Kip Theno: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Road to Care podcast hosted by SamaCare, where we'll talk with key opinion leaders, physicians, administrators, manufacturers, venture capitalists, and legislators to get their insights on the state of healthcare today. And where we see it evolving SamaCare's prior authorization platform is free to clinics, ensuring patients get on the right therapy at the right time.
Together we can simply make things right.
Welcome back, everybody to the Road to Care podcast hosted by SamaCare. And today our very special guest is the great and powerful name that movie Jim Alecxih. Jim currently serves as CEO of DH Medical, an AI driven image and video enhancement signal processing technology for healthcare.
Jim has over 30 years of experience in excellence in medical technology. He served as President and CEO of ViveBio Scientific, a medical device company focused on blood transport and storage systems. Previously, he served as chief Commercial officer of ViewRay Inc, an early stage radiation oncology company [00:01:00] where he managed global sales, marketing and training.
He's perhaps best known for his role in leading Intuitive Surgical's commercial divisions across the us. South America, Australia, and New Zealand. Intuitive Surgical developed a Da Vinci system, a groundbreaking robotic surgical system for minimally invasive procedures now used by over 60,000 surgeons nationwide.
Hey Jim, it's great to have you on the show today, man. How are you? Great, Kip. Great to talk to you. You know, when you said, uh, I got 30 years in the industry, that kind of hurts my feelings. I don't know how, uh, how time flew by so quickly, but. It's been, uh, it's been quite the ride. Yeah. Well, hopefully you and I both have 30 more, right?
Jim Alecxih: Yeah,
Kip Theno: exactly. We're on the back nine, Jim, but that's okay. That's where you play your best golf, you know that.
Jim Alecxih: That's right. That's right.
Kip Theno: Well, Jim, listen, I, I'd love our listeners to, uh, hear about your journey into, into healthcare and leadership, and then we'll dive in.
Jim Alecxih: Well, great. Uh, tell me where you'd like to start.
Kip Theno: Yeah. Start from the beginning. How did you gravitate towards healthcare and commercialization? I. [00:02:00]
Jim Alecxih: I went to a school, uh, I'm the youngest of seven children, so my dad sAId, uh, I think you should go to college, but it's all new. And so I found a school in Texas that I could be, become a paramedic and work my way through college while I drove an ambulance.
I thought it would be a natural segue to being a physician and thought I wanted to be a surgeon. And after four years of being a paramedic, I decided I didn't want to, I didn't want to be a physician, and so I took a job as a sales rep for US Surgical and um, actually a company called Automated Instruments was the a distributor for US surgical, and this is early on days of laparoscopy and, uh, had a, had a great time, I mean, super intense environment. And then from there, you know, way leads to way I'd, uh, a, a great guy who I loved dearly named Tom Davison, invented a product called the Harmonic Scalpel. And I was privileged to be one of the early employees at [00:03:00] UltraCision.
We sold that to J&J and I worked for J&J for a year and was about ready to leave and they did a urology startup called Indigo. And I stayed with them. Then in 2000, I got a call from Intuitive Surgical and they were just going to market with the Da Vinci robot.
And, um, had an amazing 15 year run there. It's a incredible technology, wonderful company and left in early 2015 and have really spent the last 10 years doing startups and just finding new technologies that I could bring to the marketplace. And so, uh, found, uh, found DH Medical about a year ago and thought it was really interesting technology.
I've spent the last year trying to trying to launch these software packages into the medical space. So it's been a great run. And, you know, certainly anxious to talk to you about it and some of the things I've learned along the way.
Kip Theno: Yeah, for sure. And I, I definitely want to segue into that.
Um, just in the pre-show [00:04:00] you talking about the blunt AI, so we'll, we'll get there. That's a little teaser for the audience. But I mean, Jim, you, you've had the Midas touch. I mean, US surgical and their heyday Intuitive, you know, we see the successes, but we often don't see the, often don't see the challenges.
And here interesting story, Jim, I. I've known you for a long time, but I knew you before we actually met a lot of folks. Did. If you or anybody who was anybody in, say, medical devices, you wanted to work for Intuitive and Jim Alexi, and that's going to be the thing probably people gravitate to you most and, and Intuitive Surgical has been such an important technology for decades.
The Robotics Revolution we used to call it. In your experience in Genesis as a commercial leader for that org, but talk about that you were building a sustainable new market, never been done before. So there was no roadmap, right? There was no ecosystem. Really what everybody sees the successes of surgical, but talk about the pathway, not only of the success, but what challenges did you guys have to overcome?
Jim Alecxih: Tremendous amount of challenges. And you know, I, I've, I've spent a great deal of time looking [00:05:00] back. Um, you know, I didn't for a long time, uh, you know, reminisce or, or, you know, be, uh, retrospective about my time with Intuitive. Um, I think it's an amazing company, um, you know, groundbreaking technology and, and amazing people that are there today.
And, and, uh, when, when I was there, um. But you know, the interesting thing about Intuitive today is it's so, uh, successful. Um, that people forget that there was a time when the success was in doubt, and that that's with every company. And you look at these big, uh, you know, successful companies in, in the, in the device industry and, and in other industries, you forget that it was a startup at some time.
And, and so I've spent some time and I'm actually in the process of writing a book about it, about what are the elements that made Intuitive successful? And, um, you know, I think it really starts with the people, um, you know. Uh, and, and it really starts with the engineering talent. And if you look at how lucky that company [00:06:00] is, to have only two CEOs in its, um, in its 30 year history is, is just amazing.
And, um, you know, Gary Goodheart, in my opinion, is one of the premier leaders in any industry, and he was also the driving engineering force early on when I first joined, uh, Gary was, um. Just an engineer. Um, and, and really drove the development of that system. And so if you look at the engineering talent and then the vision of the leadership, um, you know, I I I'll give you one, uh, one story about Intuitive and, and it's something I've, I've really thought about.
Um, you know, the, it's a new technology. We don't know exactly where the beachhead, uh, procedure is. Uh, you know, it's a paradigm shifting. You're asking surgeons to step out of the sterile field. Um, the, it was, you know, in some, in some ways certainly compared to today, it was rudimentary technology, but it was, I think anybody who [00:07:00] saw it thought it could be significant.
And so, uh, the leadership picked, um, cardiac surgery as the beachhead. And early on in the first, you know, 18 months, found out that that was not going to be the, the, um, the place where Intuitive was going to be successful. And trust me, we tried hard. Um, I, uh, I, I sold systems, uh, several systems into cardiac for cardiac surgery, and it's just very difficult to get traction.
Uh, and we pivoted to prostate surgery, which is a, you know, a longer story. But I think the thing that, that really is remarkable in hindsight is oftentimes when you make decisions early on in a company, your, your ego's involved in it as a leader. And you, you've, you've done all this research, you've had all this data, you've made a decision on, this is the way I, the, the direction I'm gonna take the company.
And then to have it fAIl and have the courage and the [00:08:00] insight and the humility to pivot and be successful is, is quite remarkable. And I, I give, uh, uh, I give great accolades to the early leadership of Intuitive for, for having that, uh, emotional maturity and professionalism to say we tried it and we're gonna, we're gonna, uh, pivot to urology.
And then to be highly successful I think is, uh. Really something that, uh, one of the things that I've, that I'm writing about, that I think made into early Intuitive, uh, very unique.
Kip Theno: Wow. And yeah. Jim, you said a pivot is so hard for companies to do, right. Especially early stage. 'cause you're, you're, you, you've got a big bet on the table.
Yeah. You've gotta take it and place another big bet on the table. But you mentioned, I remember those days, uh, when I was in cardiology and they. Cardiologists, they love that tactile, you know, feel of the wire. They weren't gonna give that up. Right. And then you guys just took an entire model and moved it over here and made it, you know, we say [00:09:00] paradigm shifts, it's kind of overused, but a generational opportunity.
And I don't think a lot of folks know that the original model was scrubbed. You had to scrap it and do something else and, but, but I wanna jump back on something you said, Jim. So I haven't been asked yet to be a ghost writer in your book. What's gonna be the focus on the book?
Jim Alecxih: Well, you know, I spent a lot of time.
Uh, you know, thinking about e Exactly. Um, you know how I wanted to write the story and, and you know, I, I think what's taken me 10 years to overcome is it's not my story. And, I didn't want to put myself out as like, oh look, I was one of the commercial leads. It was. A combination of amazing people, great strategy, world class execution, a wonderful technology, the ability to innovate consistently, but the, the really, the f the framework and the foundation is, is great people.
And I was just one part of that. And I had the ability and the privilege to lead it, but , didn't wanna really [00:10:00] be the, the focus of the story. And so, took me a while to, a couple starts and stops.
I have a podcast and it's the same, same title as my book. It's called The Success Chain. And I'm a pilot and have been a pilot for a long, long time, and. There's a monthly magazine called the NTSB Reporter, and in it, they talk about every Airplane accident in the United States every month.
And their, their assumption is that an Airplane accident is a trailing factor of poor decisions, factors, omissions, all the things that led to that moment in time. And so I thought to myself the exact same thing is true of success. People see success and they say, oh, it's overnight success when people have been at it for 20 years and real true success, business success.
Personal success is a culmination of great decision making. [00:11:00] Factors timing. Sometimes factors are outside our control, sometimes they're within it, but it's a culmination of all those activities and decisions and factors. And so I named the book The Success Chain, and it's the same as my podcast. And so the book is going to be about all of the things that led to Intuitive becoming the Intuitive that you see today early on. And part of that's, uh, you know, mistakes, but most of it is hiring great people, making great decisions, having world class training and execution. And then my podcast is going to be about other people's stories, not only early Intuitive and some of the resilience and amazing things that people did, but from other walks of life, I've interviewed a Green Beret the other day, and, cancer doc, all kinds of things. And so we're just going to talk about how do you be successful and, and if you look at success as the goal, you forget about all the process that leads to that.
And, uh, so it should be some interesting [00:12:00] conversations. And I think the book will really talk about the, the history of Intuitive.
Kip Theno: That's so cool, Jim. I'll be first in line for the book and for the podcast. I mean, our tagline here, we started with this, is "Together we can make things right" and it's a wide swath of folks like you, CEOs, doctors, key opinion leaders, venture capitalists, legislators, to really put our heads together and figure out healthcare changes.
There's so much complexities and, and just before we transition to DH and AI, I want to get to that and what you're solving today. You know, in those early moments you talked about with Intuitive and then you had to pivot. I see kind of two, two lanes there where you had to, really find a way to shift clinical behavior and even purchasing behavior.
You had the physicians on one side, and then of course you had the committees on the other side and the hospital administrators and the purchasing people, and that wasn't, not chicken feed to buy a, to, to buy a da Vinci system back then. Did you lean into patient outcomes?
I mean, what was the, what was the way that you did that? To be able to get folks to really change even the way that they were trained in medicine? [00:13:00]
Jim Alecxih: Yeah, I think that's one of the remarkable things about the Intuitive story is that, there really were no patient results and there certainly was no clinical data.
Um, there was a, you know why the name is so genius. There was certainly an intuition. W it was Intuitive when you got onto the system of physician that this somehow made me better or was a facilitating device. But there was no return on investment. There was no clinical data. And so we, if you had tried to sell it into an or every aspect of a, of an operating room that or that they're really judged in a, in measurement of success.
So time of procedure instrument costs, manpower, capital budgets. We hurt all of those. And so how we did it early on was we sold it as a strategic initiative. And so if [00:14:00] you, if a hospital administrator. Wanted to build a women's health program, or a men's health program? Well, the, the Da Vinci was one of the foundational technologies that would help them build those programs.
And one of the huge advantages that in Intuitive had and, and still has. The, they don't have to use it as much, is that it's very patient facing. So we could put a patient on the robot with a demonstration and they could immediately move the instruments. They could see the 3D imagery, and they would get, this is something really special.
