP, the respiratory solution for children with pneumonia. Because pneumonia, it affects the alveoli for the children and interferes with the delivery of oxygen. And this leads
Heath Fletcher:So is that a wear is it a wearable device? It's
Gautham Pasupuleti:it's a it's not a wearable device. It's like a oxygen therapy device, you know. It kind of like provides oxygen, but you are setting slow rate.
Heath Fletcher:But it's mobile. Yeah.
Gautham Pasupuleti:It's mobile. You're setting the flow rate. You're setting the oxygen Yeah. F I o two. Right.
Gautham Pasupuleti:The design that we have developed is is innovative, and we've also did clinical trials. We've also published our clinical trials, and we've also commercialized it. So this was the phase where we were, like, focused on life saving medical devices, respiratory, respap. Mhmm. And then we've started also started building AI solutions, which were which are basically precision medicine, like early detection, personalized treatment, clinical decision support, drug discovery, biomarker identification, using various algorithms to, you know, detect specific cancer types at early such that you save a patient's lives if you if it is diagnosed early so they can get the treatment early so they can do the the right early intervention such that it can save lives.
Gautham Pasupuleti:Mhmm. So what we have built, like, an AI solution is integrating different data sets for different clinical data points, biomarkers, symptoms, physiological parameters, and proteomics, genomics, you know, transcriptomics, all the metabolomics, all the data sets that are genetically, you know, genetic aspects, there is something called omics data, which has different layers of, like, genetic data as genomics and protein data as proteomics, and RNA data as transcriptomics. And we have all these different datasets that that we work on, and we use this data to build our own algorithms which are proprietary, and to use these algorithms to identify patterns and biomarkers to identify specific biomarkers which others have not identified, which is a novel biomarkers. And we currently are working with a lot of cancer research centers, pharma we're we're we work with pharma companies, we work with cancer research centers, we work with hospitals. We we deploy our solutions to do clinical research, to do cancer research, to provide personalized medicine such that if a if a patient has, you know, early, you know, specific indication for lung cancer.
Gautham Pasupuleti:Right? That would actually, you know, actually help them to take the time required to plan the treatment and then get the treatment early such that they can stop the progression of the disease. So this is the idea of early intervention, early detection. So, and the idea of doing personalized medicine, precision medicine is that if you are able to provide personalized treatment for a specific patient, you are considering individual patient's lifestyle, where they are from, and their genetic factors, and their clinical symptoms, and their biomarkers, and you're considering all these factors in imaging, histopathology, radiology. You're considering all these factors and the doctor can basically and the doctor can basically look at this all these data points and use our algorithms to make the right decision at the right time, which is the personalized aspect.
Gautham Pasupuleti:Which means that it's not like a one size fits all solution. It is individualized for each patient, such as such that the best clinical outcomes for the patient is guaranteed. So imagine a patient with prostate cancer. Right now, we have seen president Biden has prostate cancer, late stage detection. So this is something there are certain biomarkers that are very aggressive, very genetic mutations, very aggressive, and these are detected at late stages.
Gautham Pasupuleti:About sixty sixty percent of the cases are detected late stage, like lung cancer, and this leads to survival rate like below ten percent. And if it is it if the if the detection is done earlier, so it can help with, you know, early treatment and the and the reducing the progression of the cancer disease. Yeah.
Heath Fletcher:Wow. Got a couple questions. So both of these both of these divisions in your company have been implemented. When did the when did you do the respiratory devices? That was the first those were the first projects that you guys so
Gautham Pasupuleti:we started this work way back in 2017, early early twenty seventeen. There's a doctor in Mass General Hospital in Boston who started an initiative called Camtek. His name is doctor Chris Olson. So he was doing a lot of innovation programs across USA, Africa, India. And one of those programs where my brother and I, we were involved.
Gautham Pasupuleti:So we were doing our design thinking, brainstorming, and it was, like, kind of very sort of interaction with a lot of the, you know, the stakeholders, which which got our curiosity to actually go deep dive into make some prototypes and then start getting some traction around. So that was that was that was then. And then government of India and government of Karnataka, which is a state in India, started, you know, giving some funding to build a prototype, further test and validate the prototypes, and we took we took it out from there. And then we got various funding from, like, Qualcomm, Cisco, through awards and recognition, and Forbes, and in COVID, and government of India, Department of Science and Technology, Nidhi Priyas, and BIRAC, and CCAMP and IKP, the incubation ecosystem, NASCOM. So we had really good ecosystem in India and Bangalore, especially, and we we kind of feel like I was initially also involved with The US Boston ecosystem, MIT ecosystem.