And so, believe it or not, I would say, I don't have the exact number, but a, a large percentage of our early sales were philanthropic, either individual donors or associations, companies that donated the money, to buy a robot because they understood that this was a, a strategic [00:15:00] decision to add new technology and that there was a perception that new technology translates into the best care.
And I think we use that to our advantage to really grow the market. Until we had more clinical data. And so that was one of the, the interesting things. You know, I do think in some way the hospital environment has reacted a little bit to Intuitive strategy because there were no value add committees when we were coming through.
There were people that tried to, to stop us, but it was more, more purchasing that was looking at a capital expenditure. And so I think that the hospital environment today would be much more difficult to start an Intuitive now than it was, you know, 25 years ago.
And so I think it was a point in time that our strategy worked and we certainly took advantage of it.
Kip Theno: Well, well, I mean, yeah. You weren't just walking in and dropping 'em off. What was the, uh, what was the sales cycle like? How long from first [00:16:00] meeting to first procedure?
Jim Alecxih: I think that's one of the things I'm most proud of, less than six months. And so we from first call to, to trAIning surgeons and we had, one of our core strategies was in pending events. So you have to create a sense of urgency in your customers. And so we would have all kinds of impending events with competitive hospitals, , with other surgeons.
We would schedule trainings and say, look, we're gonna have to cancel trainings if the surgeon doesn't have a Da Vinci system to come back and use. And so you have to create that sense of urgency in your customer base that, you know, basically incents them to work on our timeline versus their timeline because any rational business person will always delay capital expenditures, as long as possible.
And so we had to create that sense of, of urgency and, and I think we did a, a really [00:17:00] great job at it.
Kip Theno: No, you did a great job and in the, I mean, in the absence of, not all, of course, but evidence-based medicine, this wasn't a case by case, Hey, use this here because that's where the data shows you. What I was really impressed with what you did and being one of the architects or the architect, you took that network, you built a community.
You, you partnered, you had the patient, the awareness and the provider, and you created that network that was actually Intuitive's ecosystem in absence of ecosystems, right.
Jim Alecxih: Yeah, I, I mean, you know, if you talk about ecosystems, probably, you know, one of my regrets, about not being with Intuitive now is early on we knew the amount of data that the system could collect.
But it was early. And, um, and so, uh, you know, one of the things I think that Intuitive has been masterful at is starting to mine that data and to give surgeons all kinds of data back on their performance and the system performance and how they could do [00:18:00] better against a, against a standard.
There's just all kinds of data that you can mine, and I think they've done a wonderful job and them. And, and I, I don't have any specific knowledge, but I can look at it and say, you know, certainly AI is going to play a role in that. And so, you look at Intuitive and you think, you know, how could AI with all their data, um, how could you, um, you know, mine that, that database.
To improve patient care, to reduce complications, to reduce procedural time, uh, you know, to just make it an indispensable tool that is not just around specific procedures, but is a, you know, a, a ubiquitous, uh, you know, tool that everybody has to use. I think that's really the future, and I think, uh, I think the data will be one of the things that drives the implementation of, uh, of Da Vinci in the future.
Kip Theno: Well, you wonderful segue, Jim. 'cause here we go. I was on [00:19:00] Edia before the call and before the show here. And it's like a rap sheet looking at different AI solutions. It just go, it's as long as your arm, right? It's, and it's here to stay. And now you've moved over as CEO to DH Medical.
Why'd you do it? What are you guys trying to solve over there?
Jim Alecxih: You know, I had left my previous job , and thought that I would maybe just consult for a little bit. And I got a call from a friend of mine and said, you have to go look at this technology. I met a gentleman named Paul Reed Smith, who makes guitars for a living, PRS guitars.
If you haven't seen a PRS guitar, they're pieces of art. They're amazing. He's one of the smartest people that I've ever met in my life and is the chairman of the board of DH Medical. And he developed a multiple software packages and one of them is called the Precision Measuring Matrix, and it's a program that essentially processes, signals, electrical signals, which are, is also the same as [00:20:00] sound. Electrical signals can be transferred into sound and diagnoses them and dissects them in multiple ways. And so we took that into heart waves, ECGs and brainwaves. EEGs and so imagine a heart.
I'll just give you one example. Imagine how the complexity of a heart with valves, opening and closing, blood, entering and exiting chambers, compressing and opening. You have all all these dynamic, signals and sounds that are happening and it's suspended. And so imagine trying to take that those signals.
And put them in a two dimensional format, you'd be like, you really haven't dissected exactly what is happening with a heart. And so we measure a heartbeat in four dimensions simultaneously. We, we measure time, frequency, amplitude, and [00:21:00] harmonics in a totally different way. And we do it all simultaneously.
And so we can look at a heartbeat in four dimensions and we have a predictive analysis. We're certainly in the process the same with brains that we can look at a arrhythmias or potentially seizures and have some sort of predictive analysis based on the signals that are coming through our algorithm.
And so we're pretty excited about driving that forward. We've got some early partnerships in the industry that we're working on and, and feel like it's. It's really pretty amazing. And then, uh, our other technology is, is really an AI image software program. And we take images in near real time and we can totally clarify them, change the lighting on them, and we reduce the bit rate without compression by about 60%.
And so we can take a surgical video and make it, [00:22:00] uh, the, the clarity would be unlike anything that a surgeon had ever seen. We've talked to some folks that are in surgical video and we're gonna put some of our programs, in their systems and I think we've got a really bright future, so we're in the process of, like any small startup, we're getting our partners, we're raising funds, we're hiring people, and really excited about what this can do.
And the future of AI and medicine is pretty amazing.
Kip Theno: Well, you, you guys are writing, forgive the pun a wonderful song over there. I mean, you can envision a world where you have you. You, you're, you're doing your, your AI based computations and it's almost like having a million reads, that's amazing technology. And you, you've talked, there's so many definitions of AI these days, but you've said blunt AI and that's kind of the first time I'd heard somebody put it into perspective of healthcare.
What's the blunt AI that you guys have?
Jim Alecxih: Basically the definition of brute force mathematics is that you look at every possible combination and the algorithm [00:23:00] decides this is correct, this actually exists, or, and so when you process really complex signals.
The ability to look at something from a computer algorithm perspective and determine whether it's real or not, or artifact is brute force mathematics. But our conversation was around the. Really the risks of generative AI. I think AI is super interesting but like robotics I draw a correlation, you know, as Intuitive started to be successful.
And started to create a market for surgical robotics. If you look at the number of companies that just put robotics into their name to try to, as, as you know, we talked about an ecosystem, you know, like, let, let, let me try to capture some of the momentum of Intuitive because they're creating a robotics market and really the, the truth is if you look at the definition of robotics, Intuitive is not even a robotics company.
They're a [00:24:00] computer assisted device. But everybody tried to use robotics and I think the same's true of AI, but I have two observations about AI that I think are very interesting. First is there is a risk around generative AI, which means, lemme give you an example. If you image the liver of a patient every day for a hundred days in a row and you put it into a generative AI algorithm and said, show me an image from day 101, the algorithm would say for a hundred straight days, I did not see a lesion. It was not there. And so it would draw, it would generate an image on day 101 of no lesion. But you and I know. That in fact, there is a first day where imaging would, would capture a lesion. And so I think that's one of the risks of generative AI that's gonna have to be addressed [00:25:00] is exactly how do you, how do you handle creating images, medical images that are based on the learning mechanism of the classifier?
And I think that's, um that's gonna be a big scientific challenge and, uh, particularly in radiology. And so I think that's, that, that's gonna be gonna be a problem. And then I think, you know, if you look at, the good side of AI is just how we can mine the data and really come to faster conclusions and, and really, uh, you know, new solutions.
But, and this is really the, you know, one of the selling points of DH Medical is AI is still bound by the rules of the quality of the input data dictates the quality of the output. And so if you put faulty data in an AI algorithm, it might refine that data, but the output's going to be [00:26:00] just slightly less faulty.
And so really, DH Medical is about putting high quality input data into an algorithm. And so that's our signal processing, our video processing, and a number of other things that we're working on. And so I think that's gonna be very interesting to see what kind of quality advancements can we make to make AI better and make AI smarter.
And so that's gonna be, it's not a panacea, it won't solve every problem if we don't concentrate on the high quality input data.
Kip Theno: Yeah. When we've, we've talked AI on a couple of shows here, Jim, and it always comes up, right? There's the ethicist piece of it where there's the human content and intent versus the AI content and intent, and there's gotta be human interventions.
It sounds like you've solved for that. I mean, you've gotta checks and balances system over there. You've thought through that equation.
Jim Alecxih: We have. And, I think one of the [00:27:00] risks of a new market. And it was the same with robotics. And, and the same with AI. I, I draw many com, you know, competitors, um, is people see a new technology like AI.
And I'm sure you saw Trump's thing with Masayoshi Son and Larry Ellison and she Yeah.
Kip Theno: Stargate.
Jim Alecxih: Yeah. And it was pretty, pretty interesting. You get this sense that all the world's problems are gonna be solved, by AI, separate from any kind of human interaction. And so if you look at, uh, I mean one of the, the leading, segments of our industry, that I think that's a prevalent belief is radiology.
So I can take an image and I can put it through an algorithm. And I don't need a radiologist to read in. I just think that's so shortsighted. Uh, you know, we, we have a, a big initiative in radiology. We can use our software technology to make the image much clearer and to turn down the radiation output, but you're still going to need [00:28:00] radiologists.
And that the idea that. It's going to be completely automated and that years of experience can be somehow written into a code. And I don't mean to be a Luddite, I'm a, you know, I've certainly dedicated my career to new technology. But I think there's a cautionary tale about how these are implemented.
And, and I think that's gonna be one of the challenge for healthcare executives in the next, , you know, 10 or 15 years.
Kip Theno: I agree, Jim, I, the , the big data, computational power of solving equations that are difficult for us to solve in general. That's one side, but I'll give you an example. I, I'm a not just a huge fan of Intuitive because of you and back in the day, but personal experience with it.
I was an observer and a family member and an emergent procedure, and I felt good that we were using the Da Vinci system. I felt better. The physician was sitting right there. So that's, I think always gonna be the balance. Well, Jim. This has been a profound discussion. Look, we're, we're gonna [00:29:00] follow the book closely.
We're gonna follow the podcast closely and of course, DH Medical. So I got two last questions for you, Jim. Sure. Where can, where, where do you want people to reach out to you about your book, the podcast, or, the, the really cool stuff you're doing at DH?
Jim Alecxih: Yep. Well, of course I'm on LinkedIn. Um, but the, the, um, the podcast is called The Success Chain, and it's at thesuccesschain.com and our website's just up and coming, our email's ready. And so we'd love to hear, uh, you know, we're, we're looking for people with interesting stories, kinda the same as you, Kip just reaching out and it's been great to, to reconnect with you and I'm looking forward to, there's so many interesting people in our industry and I get so many phone calls from young people.
I have three daughters that are. Just graduated from college and a senior and a sophomore. And so lots of young people call me and want to, want to get into the medical device. Uh, and I'm like, look, this is a hyper competitive, high stakes [00:30:00] environment. And um, and you know, we, I, I think the device industry is.
Is, you know, renowned for hiring the very best of their very best. And I, I believe in my heart that, I, I helped put together one of the best sales forces in any industry with Intuitive. And, so I'm anxious to hear people's perspective of, uh, of the medical device industry and success and out even outside the device industry.
But. Um, so we'd love for people to, to, to reach out to me on LinkedIn or@thesuccesschAIn.com.
Kip Theno: Absolutely. We will help you promote it. We will be a fan of that channel as well. I know , you're a fan of ours. And Jim, last question I got a chance to see your guitar collection. I'm encouraged that you're a, a new guitar aficionado.
As you know, my son's got a PRS, I've got a old Guild Blues 90 that I dust off once in a while. So here's my Easter egg question. Now that you're, you, you've got the guitar bug. If you could play one guitar song live [00:31:00] to a thousand to a stadium of 70,000 people, what song would that be?
Jim Alecxih: Well, Dancing in a Burning Room because my wife would totally dig me.
Kip Theno: That's, that's why people get guitars, Jim.
Jim Alecxih: Exactly. You know, I can tell you a quick story. You know, obviously Paul is, uh, Paul Reid Smith. My chairman is a guitar manufacturer, and. And, um, he ridicules me a little bit for, for trying to learn guitar at my age. But, you know, I am, I'm a big believer that one of the keys to success in life is to always put yourself in high learning environments.
And one of the metrics for success that I use personally is how nervous am I, if I wake up every day and I'm totally certain that I'm a competent and able to execute on whatever it is. I'm trying, you know, you, you're not alive. Being afraid and being nervous and having to really apply yourself, physically and mentally and [00:32:00] emotionally to do something is, is great.
And I try to do that professionally. I try to, to be around people that are so much smarter and trust me, I've, I've got some engineers that I work with that make that a pretty easy task. But, I. I have for the last, I don't know, 20 years, always pick something every couple of years that I thought would be really hard.
So I learned how to, uh, how to, uh, captain a boat. I learned how to fly an airplane, learned how to cook and, and guitar is one of those, uh, one of those things. And. It is, uh, it, it's magical when you make a, uh, a noise that is pleasurable. But, up until that point, I, it's not so pleasurable and it's the learning, the learning process.
But I, I really like it and I'm just, uh, I mean, so blessed to start with such high quality guitars as PRS, it's a, i I don't underestimate the privilege that I have, so it's a, it's a great process. I'm certainly not ready to play in front of a group of people, let [00:33:00] alone stadium. But if I could,
john Mayer would be a good place to start.
Kip Theno: Yeah. There you go. Well, fear, fear can be fuel. Jim, we've talked about that before too. And, and, uh, look, we'll, there's one song I will tell you if you really want to be scared when you pick up the guitar. Yeah. Something you can do your whole life. Um, is, uh, Eric Johnson, Cliffs of Dover?
Yeah. The hardest song to play. I don't know that anybody can play it. I certainly can't, but, uh, look, if we don't go on tour together, at least when you do end up on the PGA tour, which I've been bugging you about for a while, Jim, I only charge you a hundred bucks for the loop and 15% of any earnings to be your caddy.
Jim Alecxih: Exactly. You would, uh. We, we would be an interesting combo, that's for sure.
Kip Theno: Guitar on my back plus your Titleist bag. Sure.
Jim Alecxih: Exactly. And a hockey stick.
Kip Theno: That's right. Well, Jim, thank you so much for joining the Road to Care podcast. We really appreciated your time, sir.
Jim Alecxih: Great talking to you again.
Thanks for connecting and I've certainly enjoyed it.
Kip Theno: Thanks, Jim. Talk soon.
Jim Alecxih: All right.
Kip Theno: Thank you for joining the Road to [00:34:00] Care podcast, hosted by SamaCare, the leader in prior authorization technology and services, where through a script to therapy operating system, we enable connectivity with clinics, payers, and manufacturers focused on optimizing patient care. Tune in next time as together we can make things right.
Enjoy the music written, produced, and recorded by Jamestown.
Podcast produced by JFACTOR, visit https://www.jfactor.com/
Together, we can make healthcare right. Here are some of the outstanding healthcare organizations and associations championing patient health mentioned in this episode:
Kip Theno: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Road to Care podcast hosted by SamaCare, where we'll talk with key opinion leaders, physicians, administrators, manufacturers, venture capitalists, and legislators to get their insights on the state of healthcare today. And where we see it evolving SamaCare's prior authorization platform is free to clinics, ensuring patients get on the right therapy at the right time.
Together we can simply make things right.
Welcome back, everybody to the Road to Care podcast hosted by SamaCare. And today our very special guest is the great and powerful name that movie Jim Alecxih. Jim currently serves as CEO of DH Medical, an AI driven image and video enhancement signal processing technology for healthcare.
Jim has over 30 years of experience in excellence in medical technology. He served as President and CEO of ViveBio Scientific, a medical device company focused on blood transport and storage systems. Previously, he served as chief Commercial officer of ViewRay Inc, an early stage radiation oncology company [00:01:00] where he managed global sales, marketing and training.
He's perhaps best known for his role in leading Intuitive Surgical's commercial divisions across the us. South America, Australia, and New Zealand. Intuitive Surgical developed a Da Vinci system, a groundbreaking robotic surgical system for minimally invasive procedures now used by over 60,000 surgeons nationwide.
Hey Jim, it's great to have you on the show today, man. How are you? Great, Kip. Great to talk to you. You know, when you said, uh, I got 30 years in the industry, that kind of hurts my feelings. I don't know how, uh, how time flew by so quickly, but. It's been, uh, it's been quite the ride. Yeah. Well, hopefully you and I both have 30 more, right?
Jim Alecxih: Yeah,
Kip Theno: exactly. We're on the back nine, Jim, but that's okay. That's where you play your best golf, you know that.
Jim Alecxih: That's right. That's right.
Kip Theno: Well, Jim, listen, I, I'd love our listeners to, uh, hear about your journey into, into healthcare and leadership, and then we'll dive in.
Jim Alecxih: Well, great. Uh, tell me where you'd like to start.
Kip Theno: Yeah. Start from the beginning. How did you gravitate towards healthcare and commercialization? I. [00:02:00]
Jim Alecxih: I went to a school, uh, I'm the youngest of seven children, so my dad sAId, uh, I think you should go to college, but it's all new. And so I found a school in Texas that I could be, become a paramedic and work my way through college while I drove an ambulance.
I thought it would be a natural segue to being a physician and thought I wanted to be a surgeon. And after four years of being a paramedic, I decided I didn't want to, I didn't want to be a physician, and so I took a job as a sales rep for US Surgical and um, actually a company called Automated Instruments was the a distributor for US surgical, and this is early on days of laparoscopy and, uh, had a, had a great time, I mean, super intense environment. And then from there, you know, way leads to way I'd, uh, a, a great guy who I loved dearly named Tom Davison, invented a product called the Harmonic Scalpel. And I was privileged to be one of the early employees at [00:03:00] UltraCision.
We sold that to J&J and I worked for J&J for a year and was about ready to leave and they did a urology startup called Indigo. And I stayed with them. Then in 2000, I got a call from Intuitive Surgical and they were just going to market with the Da Vinci robot.
And, um, had an amazing 15 year run there. It's a incredible technology, wonderful company and left in early 2015 and have really spent the last 10 years doing startups and just finding new technologies that I could bring to the marketplace. And so, uh, found, uh, found DH Medical about a year ago and thought it was really interesting technology.
I've spent the last year trying to trying to launch these software packages into the medical space. So it's been a great run. And, you know, certainly anxious to talk to you about it and some of the things I've learned along the way.
Kip Theno: Yeah, for sure. And I, I definitely want to segue into that.
Um, just in the pre-show [00:04:00] you talking about the blunt AI, so we'll, we'll get there. That's a little teaser for the audience. But I mean, Jim, you, you've had the Midas touch. I mean, US surgical and their heyday Intuitive, you know, we see the successes, but we often don't see the, often don't see the challenges.
And here interesting story, Jim, I. I've known you for a long time, but I knew you before we actually met a lot of folks. Did. If you or anybody who was anybody in, say, medical devices, you wanted to work for Intuitive and Jim Alexi, and that's going to be the thing probably people gravitate to you most and, and Intuitive Surgical has been such an important technology for decades.
The Robotics Revolution we used to call it. In your experience in Genesis as a commercial leader for that org, but talk about that you were building a sustainable new market, never been done before. So there was no roadmap, right? There was no ecosystem. Really what everybody sees the successes of surgical, but talk about the pathway, not only of the success, but what challenges did you guys have to overcome?
Jim Alecxih: Tremendous amount of challenges. And you know, I, I've, I've spent a great deal of time looking [00:05:00] back. Um, you know, I didn't for a long time, uh, you know, reminisce or, or, you know, be, uh, retrospective about my time with Intuitive. Um, I think it's an amazing company, um, you know, groundbreaking technology and, and amazing people that are there today.
And, and, uh, when, when I was there, um. But you know, the interesting thing about Intuitive today is it's so, uh, successful. Um, that people forget that there was a time when the success was in doubt, and that that's with every company. And you look at these big, uh, you know, successful companies in, in the, in the device industry and, and in other industries, you forget that it was a startup at some time.
And, and so I've spent some time and I'm actually in the process of writing a book about it, about what are the elements that made Intuitive successful? And, um, you know, I think it really starts with the people, um, you know. Uh, and, and it really starts with the engineering talent. And if you look at how lucky that company [00:06:00] is, to have only two CEOs in its, um, in its 30 year history is, is just amazing.
And, um, you know, Gary Goodheart, in my opinion, is one of the premier leaders in any industry, and he was also the driving engineering force early on when I first joined, uh, Gary was, um. Just an engineer. Um, and, and really drove the development of that system. And so if you look at the engineering talent and then the vision of the leadership, um, you know, I I I'll give you one, uh, one story about Intuitive and, and it's something I've, I've really thought about.
Um, you know, the, it's a new technology. We don't know exactly where the beachhead, uh, procedure is. Uh, you know, it's a paradigm shifting. You're asking surgeons to step out of the sterile field. Um, the, it was, you know, in some, in some ways certainly compared to today, it was rudimentary technology, but it was, I think anybody who [00:07:00] saw it thought it could be significant.
And so, uh, the leadership picked, um, cardiac surgery as the beachhead. And early on in the first, you know, 18 months, found out that that was not going to be the, the, um, the place where Intuitive was going to be successful. And trust me, we tried hard. Um, I, uh, I, I sold systems, uh, several systems into cardiac for cardiac surgery, and it's just very difficult to get traction.
Uh, and we pivoted to prostate surgery, which is a, you know, a longer story. But I think the thing that, that really is remarkable in hindsight is oftentimes when you make decisions early on in a company, your, your ego's involved in it as a leader. And you, you've, you've done all this research, you've had all this data, you've made a decision on, this is the way I, the, the direction I'm gonna take the company.
And then to have it fAIl and have the courage and the [00:08:00] insight and the humility to pivot and be successful is, is quite remarkable. And I, I give, uh, uh, I give great accolades to the early leadership of Intuitive for, for having that, uh, emotional maturity and professionalism to say we tried it and we're gonna, we're gonna, uh, pivot to urology.
And then to be highly successful I think is, uh. Really something that, uh, one of the things that I've, that I'm writing about, that I think made into early Intuitive, uh, very unique.
Kip Theno: Wow. And yeah. Jim, you said a pivot is so hard for companies to do, right. Especially early stage. 'cause you're, you're, you, you've got a big bet on the table.
Yeah. You've gotta take it and place another big bet on the table. But you mentioned, I remember those days, uh, when I was in cardiology and they. Cardiologists, they love that tactile, you know, feel of the wire. They weren't gonna give that up. Right. And then you guys just took an entire model and moved it over here and made it, you know, we say [00:09:00] paradigm shifts, it's kind of overused, but a generational opportunity.
And I don't think a lot of folks know that the original model was scrubbed. You had to scrap it and do something else and, but, but I wanna jump back on something you said, Jim. So I haven't been asked yet to be a ghost writer in your book. What's gonna be the focus on the book?
Jim Alecxih: Well, you know, I spent a lot of time.