Gautham Pasupuleti:Through my association with MIT programs that was involved in designing medical devices, you know, which there were a lot of collaboration between MIT hospitals in India. Like, one of the one of those were the L. B. Prasad Eye Hospital, which was started by doctor Ramesh professor doctor, professor Ramesh Raskar from MIT Media Lab in Kalmanapulshur. So he was I was involved with the group, you know, as an India initiative to identify problems, and also another group in the scene to identify problems in Mumbai, you know, healthcare.
Gautham Pasupuleti:Like, kind of like curiosity and innovation design thinking, you know, how do we apply these technology in principle to solve these problems, kind of like, gave us like a good direction to watch where we were going in terms of our own startup and entrepreneurship and, you know, medical devices in general in general. And overall Right. We wanted to we wanted to impact, you know, create high impact solutions. We wanted to solve problems which others are not solving, and also be able to, you know, save lives with our solutions. So we looked at, like, high impact problems when we looked at problem statement identification.
Gautham Pasupuleti:Like, what is the, you know, like emergency need, you know, there's a dire situation. How do we how do we how do we come how do we come up with innovation, which is something really important at those situations. Right? Which can be lifesaving. Right.
Gautham Pasupuleti:It is lifesaving. So how do we build that is very reliable? How do we make sure it is safe? How do we make sure it is, you know, accurate? How do we make sure?
Gautham Pasupuleti:All these things are, like, you need to calibrate, you need to test it, you need to validate, and you need to iterate it. So there are a lot of standards around that. So medical devices have different standards for different regulatory aspects in in in different, you know, categories for each. So we had to go through all these labs and test all these things. And we had a lot of collaborations over the years with big companies as well, like, Rimedia was our manufacturing partner or hospitals where we've done clinical trials like St.
Gautham Pasupuleti:John's Medical College or Inappoya Medical College. And and also the ecosystem, like incubation partners where we were doing our research, you know, in the initial r and d, like, I keep in which part of our CCAP or NASCOM. And overall, in The US, we were involved with Halcyon Incubator, which was like a incubator supporting our company in Washington DC to, you know, to help to help us build our products which can help for global market needs as well as, of course, US. But Mhmm. Halcyon supported us in 2023 through their incubation program.
Gautham Pasupuleti:I was also part of a fellowship at Johns Hopkins back in back in back in 2024 last year from August till January. So and Johns Hopkins and Halcyon in Washington DC. These are the two programs that supported our company over the last last year and the previous year. And the year before, was also involved in 2022, I was also involved with the Global Good Fund, which is the leadership development program for social impact entrepreneurs, and they kind of supported my leadership to help build a better company which can help build, you know, better better better world. Yeah.
Gautham Pasupuleti:So so we these are, like, two three different programs. I was involved in Washington DC over the last three years.
Heath Fletcher:You have been very busy.
Gautham Pasupuleti:Yeah. That's good to be busy.
Heath Fletcher:And so
Gautham Pasupuleti:trying to keep myself busy Yeah.
Heath Fletcher:Very busy.
Gautham Pasupuleti:To actually, you know, work on work on health care operations, which came up. Yeah.
Heath Fletcher:I mean, this isn't I mean, the health care system isn't isn't easy to work with in the in the best of times, but you're you're you're maneuvering and and working in a lot of different systems and structures. And did you when you because your background's in computer science and math and engineering. Right? At what point did you realize that you had this sort of, like, driven entrepreneurial spirit?
Gautham Pasupuleti:It's a very it's a very, very important question, actually. I would say, you know you know, it's it's you know, I I I would say it's not just one specific incident which just, you know, kind of like took it off. It's a kind of like a collective experience as in where you get as a you know, when I was I'll tell you, when I was back in my in my engineering undergrad days, like, while I was doing, you know, I was studying in college, I was kind of lost what what I wanna do because there were, like, these different engineering aspects, sensors, electronics, and communications, and, like Mhmm. There there was also this biomedical instrumentation. So I was I was curious about it, but I had not much understanding.