Uh, you know, thinking about e Exactly. Um, you know how I wanted to write the story and, and you know, I, I think what's taken me 10 years to overcome is it's not my story. And, I didn't want to put myself out as like, oh look, I was one of the commercial leads. It was. A combination of amazing people, great strategy, world class execution, a wonderful technology, the ability to innovate consistently, but the, the really, the f the framework and the foundation is, is great people.
And I was just one part of that. And I had the ability and the privilege to lead it, but , didn't wanna really [00:10:00] be the, the focus of the story. And so, took me a while to, a couple starts and stops.
I have a podcast and it's the same, same title as my book. It's called The Success Chain. And I'm a pilot and have been a pilot for a long, long time, and. There's a monthly magazine called the NTSB Reporter, and in it, they talk about every Airplane accident in the United States every month.
And their, their assumption is that an Airplane accident is a trailing factor of poor decisions, factors, omissions, all the things that led to that moment in time. And so I thought to myself the exact same thing is true of success. People see success and they say, oh, it's overnight success when people have been at it for 20 years and real true success, business success.
Personal success is a culmination of great decision making. [00:11:00] Factors timing. Sometimes factors are outside our control, sometimes they're within it, but it's a culmination of all those activities and decisions and factors. And so I named the book The Success Chain, and it's the same as my podcast. And so the book is going to be about all of the things that led to Intuitive becoming the Intuitive that you see today early on. And part of that's, uh, you know, mistakes, but most of it is hiring great people, making great decisions, having world class training and execution. And then my podcast is going to be about other people's stories, not only early Intuitive and some of the resilience and amazing things that people did, but from other walks of life, I've interviewed a Green Beret the other day, and, cancer doc, all kinds of things. And so we're just going to talk about how do you be successful and, and if you look at success as the goal, you forget about all the process that leads to that.
And, uh, so it should be some interesting [00:12:00] conversations. And I think the book will really talk about the, the history of Intuitive.
Kip Theno: That's so cool, Jim. I'll be first in line for the book and for the podcast. I mean, our tagline here, we started with this, is "Together we can make things right" and it's a wide swath of folks like you, CEOs, doctors, key opinion leaders, venture capitalists, legislators, to really put our heads together and figure out healthcare changes.
There's so much complexities and, and just before we transition to DH and AI, I want to get to that and what you're solving today. You know, in those early moments you talked about with Intuitive and then you had to pivot. I see kind of two, two lanes there where you had to, really find a way to shift clinical behavior and even purchasing behavior.
You had the physicians on one side, and then of course you had the committees on the other side and the hospital administrators and the purchasing people, and that wasn't, not chicken feed to buy a, to, to buy a da Vinci system back then. Did you lean into patient outcomes?
I mean, what was the, what was the way that you did that? To be able to get folks to really change even the way that they were trained in medicine? [00:13:00]
Jim Alecxih: Yeah, I think that's one of the remarkable things about the Intuitive story is that, there really were no patient results and there certainly was no clinical data.
Um, there was a, you know why the name is so genius. There was certainly an intuition. W it was Intuitive when you got onto the system of physician that this somehow made me better or was a facilitating device. But there was no return on investment. There was no clinical data. And so we, if you had tried to sell it into an or every aspect of a, of an operating room that or that they're really judged in a, in measurement of success.
So time of procedure instrument costs, manpower, capital budgets. We hurt all of those. And so how we did it early on was we sold it as a strategic initiative. And so if [00:14:00] you, if a hospital administrator. Wanted to build a women's health program, or a men's health program? Well, the, the Da Vinci was one of the foundational technologies that would help them build those programs.
And one of the huge advantages that in Intuitive had and, and still has. The, they don't have to use it as much, is that it's very patient facing. So we could put a patient on the robot with a demonstration and they could immediately move the instruments. They could see the 3D imagery, and they would get, this is something really special.
And so, believe it or not, I would say, I don't have the exact number, but a, a large percentage of our early sales were philanthropic, either individual donors or associations, companies that donated the money, to buy a robot because they understood that this was a, a strategic [00:15:00] decision to add new technology and that there was a perception that new technology translates into the best care.
And I think we use that to our advantage to really grow the market. Until we had more clinical data. And so that was one of the, the interesting things. You know, I do think in some way the hospital environment has reacted a little bit to Intuitive strategy because there were no value add committees when we were coming through.
There were people that tried to, to stop us, but it was more, more purchasing that was looking at a capital expenditure. And so I think that the hospital environment today would be much more difficult to start an Intuitive now than it was, you know, 25 years ago.
And so I think it was a point in time that our strategy worked and we certainly took advantage of it.
Kip Theno: Well, well, I mean, yeah. You weren't just walking in and dropping 'em off. What was the, uh, what was the sales cycle like? How long from first [00:16:00] meeting to first procedure?
Jim Alecxih: I think that's one of the things I'm most proud of, less than six months. And so we from first call to, to trAIning surgeons and we had, one of our core strategies was in pending events. So you have to create a sense of urgency in your customers. And so we would have all kinds of impending events with competitive hospitals, , with other surgeons.
We would schedule trainings and say, look, we're gonna have to cancel trainings if the surgeon doesn't have a Da Vinci system to come back and use. And so you have to create that sense of urgency in your customer base that, you know, basically incents them to work on our timeline versus their timeline because any rational business person will always delay capital expenditures, as long as possible.
And so we had to create that sense of, of urgency and, and I think we did a, a really [00:17:00] great job at it.
Kip Theno: No, you did a great job and in the, I mean, in the absence of, not all, of course, but evidence-based medicine, this wasn't a case by case, Hey, use this here because that's where the data shows you. What I was really impressed with what you did and being one of the architects or the architect, you took that network, you built a community.
You, you partnered, you had the patient, the awareness and the provider, and you created that network that was actually Intuitive's ecosystem in absence of ecosystems, right.
Jim Alecxih: Yeah, I, I mean, you know, if you talk about ecosystems, probably, you know, one of my regrets, about not being with Intuitive now is early on we knew the amount of data that the system could collect.
But it was early. And, um, and so, uh, you know, one of the things I think that Intuitive has been masterful at is starting to mine that data and to give surgeons all kinds of data back on their performance and the system performance and how they could do [00:18:00] better against a, against a standard.
There's just all kinds of data that you can mine, and I think they've done a wonderful job and them. And, and I, I don't have any specific knowledge, but I can look at it and say, you know, certainly AI is going to play a role in that. And so, you look at Intuitive and you think, you know, how could AI with all their data, um, how could you, um, you know, mine that, that database.
To improve patient care, to reduce complications, to reduce procedural time, uh, you know, to just make it an indispensable tool that is not just around specific procedures, but is a, you know, a, a ubiquitous, uh, you know, tool that everybody has to use. I think that's really the future, and I think, uh, I think the data will be one of the things that drives the implementation of, uh, of Da Vinci in the future.
Kip Theno: Well, you wonderful segue, Jim. 'cause here we go. I was on [00:19:00] Edia before the call and before the show here. And it's like a rap sheet looking at different AI solutions. It just go, it's as long as your arm, right? It's, and it's here to stay. And now you've moved over as CEO to DH Medical.
Why'd you do it? What are you guys trying to solve over there?
Jim Alecxih: You know, I had left my previous job , and thought that I would maybe just consult for a little bit. And I got a call from a friend of mine and said, you have to go look at this technology. I met a gentleman named Paul Reed Smith, who makes guitars for a living, PRS guitars.
If you haven't seen a PRS guitar, they're pieces of art. They're amazing. He's one of the smartest people that I've ever met in my life and is the chairman of the board of DH Medical. And he developed a multiple software packages and one of them is called the Precision Measuring Matrix, and it's a program that essentially processes, signals, electrical signals, which are, is also the same as [00:20:00] sound. Electrical signals can be transferred into sound and diagnoses them and dissects them in multiple ways. And so we took that into heart waves, ECGs and brainwaves. EEGs and so imagine a heart.
I'll just give you one example. Imagine how the complexity of a heart with valves, opening and closing, blood, entering and exiting chambers, compressing and opening. You have all all these dynamic, signals and sounds that are happening and it's suspended. And so imagine trying to take that those signals.
And put them in a two dimensional format, you'd be like, you really haven't dissected exactly what is happening with a heart. And so we measure a heartbeat in four dimensions simultaneously. We, we measure time, frequency, amplitude, and [00:21:00] harmonics in a totally different way. And we do it all simultaneously.
And so we can look at a heartbeat in four dimensions and we have a predictive analysis. We're certainly in the process the same with brains that we can look at a arrhythmias or potentially seizures and have some sort of predictive analysis based on the signals that are coming through our algorithm.
And so we're pretty excited about driving that forward. We've got some early partnerships in the industry that we're working on and, and feel like it's. It's really pretty amazing. And then, uh, our other technology is, is really an AI image software program. And we take images in near real time and we can totally clarify them, change the lighting on them, and we reduce the bit rate without compression by about 60%.
And so we can take a surgical video and make it, [00:22:00] uh, the, the clarity would be unlike anything that a surgeon had ever seen. We've talked to some folks that are in surgical video and we're gonna put some of our programs, in their systems and I think we've got a really bright future, so we're in the process of, like any small startup, we're getting our partners, we're raising funds, we're hiring people, and really excited about what this can do.
And the future of AI and medicine is pretty amazing.
Kip Theno: Well, you, you guys are writing, forgive the pun a wonderful song over there. I mean, you can envision a world where you have you. You, you're, you're doing your, your AI based computations and it's almost like having a million reads, that's amazing technology. And you, you've talked, there's so many definitions of AI these days, but you've said blunt AI and that's kind of the first time I'd heard somebody put it into perspective of healthcare.
What's the blunt AI that you guys have?
Jim Alecxih: Basically the definition of brute force mathematics is that you look at every possible combination and the algorithm [00:23:00] decides this is correct, this actually exists, or, and so when you process really complex signals.
The ability to look at something from a computer algorithm perspective and determine whether it's real or not, or artifact is brute force mathematics. But our conversation was around the. Really the risks of generative AI. I think AI is super interesting but like robotics I draw a correlation, you know, as Intuitive started to be successful.
And started to create a market for surgical robotics. If you look at the number of companies that just put robotics into their name to try to, as, as you know, we talked about an ecosystem, you know, like, let, let, let me try to capture some of the momentum of Intuitive because they're creating a robotics market and really the, the truth is if you look at the definition of robotics, Intuitive is not even a robotics company.
They're a [00:24:00] computer assisted device. But everybody tried to use robotics and I think the same's true of AI, but I have two observations about AI that I think are very interesting. First is there is a risk around generative AI, which means, lemme give you an example. If you image the liver of a patient every day for a hundred days in a row and you put it into a generative AI algorithm and said, show me an image from day 101, the algorithm would say for a hundred straight days, I did not see a lesion. It was not there. And so it would draw, it would generate an image on day 101 of no lesion. But you and I know. That in fact, there is a first day where imaging would, would capture a lesion. And so I think that's one of the risks of generative AI that's gonna have to be addressed [00:25:00] is exactly how do you, how do you handle creating images, medical images that are based on the learning mechanism of the classifier?
And I think that's, um that's gonna be a big scientific challenge and, uh, particularly in radiology. And so I think that's, that, that's gonna be gonna be a problem. And then I think, you know, if you look at, the good side of AI is just how we can mine the data and really come to faster conclusions and, and really, uh, you know, new solutions.
But, and this is really the, you know, one of the selling points of DH Medical is AI is still bound by the rules of the quality of the input data dictates the quality of the output. And so if you put faulty data in an AI algorithm, it might refine that data, but the output's going to be [00:26:00] just slightly less faulty.
And so really, DH Medical is about putting high quality input data into an algorithm. And so that's our signal processing, our video processing, and a number of other things that we're working on. And so I think that's gonna be very interesting to see what kind of quality advancements can we make to make AI better and make AI smarter.
And so that's gonna be, it's not a panacea, it won't solve every problem if we don't concentrate on the high quality input data.
Kip Theno: Yeah. When we've, we've talked AI on a couple of shows here, Jim, and it always comes up, right? There's the ethicist piece of it where there's the human content and intent versus the AI content and intent, and there's gotta be human interventions.
It sounds like you've solved for that. I mean, you've gotta checks and balances system over there. You've thought through that equation.
Jim Alecxih: We have. And, I think one of the [00:27:00] risks of a new market. And it was the same with robotics. And, and the same with AI. I, I draw many com, you know, competitors, um, is people see a new technology like AI.
And I'm sure you saw Trump's thing with Masayoshi Son and Larry Ellison and she Yeah.
Kip Theno: Stargate.
Jim Alecxih: Yeah. And it was pretty, pretty interesting. You get this sense that all the world's problems are gonna be solved, by AI, separate from any kind of human interaction. And so if you look at, uh, I mean one of the, the leading, segments of our industry, that I think that's a prevalent belief is radiology.
So I can take an image and I can put it through an algorithm. And I don't need a radiologist to read in. I just think that's so shortsighted. Uh, you know, we, we have a, a big initiative in radiology. We can use our software technology to make the image much clearer and to turn down the radiation output, but you're still going to need [00:28:00] radiologists.
And that the idea that. It's going to be completely automated and that years of experience can be somehow written into a code. And I don't mean to be a Luddite, I'm a, you know, I've certainly dedicated my career to new technology. But I think there's a cautionary tale about how these are implemented.
And, and I think that's gonna be one of the challenge for healthcare executives in the next, , you know, 10 or 15 years.
Kip Theno: I agree, Jim, I, the , the big data, computational power of solving equations that are difficult for us to solve in general. That's one side, but I'll give you an example. I, I'm a not just a huge fan of Intuitive because of you and back in the day, but personal experience with it.
I was an observer and a family member and an emergent procedure, and I felt good that we were using the Da Vinci system. I felt better. The physician was sitting right there. So that's, I think always gonna be the balance. Well, Jim. This has been a profound discussion. Look, we're, we're gonna [00:29:00] follow the book closely.
We're gonna follow the podcast closely and of course, DH Medical. So I got two last questions for you, Jim. Sure. Where can, where, where do you want people to reach out to you about your book, the podcast, or, the, the really cool stuff you're doing at DH?
Jim Alecxih: Yep. Well, of course I'm on LinkedIn. Um, but the, the, um, the podcast is called The Success Chain, and it's at thesuccesschain.com and our website's just up and coming, our email's ready. And so we'd love to hear, uh, you know, we're, we're looking for people with interesting stories, kinda the same as you, Kip just reaching out and it's been great to, to reconnect with you and I'm looking forward to, there's so many interesting people in our industry and I get so many phone calls from young people.
I have three daughters that are. Just graduated from college and a senior and a sophomore. And so lots of young people call me and want to, want to get into the medical device. Uh, and I'm like, look, this is a hyper competitive, high stakes [00:30:00] environment. And um, and you know, we, I, I think the device industry is.
Is, you know, renowned for hiring the very best of their very best. And I, I believe in my heart that, I, I helped put together one of the best sales forces in any industry with Intuitive. And, so I'm anxious to hear people's perspective of, uh, of the medical device industry and success and out even outside the device industry.
But. Um, so we'd love for people to, to, to reach out to me on LinkedIn or@thesuccesschAIn.com.
Kip Theno: Absolutely. We will help you promote it. We will be a fan of that channel as well. I know , you're a fan of ours. And Jim, last question I got a chance to see your guitar collection. I'm encouraged that you're a, a new guitar aficionado.
As you know, my son's got a PRS, I've got a old Guild Blues 90 that I dust off once in a while. So here's my Easter egg question. Now that you're, you, you've got the guitar bug. If you could play one guitar song live [00:31:00] to a thousand to a stadium of 70,000 people, what song would that be?
Jim Alecxih: Well, Dancing in a Burning Room because my wife would totally dig me.
Kip Theno: That's, that's why people get guitars, Jim.
Jim Alecxih: Exactly. You know, I can tell you a quick story. You know, obviously Paul is, uh, Paul Reid Smith. My chairman is a guitar manufacturer, and. And, um, he ridicules me a little bit for, for trying to learn guitar at my age. But, you know, I am, I'm a big believer that one of the keys to success in life is to always put yourself in high learning environments.
And one of the metrics for success that I use personally is how nervous am I, if I wake up every day and I'm totally certain that I'm a competent and able to execute on whatever it is. I'm trying, you know, you, you're not alive. Being afraid and being nervous and having to really apply yourself, physically and mentally and [00:32:00] emotionally to do something is, is great.
And I try to do that professionally. I try to, to be around people that are so much smarter and trust me, I've, I've got some engineers that I work with that make that a pretty easy task. But, I. I have for the last, I don't know, 20 years, always pick something every couple of years that I thought would be really hard.
So I learned how to, uh, how to, uh, captain a boat. I learned how to fly an airplane, learned how to cook and, and guitar is one of those, uh, one of those things. And. It is, uh, it, it's magical when you make a, uh, a noise that is pleasurable. But, up until that point, I, it's not so pleasurable and it's the learning, the learning process.
But I, I really like it and I'm just, uh, I mean, so blessed to start with such high quality guitars as PRS, it's a, i I don't underestimate the privilege that I have, so it's a, it's a great process. I'm certainly not ready to play in front of a group of people, let [00:33:00] alone stadium. But if I could,
john Mayer would be a good place to start.
Kip Theno: Yeah. There you go. Well, fear, fear can be fuel. Jim, we've talked about that before too. And, and, uh, look, we'll, there's one song I will tell you if you really want to be scared when you pick up the guitar. Yeah. Something you can do your whole life. Um, is, uh, Eric Johnson, Cliffs of Dover?
Yeah. The hardest song to play. I don't know that anybody can play it. I certainly can't, but, uh, look, if we don't go on tour together, at least when you do end up on the PGA tour, which I've been bugging you about for a while, Jim, I only charge you a hundred bucks for the loop and 15% of any earnings to be your caddy.
Jim Alecxih: Exactly. You would, uh. We, we would be an interesting combo, that's for sure.
Kip Theno: Guitar on my back plus your Titleist bag. Sure.
Jim Alecxih: Exactly. And a hockey stick.
Kip Theno: That's right. Well, Jim, thank you so much for joining the Road to Care podcast. We really appreciated your time, sir.
Jim Alecxih: Great talking to you again.
Thanks for connecting and I've certainly enjoyed it.
Kip Theno: Thanks, Jim. Talk soon.
Jim Alecxih: All right.
Kip Theno: Thank you for joining the Road to [00:34:00] Care podcast, hosted by SamaCare, the leader in prior authorization technology and services, where through a script to therapy operating system, we enable connectivity with clinics, payers, and manufacturers focused on optimizing patient care. Tune in next time as together we can make things right.
Enjoy the music written, produced, and recorded by Jamestown.
Podcast produced by JFACTOR, visit https://www.jfactor.com/
Together, we can make healthcare right. Here are some of the outstanding healthcare organizations and associations championing patient health mentioned in this episode:
Kip Theno: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Road to Care podcast hosted by SamaCare, where we'll talk with key opinion leaders, physicians, administrators, manufacturers, venture capitalists, and legislators to get their insights on the state of healthcare today. And where we see it evolving SamaCare's prior authorization platform is free to clinics, ensuring patients get on the right therapy at the right time.
Together we can simply make things right.
Welcome back, everybody to the Road to Care podcast hosted by SamaCare. And today our very special guest is the great and powerful name that movie Jim Alecxih. Jim currently serves as CEO of DH Medical, an AI driven image and video enhancement signal processing technology for healthcare.
Jim has over 30 years of experience in excellence in medical technology. He served as President and CEO of ViveBio Scientific, a medical device company focused on blood transport and storage systems. Previously, he served as chief Commercial officer of ViewRay Inc, an early stage radiation oncology company [00:01:00] where he managed global sales, marketing and training.
He's perhaps best known for his role in leading Intuitive Surgical's commercial divisions across the us. South America, Australia, and New Zealand. Intuitive Surgical developed a Da Vinci system, a groundbreaking robotic surgical system for minimally invasive procedures now used by over 60,000 surgeons nationwide.
Hey Jim, it's great to have you on the show today, man. How are you? Great, Kip. Great to talk to you. You know, when you said, uh, I got 30 years in the industry, that kind of hurts my feelings. I don't know how, uh, how time flew by so quickly, but. It's been, uh, it's been quite the ride. Yeah. Well, hopefully you and I both have 30 more, right?
Jim Alecxih: Yeah,
Kip Theno: exactly. We're on the back nine, Jim, but that's okay. That's where you play your best golf, you know that.
Jim Alecxih: That's right. That's right.
Kip Theno: Well, Jim, listen, I, I'd love our listeners to, uh, hear about your journey into, into healthcare and leadership, and then we'll dive in.
Jim Alecxih: Well, great. Uh, tell me where you'd like to start.
Kip Theno: Yeah. Start from the beginning. How did you gravitate towards healthcare and commercialization? I. [00:02:00]
Jim Alecxih: I went to a school, uh, I'm the youngest of seven children, so my dad sAId, uh, I think you should go to college, but it's all new. And so I found a school in Texas that I could be, become a paramedic and work my way through college while I drove an ambulance.
I thought it would be a natural segue to being a physician and thought I wanted to be a surgeon. And after four years of being a paramedic, I decided I didn't want to, I didn't want to be a physician, and so I took a job as a sales rep for US Surgical and um, actually a company called Automated Instruments was the a distributor for US surgical, and this is early on days of laparoscopy and, uh, had a, had a great time, I mean, super intense environment. And then from there, you know, way leads to way I'd, uh, a, a great guy who I loved dearly named Tom Davison, invented a product called the Harmonic Scalpel. And I was privileged to be one of the early employees at [00:03:00] UltraCision.
We sold that to J&J and I worked for J&J for a year and was about ready to leave and they did a urology startup called Indigo. And I stayed with them. Then in 2000, I got a call from Intuitive Surgical and they were just going to market with the Da Vinci robot.
And, um, had an amazing 15 year run there. It's a incredible technology, wonderful company and left in early 2015 and have really spent the last 10 years doing startups and just finding new technologies that I could bring to the marketplace. And so, uh, found, uh, found DH Medical about a year ago and thought it was really interesting technology.
I've spent the last year trying to trying to launch these software packages into the medical space. So it's been a great run. And, you know, certainly anxious to talk to you about it and some of the things I've learned along the way.
Kip Theno: Yeah, for sure. And I, I definitely want to segue into that.
Um, just in the pre-show [00:04:00] you talking about the blunt AI, so we'll, we'll get there. That's a little teaser for the audience. But I mean, Jim, you, you've had the Midas touch. I mean, US surgical and their heyday Intuitive, you know, we see the successes, but we often don't see the, often don't see the challenges.
And here interesting story, Jim, I. I've known you for a long time, but I knew you before we actually met a lot of folks. Did. If you or anybody who was anybody in, say, medical devices, you wanted to work for Intuitive and Jim Alexi, and that's going to be the thing probably people gravitate to you most and, and Intuitive Surgical has been such an important technology for decades.
The Robotics Revolution we used to call it. In your experience in Genesis as a commercial leader for that org, but talk about that you were building a sustainable new market, never been done before. So there was no roadmap, right? There was no ecosystem. Really what everybody sees the successes of surgical, but talk about the pathway, not only of the success, but what challenges did you guys have to overcome?
Jim Alecxih: Tremendous amount of challenges. And you know, I, I've, I've spent a great deal of time looking [00:05:00] back. Um, you know, I didn't for a long time, uh, you know, reminisce or, or, you know, be, uh, retrospective about my time with Intuitive. Um, I think it's an amazing company, um, you know, groundbreaking technology and, and amazing people that are there today.