Gautham Pasupuleti:I wanna get something hands on. Wanna first understand the problem. I wanna first understand hands on, test it. So there were so I found that academics, you know, in general, found them very very much in a in a gap between what the real world is, you know, because you're just Right. Learning something on a concept level.
Gautham Pasupuleti:But when you actually go to the real world and you you test it out, you try things, and you actually get the first hand experience. So there's a gap between academics and, you know, industry. So that's that's when I found out that, okay, there. So that's why when when you're in academia and yours during your very early, like, to figure out, doing the discovery, so I was kind of lost and, of course, I had a good mentor, like my brother, who kind of like Right. Was involved with various medical innovations, medical device innovations, healthcare applications, technologies, and various mostly hardware as well.
Gautham Pasupuleti:But the curiosity, like, the curiosity was, like, for me, brother was doing something in health care. He was an innovator. I was trying to understand what I wanna do, what I wanted to, you know, see myself moving forward career trajectory, and also do something meaningful and impactful. So one of those days during my undergrad, I was in a hospital volunteering for a specific, you know, for a specific project. So while I was volunteering, it was basically to do observation to understand what are what are the kind of, like, say it's an operation theater, let's say an emergency room.
Gautham Pasupuleti:You Right. Trying to speak with doctors, take some notes, you know, get some key points on what are the equipments they have, what kind of patients they see, what kind of, you know, challenges they face, and how do you compare those notes with other hospitals and you get an idea around what's the what's the common theme around the unmet need or the, you know, key challenges, like the gaps and and so on. So so when we look at that, like, what I was actually in an ER, outside ER in blood bank, so I was seeing a patient just coming out of an ambulance and they were trying to, this was a very elderly patient, and I've never seen anybody die inside of me, like, never. So this was the first time, this was I think back in 2013. So I there was this patient, they were they were, you know, trying to do CPR and there was this ECG machine and it was like going very, you know, there was no sign of life there.
Gautham Pasupuleti:I was Right. At the time, I realized that I I should actually build something, you know, equip the doctors, equip the paramedics, equip the healthcare ecosystem, the hospitals, such that they can help save lives. That solution can help save lives. Was '20 Great. 2013.
Gautham Pasupuleti:And fast forward 2017, somehow I manifested into building a company which is exactly a life saving medical device. So I look back and I I looked at that incident and I realized, oh, I swelled it.
Heath Fletcher:From that moment.
Gautham Pasupuleti:I looked. So retrospectively, can see that somehow I actually looked at that and then I actually imagined myself like I should be building a company around, you know, building life saving solutions which can help save patients' lives during medical emergencies, during transportation, during ICU, during various medical, you know, respiratory issues. So it was not exactly like a CPR machine, but it was a device, an automated respiratory device, which provides manual automated automated ventilation as opposed to manual ventilation. So it provides respiratory rate, tidal volume, inspiratory expiratory ratio, peak inspiratory pressure, peak and expiratory pressure, and all these things, you know, which a standard emergency ventilator would do. But it is an affordable, easy to use, and at the same time, innovative design for ER and paramedics and post operative care to use it for patients for short term such that they can help save lives during the period, and then can help the patients to get further treatment in ICUs or in post op or cardiac care.
Gautham Pasupuleti:So so it kind of like took that that would be one part of it, to answer your question. Yeah. The other part, of course, my brother, and I was involved with MIT, the eco the ecosystem in MIT, and the ecosystem in in Bangalore, in, you know, you know, Bangalore and Chennai where I grew up and where I actually came to work. And so my advice actually would people who are actually looking at this video podcast or who are trying to figure out what they're trying to get involved with communities, go go to go to workshops, you know, where they are doing something tech based, very specific. Let's say you're working on something for climate change.
Gautham Pasupuleti:Let's say you're working on something solutions which can help with patients with cancer or diabetes or cardiac. So go to those specific workshops, understand the concepts and, you know, not just from a concept lab, but also from a practical point of view. And also meet with people who have also been in this journey, and also who are both from an industry and academia, and from a practice perspective, from a knowledge perspective, and know the different spectrum of, you know, you can you you can be able to be on both sides and also from a clinical side, understand what are those gaps and all what are those missing missing points around specific challenges they face and what what their perspectives are. And overall, it will help you get an understanding of what is there and what what is kind of challenging and what what is interesting, passionate that you're, you know, that you are actually involved. So you can pick and choose what you wanna do and then go on from there.