And, and, uh, when, when I was there, um. But you know, the interesting thing about Intuitive today is it's so, uh, successful. Um, that people forget that there was a time when the success was in doubt, and that that's with every company. And you look at these big, uh, you know, successful companies in, in the, in the device industry and, and in other industries, you forget that it was a startup at some time.
And, and so I've spent some time and I'm actually in the process of writing a book about it, about what are the elements that made Intuitive successful? And, um, you know, I think it really starts with the people, um, you know. Uh, and, and it really starts with the engineering talent. And if you look at how lucky that company [00:06:00] is, to have only two CEOs in its, um, in its 30 year history is, is just amazing.
And, um, you know, Gary Goodheart, in my opinion, is one of the premier leaders in any industry, and he was also the driving engineering force early on when I first joined, uh, Gary was, um. Just an engineer. Um, and, and really drove the development of that system. And so if you look at the engineering talent and then the vision of the leadership, um, you know, I I I'll give you one, uh, one story about Intuitive and, and it's something I've, I've really thought about.
Um, you know, the, it's a new technology. We don't know exactly where the beachhead, uh, procedure is. Uh, you know, it's a paradigm shifting. You're asking surgeons to step out of the sterile field. Um, the, it was, you know, in some, in some ways certainly compared to today, it was rudimentary technology, but it was, I think anybody who [00:07:00] saw it thought it could be significant.
And so, uh, the leadership picked, um, cardiac surgery as the beachhead. And early on in the first, you know, 18 months, found out that that was not going to be the, the, um, the place where Intuitive was going to be successful. And trust me, we tried hard. Um, I, uh, I, I sold systems, uh, several systems into cardiac for cardiac surgery, and it's just very difficult to get traction.
Uh, and we pivoted to prostate surgery, which is a, you know, a longer story. But I think the thing that, that really is remarkable in hindsight is oftentimes when you make decisions early on in a company, your, your ego's involved in it as a leader. And you, you've, you've done all this research, you've had all this data, you've made a decision on, this is the way I, the, the direction I'm gonna take the company.
And then to have it fAIl and have the courage and the [00:08:00] insight and the humility to pivot and be successful is, is quite remarkable. And I, I give, uh, uh, I give great accolades to the early leadership of Intuitive for, for having that, uh, emotional maturity and professionalism to say we tried it and we're gonna, we're gonna, uh, pivot to urology.
And then to be highly successful I think is, uh. Really something that, uh, one of the things that I've, that I'm writing about, that I think made into early Intuitive, uh, very unique.
Kip Theno: Wow. And yeah. Jim, you said a pivot is so hard for companies to do, right. Especially early stage. 'cause you're, you're, you, you've got a big bet on the table.
Yeah. You've gotta take it and place another big bet on the table. But you mentioned, I remember those days, uh, when I was in cardiology and they. Cardiologists, they love that tactile, you know, feel of the wire. They weren't gonna give that up. Right. And then you guys just took an entire model and moved it over here and made it, you know, we say [00:09:00] paradigm shifts, it's kind of overused, but a generational opportunity.
And I don't think a lot of folks know that the original model was scrubbed. You had to scrap it and do something else and, but, but I wanna jump back on something you said, Jim. So I haven't been asked yet to be a ghost writer in your book. What's gonna be the focus on the book?
Jim Alecxih: Well, you know, I spent a lot of time.
Uh, you know, thinking about e Exactly. Um, you know how I wanted to write the story and, and you know, I, I think what's taken me 10 years to overcome is it's not my story. And, I didn't want to put myself out as like, oh look, I was one of the commercial leads. It was. A combination of amazing people, great strategy, world class execution, a wonderful technology, the ability to innovate consistently, but the, the really, the f the framework and the foundation is, is great people.
And I was just one part of that. And I had the ability and the privilege to lead it, but , didn't wanna really [00:10:00] be the, the focus of the story. And so, took me a while to, a couple starts and stops.
I have a podcast and it's the same, same title as my book. It's called The Success Chain. And I'm a pilot and have been a pilot for a long, long time, and. There's a monthly magazine called the NTSB Reporter, and in it, they talk about every Airplane accident in the United States every month.
And their, their assumption is that an Airplane accident is a trailing factor of poor decisions, factors, omissions, all the things that led to that moment in time. And so I thought to myself the exact same thing is true of success. People see success and they say, oh, it's overnight success when people have been at it for 20 years and real true success, business success.
Personal success is a culmination of great decision making. [00:11:00] Factors timing. Sometimes factors are outside our control, sometimes they're within it, but it's a culmination of all those activities and decisions and factors. And so I named the book The Success Chain, and it's the same as my podcast. And so the book is going to be about all of the things that led to Intuitive becoming the Intuitive that you see today early on. And part of that's, uh, you know, mistakes, but most of it is hiring great people, making great decisions, having world class training and execution. And then my podcast is going to be about other people's stories, not only early Intuitive and some of the resilience and amazing things that people did, but from other walks of life, I've interviewed a Green Beret the other day, and, cancer doc, all kinds of things. And so we're just going to talk about how do you be successful and, and if you look at success as the goal, you forget about all the process that leads to that.
And, uh, so it should be some interesting [00:12:00] conversations. And I think the book will really talk about the, the history of Intuitive.
Kip Theno: That's so cool, Jim. I'll be first in line for the book and for the podcast. I mean, our tagline here, we started with this, is "Together we can make things right" and it's a wide swath of folks like you, CEOs, doctors, key opinion leaders, venture capitalists, legislators, to really put our heads together and figure out healthcare changes.
There's so much complexities and, and just before we transition to DH and AI, I want to get to that and what you're solving today. You know, in those early moments you talked about with Intuitive and then you had to pivot. I see kind of two, two lanes there where you had to, really find a way to shift clinical behavior and even purchasing behavior.
You had the physicians on one side, and then of course you had the committees on the other side and the hospital administrators and the purchasing people, and that wasn't, not chicken feed to buy a, to, to buy a da Vinci system back then. Did you lean into patient outcomes?
I mean, what was the, what was the way that you did that? To be able to get folks to really change even the way that they were trained in medicine? [00:13:00]
Jim Alecxih: Yeah, I think that's one of the remarkable things about the Intuitive story is that, there really were no patient results and there certainly was no clinical data.
Um, there was a, you know why the name is so genius. There was certainly an intuition. W it was Intuitive when you got onto the system of physician that this somehow made me better or was a facilitating device. But there was no return on investment. There was no clinical data. And so we, if you had tried to sell it into an or every aspect of a, of an operating room that or that they're really judged in a, in measurement of success.
So time of procedure instrument costs, manpower, capital budgets. We hurt all of those. And so how we did it early on was we sold it as a strategic initiative. And so if [00:14:00] you, if a hospital administrator. Wanted to build a women's health program, or a men's health program? Well, the, the Da Vinci was one of the foundational technologies that would help them build those programs.
And one of the huge advantages that in Intuitive had and, and still has. The, they don't have to use it as much, is that it's very patient facing. So we could put a patient on the robot with a demonstration and they could immediately move the instruments. They could see the 3D imagery, and they would get, this is something really special.
And so, believe it or not, I would say, I don't have the exact number, but a, a large percentage of our early sales were philanthropic, either individual donors or associations, companies that donated the money, to buy a robot because they understood that this was a, a strategic [00:15:00] decision to add new technology and that there was a perception that new technology translates into the best care.
And I think we use that to our advantage to really grow the market. Until we had more clinical data. And so that was one of the, the interesting things. You know, I do think in some way the hospital environment has reacted a little bit to Intuitive strategy because there were no value add committees when we were coming through.
There were people that tried to, to stop us, but it was more, more purchasing that was looking at a capital expenditure. And so I think that the hospital environment today would be much more difficult to start an Intuitive now than it was, you know, 25 years ago.
And so I think it was a point in time that our strategy worked and we certainly took advantage of it.
Kip Theno: Well, well, I mean, yeah. You weren't just walking in and dropping 'em off. What was the, uh, what was the sales cycle like? How long from first [00:16:00] meeting to first procedure?
Jim Alecxih: I think that's one of the things I'm most proud of, less than six months. And so we from first call to, to trAIning surgeons and we had, one of our core strategies was in pending events. So you have to create a sense of urgency in your customers. And so we would have all kinds of impending events with competitive hospitals, , with other surgeons.
We would schedule trainings and say, look, we're gonna have to cancel trainings if the surgeon doesn't have a Da Vinci system to come back and use. And so you have to create that sense of urgency in your customer base that, you know, basically incents them to work on our timeline versus their timeline because any rational business person will always delay capital expenditures, as long as possible.
And so we had to create that sense of, of urgency and, and I think we did a, a really [00:17:00] great job at it.
Kip Theno: No, you did a great job and in the, I mean, in the absence of, not all, of course, but evidence-based medicine, this wasn't a case by case, Hey, use this here because that's where the data shows you. What I was really impressed with what you did and being one of the architects or the architect, you took that network, you built a community.
You, you partnered, you had the patient, the awareness and the provider, and you created that network that was actually Intuitive's ecosystem in absence of ecosystems, right.
Jim Alecxih: Yeah, I, I mean, you know, if you talk about ecosystems, probably, you know, one of my regrets, about not being with Intuitive now is early on we knew the amount of data that the system could collect.
But it was early. And, um, and so, uh, you know, one of the things I think that Intuitive has been masterful at is starting to mine that data and to give surgeons all kinds of data back on their performance and the system performance and how they could do [00:18:00] better against a, against a standard.
There's just all kinds of data that you can mine, and I think they've done a wonderful job and them. And, and I, I don't have any specific knowledge, but I can look at it and say, you know, certainly AI is going to play a role in that. And so, you look at Intuitive and you think, you know, how could AI with all their data, um, how could you, um, you know, mine that, that database.
To improve patient care, to reduce complications, to reduce procedural time, uh, you know, to just make it an indispensable tool that is not just around specific procedures, but is a, you know, a, a ubiquitous, uh, you know, tool that everybody has to use. I think that's really the future, and I think, uh, I think the data will be one of the things that drives the implementation of, uh, of Da Vinci in the future.
Kip Theno: Well, you wonderful segue, Jim. 'cause here we go. I was on [00:19:00] Edia before the call and before the show here. And it's like a rap sheet looking at different AI solutions. It just go, it's as long as your arm, right? It's, and it's here to stay. And now you've moved over as CEO to DH Medical.
Why'd you do it? What are you guys trying to solve over there?
Jim Alecxih: You know, I had left my previous job , and thought that I would maybe just consult for a little bit. And I got a call from a friend of mine and said, you have to go look at this technology. I met a gentleman named Paul Reed Smith, who makes guitars for a living, PRS guitars.
If you haven't seen a PRS guitar, they're pieces of art. They're amazing. He's one of the smartest people that I've ever met in my life and is the chairman of the board of DH Medical. And he developed a multiple software packages and one of them is called the Precision Measuring Matrix, and it's a program that essentially processes, signals, electrical signals, which are, is also the same as [00:20:00] sound. Electrical signals can be transferred into sound and diagnoses them and dissects them in multiple ways. And so we took that into heart waves, ECGs and brainwaves. EEGs and so imagine a heart.
I'll just give you one example. Imagine how the complexity of a heart with valves, opening and closing, blood, entering and exiting chambers, compressing and opening. You have all all these dynamic, signals and sounds that are happening and it's suspended. And so imagine trying to take that those signals.
And put them in a two dimensional format, you'd be like, you really haven't dissected exactly what is happening with a heart. And so we measure a heartbeat in four dimensions simultaneously. We, we measure time, frequency, amplitude, and [00:21:00] harmonics in a totally different way. And we do it all simultaneously.