Gautham Pasupuleti:And, you know
Heath Fletcher:Well, you brought up a good point earlier about having an academic approach. Yeah. You can only you can learn a lot through academia, but it's actually the hands on approach where you're where you're actually engaged with other people, seeing the problems, finding out exactly what what are the problems and how they're and how they're impacting both the providers, the doctors, the staff, and how they're impacting patients as well or the outcome for for individuals. So, yeah, I can see how that's a really good advice to to be able to have an idea and and then to immerse yourself in that situation so you can actually experience it yourself and maybe have a a personal impact.
Gautham Pasupuleti:Yeah.
Heath Fletcher:Right? Which would would spark that It's
Gautham Pasupuleti:very important to get a first hand experience in order for you to get it from an actual actual actual understanding and then compare it with what is already out there. And so and also pick what those skills that you can you already have or interested in, and then also what what are the team members that you need to get, you know, involve yourself, you know. Let's say you wanna get your friends in your team or get your get your classmates or professors or, you know, somebody who's you met at a conference who has a specific skill set like doing data analysis or
Heath Fletcher:Right.
Gautham Pasupuleti:Designing some kind of equipment that requires certain skills for solid or electronics that you need, some kind of would be Mhmm. So some of the skills that you can do it by yourself, if you're passionate about, are some skills that you need to get people who are already good at it, depending on your timelines, your projects, and how you're gonna execute those things. And also, really matters is, like, how how how passionate about specific problem. How for for us, it was always, you know, because my own personal experience and my professional experience, it was always like aligned to healthcare innovation and technology from first from first experiencing myself to also, you know, all the way till COVID and post COVID same patient. And so there were there were there were motivations to solve problems in healthcare from a professional point of view as well as from a personal point of view.
Gautham Pasupuleti:And and for anybody who is looking at, like, how do we how do how do we know what is the right, you know, approach, what is the right approach or what is the right direction do I need to go, is basically, first you need to immerse yourselves in the community, attend attend hackathons, tech conferences, attend these seminars, and also get hands on experiences, and, you know, get yourself the right right skills and get get yourself involved with the right people around you so you can immerse and start building teams and working on working on solutions, important solutions, which can solve very pressing problems, not just for this your community, but for the global gurus. Yeah.
Heath Fletcher:Right. Did you did you and your brother partner up immediately or did that happen afterwards? Did you guys or did you think you were gonna go into business with your brother?
Gautham Pasupuleti:So I was no. It was not our yeah. So it was not very it was our very because he was in a different, you know, he was in a different stage, I was in a different stage. I was just Right. I I was I was actually at the time, you know, between jobs trying to figure out what I was trying to do, and the next, I was I was in a corporate.
Gautham Pasupuleti:Before I started working in a corporate after my college, I took a small internship at MIT, which which was basically to identify problems in India and design come up with solutions, which was an internship. Right. And before that, I I was involved with the the MIT Media Lab, the initiative group, which kind of like Uh-huh. Put us all into a, you know, a very intense programming or or a few weeks, and then come up with solutions for very specific problems that we write. Right?
Gautham Pasupuleti:Right. Through technology, through design thinking, through
Heath Fletcher:That's good training.
Gautham Pasupuleti:So, yeah. This kind of like help us get all the, you know, all the confidence that we need when you have confidence because you don't have confidence to actually dream that being solved by big hours. But putting all these people with very high skilled, you know, high achieved people from MIT and from Boston coming to all the way to MIT in in Mumbai in India and collaborating those different, you know, exchange of ideas and also putting plan and not just building something for those weeks and also implementing that. So the implementation was when I came back and started doing this research internship at MIT. And after that, I was for a brief period, I was in corporate in Chennai, which is a Southern part of India, which is a software company and a SaaS company.
Gautham Pasupuleti:So I found that was not my calling, and then my actual calling was actually to start something on the on building a startup medical device technology which can save lives and, you know, before I went there, I wanted to also understand how it feels like working in a startup, working in a very high intense and high demanding startup ecosystem. So I went back to BAML from Chennai, and I actually started working with my with with some of the people I'd met in MIT, the workshop in Mumbai. Mhmm. For a few for a few months, and then got myself I know I was helping them and they were helping me and, you know, we were working on a specific project. And then I actually after that, I decided to go back to Boston and then work on the specific VR and ER device project, which was to to help the the children with screening exams for refractor that are using different technologies like colorimetric, you know, for color blindness.