And so we can look at a heartbeat in four dimensions and we have a predictive analysis. We're certainly in the process the same with brains that we can look at a arrhythmias or potentially seizures and have some sort of predictive analysis based on the signals that are coming through our algorithm.
And so we're pretty excited about driving that forward. We've got some early partnerships in the industry that we're working on and, and feel like it's. It's really pretty amazing. And then, uh, our other technology is, is really an AI image software program. And we take images in near real time and we can totally clarify them, change the lighting on them, and we reduce the bit rate without compression by about 60%.
And so we can take a surgical video and make it, [00:22:00] uh, the, the clarity would be unlike anything that a surgeon had ever seen. We've talked to some folks that are in surgical video and we're gonna put some of our programs, in their systems and I think we've got a really bright future, so we're in the process of, like any small startup, we're getting our partners, we're raising funds, we're hiring people, and really excited about what this can do.
And the future of AI and medicine is pretty amazing.
Kip Theno: Well, you, you guys are writing, forgive the pun a wonderful song over there. I mean, you can envision a world where you have you. You, you're, you're doing your, your AI based computations and it's almost like having a million reads, that's amazing technology. And you, you've talked, there's so many definitions of AI these days, but you've said blunt AI and that's kind of the first time I'd heard somebody put it into perspective of healthcare.
What's the blunt AI that you guys have?
Jim Alecxih: Basically the definition of brute force mathematics is that you look at every possible combination and the algorithm [00:23:00] decides this is correct, this actually exists, or, and so when you process really complex signals.
The ability to look at something from a computer algorithm perspective and determine whether it's real or not, or artifact is brute force mathematics. But our conversation was around the. Really the risks of generative AI. I think AI is super interesting but like robotics I draw a correlation, you know, as Intuitive started to be successful.
And started to create a market for surgical robotics. If you look at the number of companies that just put robotics into their name to try to, as, as you know, we talked about an ecosystem, you know, like, let, let, let me try to capture some of the momentum of Intuitive because they're creating a robotics market and really the, the truth is if you look at the definition of robotics, Intuitive is not even a robotics company.
They're a [00:24:00] computer assisted device. But everybody tried to use robotics and I think the same's true of AI, but I have two observations about AI that I think are very interesting. First is there is a risk around generative AI, which means, lemme give you an example. If you image the liver of a patient every day for a hundred days in a row and you put it into a generative AI algorithm and said, show me an image from day 101, the algorithm would say for a hundred straight days, I did not see a lesion. It was not there. And so it would draw, it would generate an image on day 101 of no lesion. But you and I know. That in fact, there is a first day where imaging would, would capture a lesion. And so I think that's one of the risks of generative AI that's gonna have to be addressed [00:25:00] is exactly how do you, how do you handle creating images, medical images that are based on the learning mechanism of the classifier?
And I think that's, um that's gonna be a big scientific challenge and, uh, particularly in radiology. And so I think that's, that, that's gonna be gonna be a problem. And then I think, you know, if you look at, the good side of AI is just how we can mine the data and really come to faster conclusions and, and really, uh, you know, new solutions.
But, and this is really the, you know, one of the selling points of DH Medical is AI is still bound by the rules of the quality of the input data dictates the quality of the output. And so if you put faulty data in an AI algorithm, it might refine that data, but the output's going to be [00:26:00] just slightly less faulty.
And so really, DH Medical is about putting high quality input data into an algorithm. And so that's our signal processing, our video processing, and a number of other things that we're working on. And so I think that's gonna be very interesting to see what kind of quality advancements can we make to make AI better and make AI smarter.
And so that's gonna be, it's not a panacea, it won't solve every problem if we don't concentrate on the high quality input data.
Kip Theno: Yeah. When we've, we've talked AI on a couple of shows here, Jim, and it always comes up, right? There's the ethicist piece of it where there's the human content and intent versus the AI content and intent, and there's gotta be human interventions.
It sounds like you've solved for that. I mean, you've gotta checks and balances system over there. You've thought through that equation.
Jim Alecxih: We have. And, I think one of the [00:27:00] risks of a new market. And it was the same with robotics. And, and the same with AI. I, I draw many com, you know, competitors, um, is people see a new technology like AI.
And I'm sure you saw Trump's thing with Masayoshi Son and Larry Ellison and she Yeah.
Kip Theno: Stargate.
Jim Alecxih: Yeah. And it was pretty, pretty interesting. You get this sense that all the world's problems are gonna be solved, by AI, separate from any kind of human interaction. And so if you look at, uh, I mean one of the, the leading, segments of our industry, that I think that's a prevalent belief is radiology.
So I can take an image and I can put it through an algorithm. And I don't need a radiologist to read in. I just think that's so shortsighted. Uh, you know, we, we have a, a big initiative in radiology. We can use our software technology to make the image much clearer and to turn down the radiation output, but you're still going to need [00:28:00] radiologists.
And that the idea that. It's going to be completely automated and that years of experience can be somehow written into a code. And I don't mean to be a Luddite, I'm a, you know, I've certainly dedicated my career to new technology. But I think there's a cautionary tale about how these are implemented.
And, and I think that's gonna be one of the challenge for healthcare executives in the next, , you know, 10 or 15 years.
Kip Theno: I agree, Jim, I, the , the big data, computational power of solving equations that are difficult for us to solve in general. That's one side, but I'll give you an example. I, I'm a not just a huge fan of Intuitive because of you and back in the day, but personal experience with it.
I was an observer and a family member and an emergent procedure, and I felt good that we were using the Da Vinci system. I felt better. The physician was sitting right there. So that's, I think always gonna be the balance. Well, Jim. This has been a profound discussion. Look, we're, we're gonna [00:29:00] follow the book closely.
We're gonna follow the podcast closely and of course, DH Medical. So I got two last questions for you, Jim. Sure. Where can, where, where do you want people to reach out to you about your book, the podcast, or, the, the really cool stuff you're doing at DH?
Jim Alecxih: Yep. Well, of course I'm on LinkedIn. Um, but the, the, um, the podcast is called The Success Chain, and it's at thesuccesschain.com and our website's just up and coming, our email's ready. And so we'd love to hear, uh, you know, we're, we're looking for people with interesting stories, kinda the same as you, Kip just reaching out and it's been great to, to reconnect with you and I'm looking forward to, there's so many interesting people in our industry and I get so many phone calls from young people.
I have three daughters that are. Just graduated from college and a senior and a sophomore. And so lots of young people call me and want to, want to get into the medical device. Uh, and I'm like, look, this is a hyper competitive, high stakes [00:30:00] environment. And um, and you know, we, I, I think the device industry is.
Is, you know, renowned for hiring the very best of their very best. And I, I believe in my heart that, I, I helped put together one of the best sales forces in any industry with Intuitive. And, so I'm anxious to hear people's perspective of, uh, of the medical device industry and success and out even outside the device industry.
But. Um, so we'd love for people to, to, to reach out to me on LinkedIn or@thesuccesschAIn.com.
Kip Theno: Absolutely. We will help you promote it. We will be a fan of that channel as well. I know , you're a fan of ours. And Jim, last question I got a chance to see your guitar collection. I'm encouraged that you're a, a new guitar aficionado.
As you know, my son's got a PRS, I've got a old Guild Blues 90 that I dust off once in a while. So here's my Easter egg question. Now that you're, you, you've got the guitar bug. If you could play one guitar song live [00:31:00] to a thousand to a stadium of 70,000 people, what song would that be?
Jim Alecxih: Well, Dancing in a Burning Room because my wife would totally dig me.
Kip Theno: That's, that's why people get guitars, Jim.
Jim Alecxih: Exactly. You know, I can tell you a quick story. You know, obviously Paul is, uh, Paul Reid Smith. My chairman is a guitar manufacturer, and. And, um, he ridicules me a little bit for, for trying to learn guitar at my age. But, you know, I am, I'm a big believer that one of the keys to success in life is to always put yourself in high learning environments.
And one of the metrics for success that I use personally is how nervous am I, if I wake up every day and I'm totally certain that I'm a competent and able to execute on whatever it is. I'm trying, you know, you, you're not alive. Being afraid and being nervous and having to really apply yourself, physically and mentally and [00:32:00] emotionally to do something is, is great.
And I try to do that professionally. I try to, to be around people that are so much smarter and trust me, I've, I've got some engineers that I work with that make that a pretty easy task. But, I. I have for the last, I don't know, 20 years, always pick something every couple of years that I thought would be really hard.
So I learned how to, uh, how to, uh, captain a boat. I learned how to fly an airplane, learned how to cook and, and guitar is one of those, uh, one of those things. And. It is, uh, it, it's magical when you make a, uh, a noise that is pleasurable. But, up until that point, I, it's not so pleasurable and it's the learning, the learning process.
But I, I really like it and I'm just, uh, I mean, so blessed to start with such high quality guitars as PRS, it's a, i I don't underestimate the privilege that I have, so it's a, it's a great process. I'm certainly not ready to play in front of a group of people, let [00:33:00] alone stadium. But if I could,
john Mayer would be a good place to start.
Kip Theno: Yeah. There you go. Well, fear, fear can be fuel. Jim, we've talked about that before too. And, and, uh, look, we'll, there's one song I will tell you if you really want to be scared when you pick up the guitar. Yeah. Something you can do your whole life. Um, is, uh, Eric Johnson, Cliffs of Dover?
Yeah. The hardest song to play. I don't know that anybody can play it. I certainly can't, but, uh, look, if we don't go on tour together, at least when you do end up on the PGA tour, which I've been bugging you about for a while, Jim, I only charge you a hundred bucks for the loop and 15% of any earnings to be your caddy.
Jim Alecxih: Exactly. You would, uh. We, we would be an interesting combo, that's for sure.
Kip Theno: Guitar on my back plus your Titleist bag. Sure.
Jim Alecxih: Exactly. And a hockey stick.
Kip Theno: That's right. Well, Jim, thank you so much for joining the Road to Care podcast. We really appreciated your time, sir.
Jim Alecxih: Great talking to you again.
Thanks for connecting and I've certainly enjoyed it.
Kip Theno: Thanks, Jim. Talk soon.
Jim Alecxih: All right.
Kip Theno: Thank you for joining the Road to [00:34:00] Care podcast, hosted by SamaCare, the leader in prior authorization technology and services, where through a script to therapy operating system, we enable connectivity with clinics, payers, and manufacturers focused on optimizing patient care. Tune in next time as together we can make things right.
Enjoy the music written, produced, and recorded by Jamestown.
Podcast produced by JFACTOR, visit https://www.jfactor.com/
Together, we can make healthcare right. Here are some of the outstanding healthcare organizations and associations championing patient health mentioned in this episode:
Kip Theno: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Road to Care podcast hosted by SamaCare, where we'll talk with key opinion leaders, physicians, administrators, manufacturers, venture capitalists, and legislators to get their insights on the state of healthcare today. And where we see it evolving SamaCare's prior authorization platform is free to clinics, ensuring patients get on the right therapy at the right time.
Together we can simply make things right.
Welcome back, everybody to the Road to Care podcast hosted by SamaCare. And today our very special guest is the great and powerful name that movie Jim Alecxih. Jim currently serves as CEO of DH Medical, an AI driven image and video enhancement signal processing technology for healthcare.
Jim has over 30 years of experience in excellence in medical technology. He served as President and CEO of ViveBio Scientific, a medical device company focused on blood transport and storage systems. Previously, he served as chief Commercial officer of ViewRay Inc, an early stage radiation oncology company [00:01:00] where he managed global sales, marketing and training.
He's perhaps best known for his role in leading Intuitive Surgical's commercial divisions across the us. South America, Australia, and New Zealand. Intuitive Surgical developed a Da Vinci system, a groundbreaking robotic surgical system for minimally invasive procedures now used by over 60,000 surgeons nationwide.