Gautham Pasupuleti:We have this gamification, which we
Heath Fletcher:have Oh, yeah.
Gautham Pasupuleti:Which we have built, A gamification, which kind of like a and we've used IR sensors. We've used different cameras, IR camera, IR camera, IR sensors cameras, which can captures the eye movements, and then we can track, you know, it can plot in the grass, and it can track the the difference between the left eye and right eye, and then it it diagnoses for neurological conditions. So there's something called pupil dilation. So the pupil dilation, when you actually do do a specific, you know, the when you actually if you have if you're doing a screening for pupil dilation, and this pupil dilation is something you you can look at it for a diagnosis for a neurological condition by comparing the left eye and right eye. And this Is
Heath Fletcher:that right?
Gautham Pasupuleti:Yeah. This is something that we Interesting. We've we've actually built, like, a a gamification headset, which can compare left eye and right eye. And this was for a UNICEF project for for children in Brazil in, you know, in Rio, and which which was in a collaboration with another colleague whom I met in MIT, medial, in 2017. So this was Katia.
Gautham Pasupuleti:She's a good still a good friend. So we actually worked on this headset, which can help the children with eye screening, which is a combination of different technologies like VR and AR and, you know, and I
Heath Fletcher:was gonna say, was I using VR
Gautham Pasupuleti:for A headset with with using AI to do lot of screening from cornea, retina, gel, but
Heath Fletcher:Oh, interesting. Wow.
Gautham Pasupuleti:So fast forward that I had this I had this personal situation where, of course, in parallel to this, my brother was already was in a late stage, you know, in a late stage in in his own startup, which is the current bio design innovation labs to start
Heath Fletcher:Oh,
Gautham Pasupuleti:okay. To start working on prototyping for the Respirate project. So I was I I, myself, was involved with them to help support my brother in the initial stages for the Respirate project. But I was having my own projects in AI and VR and AI for, you know, mostly for the eye diseases with my collaboration with Katia, my colleague and friend. But due to personal personal tragedy that I had, which I've explained to you, my after my brother's passing, I had to, you know, this was way early in 2017.
Gautham Pasupuleti:Oh, this this was your very early prototype which my brother was already working on. This is the affordable ventilated rest rate. And I had to basically step up and, you know, work with the team, work with work with a group of doctors, and further taking the project all the way to commercialization in 2020, from 2017 to 2020 while we while we did the R and D, right, writing grants, getting funding, you know, building the products, testing the products in hospitals, getting certifications, doing clinical trials, submitting for, you know, IRB approvals in various aspects and in partnering with various companies and hospitals. And COVID, we've we've helped launch during that time, especially it's it was widely required, you know, the respiratory devices, not just for adults, for children, everywhere. So we have launched our products.
Gautham Pasupuleti:And what happened was I've I've realized that one of the things that for any medical device so I think it takes its own time, you know, to design that lab because you need to make sure the quality and compliance is the quality assurance. At the same time, there is there is something called innovation. Innovation, it has to be innovative enough that that it is not something which others could compare, you know, what what novel trying to exit your solving, your building that others are not building, and how is it different? So in terms of value proposition, so that's where we spend a lot of time within our drawing board, within our labs, within our, you know, fabrication units to validate and see the performance and reliability. So we have done that, and then we've we've we've actually, you know, tested in hospitals, impacted patients over over the course of COVID and post COVID.
Gautham Pasupuleti:And then I was I was I was also interested in, you know, not just knowledge for myself, but also, you know, spreading the knowledge about how we can use design thinking, entrepreneurship skills, and innovation skills to help a lot of people, like, who are in, you know, in engineering or in design medicine, who wanted to innovate, who wanted to identify problems, who wanted to solve problems because, let's say, they have their own family member or affected by specific disease, specific medical condition, we all have lost We all have some kind of a personal situation which motivates us to solve something which is meaningful and to, you know, be able to be able to impact. So I think it's really important that, you know, if there is a team that is, you know, if you're working in a team, you have the right people with the right mindset and, you know, you need to have the people with diverse background. Like, let's say somebody brings in certain capabilities and you need to have, you know, different capabilities to add to the value for the project. Especially in a medical devices, you need people from different backgrounds like design and, you know, programming and design design thinking.
Gautham Pasupuleti:And, of course, you need to have, like, if you are working on medical devices, electronics, and, you know, which are work of course, you need to have the kind of skills that it's from. Design, you know, the software skills to the hardware skills and specific soft skills. And also, you need to have the right kind of mindset. You need to also have the right people around you with skill sets that is really complex. Yeah.
Heath Fletcher:So and also, I mean, this isn't the area that you're working in is not for the faint of heart either. Like, you you need a lot of you gotta have a lot of persistence and a lot of drive for to do what this I mean, for one project, let alone several projects like you and your brother tackled. And then, of course, you also have had there's always setbacks, of course. You had not only professional setbacks like everyone does. You also have a very intense personal setback too with losing your brother.
Heath Fletcher:How did you how did you move ahead? I mean, obviously, we you were gonna you're taking the torch and and carrying it for both of you, but that must have been a lot for you to take on.
Gautham Pasupuleti:Yeah. I think my brother, he taught me like the specific, you know, kind of values and principles and what what he's working day in day out. And I've seen him, like, he he's he's like my inspiration, one of main inspirations for me to be in this field. And he kind of like, you know, gave me different, you know, opportunities for me to pursue, like, you know, let's say, go and talk to these people, you know, go and, you know, get get these skills, you know, don't you get familiarized with these skills, go and figure this out. So that gave me, like, direction as a mentor, you know, as a not not just spoon feeding, not spoon feeding, but to actually inspire, to actually give certain directions, push push to the limit, and be able to, you know, master skill or, you know, be an expert in a specific topic.
Gautham Pasupuleti:And also have the passion and drive that that you really need to put all this together. And I've see, having seen my brother over the years, that kind of helped me to follow his footsteps, you know, kind of, you know, look I would also think myself, is this something my brother would do? Is this something I'm doing this right?
Heath Fletcher:Right.
Gautham Pasupuleti:For a lot of I have for the lot of times, like, after my brother's passing over the coming weeks and even months, I had this same question back and forth. Am I doing it right? Am I because a lot of decision making, you have to make as a leader as a for the company and the future direction. And people
Heath Fletcher:Yeah. You're it's kind of
Gautham Pasupuleti:a lonely job. Bring in into your team is gonna be really really important. So you need to really make a very crucial decisions. And for me, I I I have always tried to, you know, look back. Is this something my brother would do?
Gautham Pasupuleti:Is this something from principle stand, from a value point, from a capability point? But over the years, what I've understood is that, like, there's always something what you can do and there's always something that what others would do, but you you always need to have a set of expectations, but you need to also you can't you can you have your own originality. You need to do it by yourself. We need to, you know, no matter how how much we're siblings, there are differences in which the way we operate the way we do things. So you need to know what are your core strengths, what are your core, you know, focusing on your core strengths, focusing on honing those and then bringing in people and then, you know, delegating some of these tasks, of these aspects.
Gautham Pasupuleti:So it really adds value. So that's what I have learned over the years, like how do you delegate some of these things. But you really you really also need to focus on what are you really really good at and focus on the what are the most important things for the company as well as so that was that was a learning curve that I well, I actually understood that because every time I had this question back and forth, this am I doing it right? Am I is this something I want my brother would do? Is this the right thing?
Gautham Pasupuleti:But then, yeah, no matter you you you have you had to make a judgment. You had to you had to you had to make your own judgment. And you cannot do everything what others would do. You have to do the way you do because that's what the best and the good good intent and, of course, the best interest for the company and for the project. If the objective wise, what is really required for patients?
Gautham Pasupuleti:What is really required healthcare industry and for yeah.
Heath Fletcher:Do you find that you're asking that less now and you're feeling more confident in your in your choices and your decisions now?
Gautham Pasupuleti:This was only like in the initial years and then now I have my own, you know, view of things because I
Heath Fletcher:You know where you're going?
Gautham Pasupuleti:Experience and I have the, you know, I can I can I have the intuition and or you know, offer Right? Over the years. You just saw something you understand if you even if you tell it, you have to do it by yourself to understand it.
Heath Fletcher:Is that something that has that experience allowed you to develop a type of a skill or to your leadership or certain qualities to your leadership have have been, you know, because of that experience?
Gautham Pasupuleti:So, yeah, I've been involved with various leadership positions, like, from involving myself in various academic positions, being a mentor at Mount Sinai, Empire State Development, you know, you know, grant programs to, you know, UCSF, you know, giving talks and seminars in UCSF, UC Berkeley to giving talks in various institutions and universities and hospitals across. So try to put myself in a position where I'm able to share my learning over the years where I've what I have, you know, acquired and had the chance. There are ways you can think faster and you can look at things and say, okay, this is not right, and you can say this is this is right because you have the kind of intuition over the years, the kind of knowledge that can give you the, you know, firsthand, you know, in hindsight, to give you a kind of indicator. But that's why for me, I like to get involved in various, you know, not just as an entrepreneur, but also as an entrepreneur, being myself to help others in the academia and for students and for I think from hospitals to to all the retail industry to peer to peer knowledge as well as first, if going to universities, giving the next guest lectures or giving talks, seminars or connecting workshops, you know, doing something hands on with them to help them get what they to help them mind for what they wanna do.
Gautham Pasupuleti:Also, it's a strategic for us. We also get to meet our amazing students and be able to hire some interns or even to help help them with some projects.
Heath Fletcher:New talent's important for you. Yeah.
Gautham Pasupuleti:Industry collaboration. So it's a Mhmm. Both ways. So it's a win win. So I see that not just US, but globally as well, India and other places as well.
Heath Fletcher:Now, did I see that right? You were on the cover of Forbes 500 India?
Gautham Pasupuleti:Yeah. So that was
Heath Fletcher:That's pretty cool.
Gautham Pasupuleti:Yeah. That was I was in the Forbes cover for I think if I'm not wrong, four or five times. Yeah.
Heath Fletcher:Cool picture too. Looks good.
Gautham Pasupuleti:Thanks. Yeah.
Heath Fletcher:Yeah. So that was that you've been you've been on that cover five times.
Gautham Pasupuleti:Yeah. That was that was one of the the one you mentioned is one of the covers. There were many covers troops. Yeah. One was one was around around that.
Gautham Pasupuleti:Yeah.
Heath Fletcher:When was that
Gautham Pasupuleti:2020 and 2020. Yeah.
Heath Fletcher:Wow. Very cool. Yeah. I just came across that when I was when we were having our break.
Gautham Pasupuleti:You sure?
Heath Fletcher:I just found that photo. That was great. So what's what's on the horizon for the company? What do you see what's what's next for you? What do you what's what's going what's what's what's coming up?
Gautham Pasupuleti:Yeah. So I'll I'll just put it in layman's word. We are on a quest to cure cancer, you know, build AI models and predictive analytic solutions and building our own machine learning algorithms, deep learning algorithms, building our own AI models which can help with, you know, from early detection for all the cancer types, human cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, liver cancer, colorectal cancer, all cancer types to, you know, providing personalized treatment, which means that, let's say, a patient were coming up with some kind of disease, like, let's say, blood cancer, you know, or lung cancer, and they give chemotherapy and radiotherapy depending on the stage of the cancer type, stage of
Heath Fletcher:Right.
Gautham Pasupuleti:Concept they give different combination of treatment. But what happens is with precision medicine, with personalized treatment, you're able to reduce the adverse effects, you're able to reduce the negative effects because of the radio radiotherapy or chemotherapy or the adverse effects. You know, you're you're giving the medicine which is supposed to, you know, treat the, you know, specific cancer cells, tumor cells, but it is also, you know, going in, you know, affecting the healthy cells, which deteriorates the health and causes adverse effects. Right? This happens from breast cancer, for various cancer types.
Gautham Pasupuleti:But what happens with precision medicine is you're able to reduce these adverse effects, you're able to make it tailored, made targeted therapy by doing various analysis, doing data integration, combining different, know, omic data, patient data, clinical data, symptoms, and various data aspects, and then looking for patterns, looking for the signs which can essentially look for, okay, there are a hundred thousand people who have this specific genetic mutation and these are the clinical trials that are being done and this is the kind of medicines that are tried and tested and these are the effects and these are not. So now you need to build a model which can, you know, understand these, what are the work we saw, what have not worked before, and then design Right. A solution which is targeted, and then coming up with the treatment strategies, clinical addition support. That's what we're trying to do. That's again which we're trying to save patients lives which can help improve clinical lives of patients.
Gautham Pasupuleti:Yeah.
Heath Fletcher:Wow amazing. Wow. So that's what your focus is next and you are also is it correct when I say that you're bringing the manufacturing of the respiratory systems to the
Gautham Pasupuleti:Yeah. It's already in manufacturing. We've already collaborated with we have licensed our technology. It's a company we are working in India, does the manufacturing for us. It's for respiratory.
Heath Fletcher:Right. And so now those those devices are now available in the indoor
Gautham Pasupuleti:Those are available and our AI models are right now being available as well. Right.
Heath Fletcher:Right. Well, that's great. So listen. This has been really fascinating to hear you talk about your journey and and your experience. You've done a lot.
Heath Fletcher:You've come to accomplish a lot in your short career. I'm sure you got a lot more to go. But what some last bits of advice for people who are, you know, maybe it's somebody who's thinking about doing a start up or maybe just coming out of school. I know you talked about, you know, finding a passion, getting involved in things. Is there anything, you know, sort of personally around, you know, getting through tough times that you tap into that help you kind of, you know, jump those hurdles and and move past to your goals?
Gautham Pasupuleti:Is it Yeah. So so one of the things that I would say for people who are kind of lost or aspiring to do something, you know, something in the space of entrepreneurship, trying to solve problems. Just look for people who you look up to, you know, like in in the same field. Let's say you are in the field of you're in the financial, you know, financial sector trying to solve, you know, its underserved population, and you're trying to solve something. So look for look for people who are ahead of you in terms of in the in terms of the entrepreneurship stage wise, you know.
Gautham Pasupuleti:They might have raised some funding. They might have, you know, served 100,000 people through their solutions. They they might have, you know, been been, like, known across across a specific sector, specific geography. So go to these conferences, go to these specific events and that are specifically aligned with your interests, and talk to those people who are, you know, how how their journey is. Trying to understand what are the ways, how they are taught trust, how what kind of yeah.
Gautham Pasupuleti:What kind of hardships that they have faced, what kind of, know, what kind of a what kind of a thinking process, what kind of thought process their pattern of, you know, actions. Also, you can you don't have to imitate or anything like that, but you get an idea of what it takes to, you know, do something really impactful, really something that can help patients' lives or help people before.
Heath Fletcher:Yeah. Yeah. That's great advice because I mean that sometimes it's just needing you need to hear from people who are actually doing those things, participating in those environments, and and hearing how they've how they've gotten through their to and reach their goals.
Gautham Pasupuleti:Yeah. I've been So there's a other side so I can yeah.
Heath Fletcher:Yeah. Yeah. So you've got a lot of websites. Tell, you know, people are looking for more information about biodesign innovation labs or I wanna know more about the devices and the other products, what are the websites that people can go to to find you?
Gautham Pasupuleti:Yeah. We have so we have, like, two products, Respirate and Respap, which which is under our Biodesign Innovation Labs company biodesigninnovationlabs.com and then we have our AI enabled precision medicine which is Build AI which is under biodesigninnovationlabs.org which is the other website we have. And yeah, that's the website.
Heath Fletcher:Excellent. And if people wanna find you, you're they can find you on LinkedIn.
Gautham Pasupuleti:Yeah. Feel free to or you can just look at my name, Gautam. You can find me on LinkedIn and I'm just I'm more active on LinkedIn. So that's that's way.
Heath Fletcher:Well, Gautham, thank you so much for joining me today. Really enjoyed meeting you, enjoyed hearing your story, and I look forward to seeing what you do next.
Gautham Pasupuleti:Thanks. Thanks. Yeah. Good day.
Heath Fletcher:Okay. Wow. Super inspiring story. So, yeah, for any entrepreneurs out there who are experiencing resistance or challenges, man, that's that's an inspiring story. To hear Gautam where he has come from, not knowing really where he was gonna go other than the fact that he really understood that he wanted to solve some problems and which set his course into the medical world developing devices and and now going into AI and precision medicine.
Heath Fletcher:But also having that personal tragedy in his life that was not only a personal setback, but a professional setback. And to be hit with both those things at the same time, he learned some valuable lessons that he took from his brother and which helped guide his decision making process and and build that confidence that he needed to stand in his own strength and really believes that resilience and persistence are key traits for his success in entrepreneurship. So take a minute at some point and go to bioinnovationlabs.org or bioinnovationlabs.com, and you can see what they've been working on. And, yeah, I thank you so much for listening today. Be healthy, and we will see you again soon.
Heath Fletcher:Thanks.