Hey Jim, it's great to have you on the show today, man. How are you? Great, Kip. Great to talk to you. You know, when you said, uh, I got 30 years in the industry, that kind of hurts my feelings. I don't know how, uh, how time flew by so quickly, but. It's been, uh, it's been quite the ride. Yeah. Well, hopefully you and I both have 30 more, right?
Jim Alecxih: Yeah,
Kip Theno: exactly. We're on the back nine, Jim, but that's okay. That's where you play your best golf, you know that.
Jim Alecxih: That's right. That's right.
Kip Theno: Well, Jim, listen, I, I'd love our listeners to, uh, hear about your journey into, into healthcare and leadership, and then we'll dive in.
Jim Alecxih: Well, great. Uh, tell me where you'd like to start.
Kip Theno: Yeah. Start from the beginning. How did you gravitate towards healthcare and commercialization? I. [00:02:00]
Jim Alecxih: I went to a school, uh, I'm the youngest of seven children, so my dad sAId, uh, I think you should go to college, but it's all new. And so I found a school in Texas that I could be, become a paramedic and work my way through college while I drove an ambulance.
I thought it would be a natural segue to being a physician and thought I wanted to be a surgeon. And after four years of being a paramedic, I decided I didn't want to, I didn't want to be a physician, and so I took a job as a sales rep for US Surgical and um, actually a company called Automated Instruments was the a distributor for US surgical, and this is early on days of laparoscopy and, uh, had a, had a great time, I mean, super intense environment. And then from there, you know, way leads to way I'd, uh, a, a great guy who I loved dearly named Tom Davison, invented a product called the Harmonic Scalpel. And I was privileged to be one of the early employees at [00:03:00] UltraCision.
We sold that to J&J and I worked for J&J for a year and was about ready to leave and they did a urology startup called Indigo. And I stayed with them. Then in 2000, I got a call from Intuitive Surgical and they were just going to market with the Da Vinci robot.
And, um, had an amazing 15 year run there. It's a incredible technology, wonderful company and left in early 2015 and have really spent the last 10 years doing startups and just finding new technologies that I could bring to the marketplace. And so, uh, found, uh, found DH Medical about a year ago and thought it was really interesting technology.
I've spent the last year trying to trying to launch these software packages into the medical space. So it's been a great run. And, you know, certainly anxious to talk to you about it and some of the things I've learned along the way.
Kip Theno: Yeah, for sure. And I, I definitely want to segue into that.
Um, just in the pre-show [00:04:00] you talking about the blunt AI, so we'll, we'll get there. That's a little teaser for the audience. But I mean, Jim, you, you've had the Midas touch. I mean, US surgical and their heyday Intuitive, you know, we see the successes, but we often don't see the, often don't see the challenges.
And here interesting story, Jim, I. I've known you for a long time, but I knew you before we actually met a lot of folks. Did. If you or anybody who was anybody in, say, medical devices, you wanted to work for Intuitive and Jim Alexi, and that's going to be the thing probably people gravitate to you most and, and Intuitive Surgical has been such an important technology for decades.
The Robotics Revolution we used to call it. In your experience in Genesis as a commercial leader for that org, but talk about that you were building a sustainable new market, never been done before. So there was no roadmap, right? There was no ecosystem. Really what everybody sees the successes of surgical, but talk about the pathway, not only of the success, but what challenges did you guys have to overcome?
Jim Alecxih: Tremendous amount of challenges. And you know, I, I've, I've spent a great deal of time looking [00:05:00] back. Um, you know, I didn't for a long time, uh, you know, reminisce or, or, you know, be, uh, retrospective about my time with Intuitive. Um, I think it's an amazing company, um, you know, groundbreaking technology and, and amazing people that are there today.
And, and, uh, when, when I was there, um. But you know, the interesting thing about Intuitive today is it's so, uh, successful. Um, that people forget that there was a time when the success was in doubt, and that that's with every company. And you look at these big, uh, you know, successful companies in, in the, in the device industry and, and in other industries, you forget that it was a startup at some time.
And, and so I've spent some time and I'm actually in the process of writing a book about it, about what are the elements that made Intuitive successful? And, um, you know, I think it really starts with the people, um, you know. Uh, and, and it really starts with the engineering talent. And if you look at how lucky that company [00:06:00] is, to have only two CEOs in its, um, in its 30 year history is, is just amazing.
And, um, you know, Gary Goodheart, in my opinion, is one of the premier leaders in any industry, and he was also the driving engineering force early on when I first joined, uh, Gary was, um. Just an engineer. Um, and, and really drove the development of that system. And so if you look at the engineering talent and then the vision of the leadership, um, you know, I I I'll give you one, uh, one story about Intuitive and, and it's something I've, I've really thought about.
Um, you know, the, it's a new technology. We don't know exactly where the beachhead, uh, procedure is. Uh, you know, it's a paradigm shifting. You're asking surgeons to step out of the sterile field. Um, the, it was, you know, in some, in some ways certainly compared to today, it was rudimentary technology, but it was, I think anybody who [00:07:00] saw it thought it could be significant.
And so, uh, the leadership picked, um, cardiac surgery as the beachhead. And early on in the first, you know, 18 months, found out that that was not going to be the, the, um, the place where Intuitive was going to be successful. And trust me, we tried hard. Um, I, uh, I, I sold systems, uh, several systems into cardiac for cardiac surgery, and it's just very difficult to get traction.
Uh, and we pivoted to prostate surgery, which is a, you know, a longer story. But I think the thing that, that really is remarkable in hindsight is oftentimes when you make decisions early on in a company, your, your ego's involved in it as a leader. And you, you've, you've done all this research, you've had all this data, you've made a decision on, this is the way I, the, the direction I'm gonna take the company.
And then to have it fAIl and have the courage and the [00:08:00] insight and the humility to pivot and be successful is, is quite remarkable. And I, I give, uh, uh, I give great accolades to the early leadership of Intuitive for, for having that, uh, emotional maturity and professionalism to say we tried it and we're gonna, we're gonna, uh, pivot to urology.
And then to be highly successful I think is, uh. Really something that, uh, one of the things that I've, that I'm writing about, that I think made into early Intuitive, uh, very unique.
Kip Theno: Wow. And yeah. Jim, you said a pivot is so hard for companies to do, right. Especially early stage. 'cause you're, you're, you, you've got a big bet on the table.
Yeah. You've gotta take it and place another big bet on the table. But you mentioned, I remember those days, uh, when I was in cardiology and they. Cardiologists, they love that tactile, you know, feel of the wire. They weren't gonna give that up. Right. And then you guys just took an entire model and moved it over here and made it, you know, we say [00:09:00] paradigm shifts, it's kind of overused, but a generational opportunity.
And I don't think a lot of folks know that the original model was scrubbed. You had to scrap it and do something else and, but, but I wanna jump back on something you said, Jim. So I haven't been asked yet to be a ghost writer in your book. What's gonna be the focus on the book?
Jim Alecxih: Well, you know, I spent a lot of time.
Uh, you know, thinking about e Exactly. Um, you know how I wanted to write the story and, and you know, I, I think what's taken me 10 years to overcome is it's not my story. And, I didn't want to put myself out as like, oh look, I was one of the commercial leads. It was. A combination of amazing people, great strategy, world class execution, a wonderful technology, the ability to innovate consistently, but the, the really, the f the framework and the foundation is, is great people.
And I was just one part of that. And I had the ability and the privilege to lead it, but , didn't wanna really [00:10:00] be the, the focus of the story. And so, took me a while to, a couple starts and stops.
I have a podcast and it's the same, same title as my book. It's called The Success Chain. And I'm a pilot and have been a pilot for a long, long time, and. There's a monthly magazine called the NTSB Reporter, and in it, they talk about every Airplane accident in the United States every month.
And their, their assumption is that an Airplane accident is a trailing factor of poor decisions, factors, omissions, all the things that led to that moment in time. And so I thought to myself the exact same thing is true of success. People see success and they say, oh, it's overnight success when people have been at it for 20 years and real true success, business success.
Personal success is a culmination of great decision making. [00:11:00] Factors timing. Sometimes factors are outside our control, sometimes they're within it, but it's a culmination of all those activities and decisions and factors. And so I named the book The Success Chain, and it's the same as my podcast. And so the book is going to be about all of the things that led to Intuitive becoming the Intuitive that you see today early on. And part of that's, uh, you know, mistakes, but most of it is hiring great people, making great decisions, having world class training and execution. And then my podcast is going to be about other people's stories, not only early Intuitive and some of the resilience and amazing things that people did, but from other walks of life, I've interviewed a Green Beret the other day, and, cancer doc, all kinds of things. And so we're just going to talk about how do you be successful and, and if you look at success as the goal, you forget about all the process that leads to that.
And, uh, so it should be some interesting [00:12:00] conversations. And I think the book will really talk about the, the history of Intuitive.
Kip Theno: That's so cool, Jim. I'll be first in line for the book and for the podcast. I mean, our tagline here, we started with this, is "Together we can make things right" and it's a wide swath of folks like you, CEOs, doctors, key opinion leaders, venture capitalists, legislators, to really put our heads together and figure out healthcare changes.
There's so much complexities and, and just before we transition to DH and AI, I want to get to that and what you're solving today. You know, in those early moments you talked about with Intuitive and then you had to pivot. I see kind of two, two lanes there where you had to, really find a way to shift clinical behavior and even purchasing behavior.
You had the physicians on one side, and then of course you had the committees on the other side and the hospital administrators and the purchasing people, and that wasn't, not chicken feed to buy a, to, to buy a da Vinci system back then. Did you lean into patient outcomes?
I mean, what was the, what was the way that you did that? To be able to get folks to really change even the way that they were trained in medicine? [00:13:00]
Jim Alecxih: Yeah, I think that's one of the remarkable things about the Intuitive story is that, there really were no patient results and there certainly was no clinical data.
Um, there was a, you know why the name is so genius. There was certainly an intuition. W it was Intuitive when you got onto the system of physician that this somehow made me better or was a facilitating device. But there was no return on investment. There was no clinical data. And so we, if you had tried to sell it into an or every aspect of a, of an operating room that or that they're really judged in a, in measurement of success.
So time of procedure instrument costs, manpower, capital budgets. We hurt all of those. And so how we did it early on was we sold it as a strategic initiative. And so if [00:14:00] you, if a hospital administrator. Wanted to build a women's health program, or a men's health program? Well, the, the Da Vinci was one of the foundational technologies that would help them build those programs.
And one of the huge advantages that in Intuitive had and, and still has. The, they don't have to use it as much, is that it's very patient facing. So we could put a patient on the robot with a demonstration and they could immediately move the instruments. They could see the 3D imagery, and they would get, this is something really special.
And so, believe it or not, I would say, I don't have the exact number, but a, a large percentage of our early sales were philanthropic, either individual donors or associations, companies that donated the money, to buy a robot because they understood that this was a, a strategic [00:15:00] decision to add new technology and that there was a perception that new technology translates into the best care.
And I think we use that to our advantage to really grow the market. Until we had more clinical data. And so that was one of the, the interesting things. You know, I do think in some way the hospital environment has reacted a little bit to Intuitive strategy because there were no value add committees when we were coming through.
There were people that tried to, to stop us, but it was more, more purchasing that was looking at a capital expenditure. And so I think that the hospital environment today would be much more difficult to start an Intuitive now than it was, you know, 25 years ago.
And so I think it was a point in time that our strategy worked and we certainly took advantage of it.
Kip Theno: Well, well, I mean, yeah. You weren't just walking in and dropping 'em off. What was the, uh, what was the sales cycle like? How long from first [00:16:00] meeting to first procedure?
Jim Alecxih: I think that's one of the things I'm most proud of, less than six months. And so we from first call to, to trAIning surgeons and we had, one of our core strategies was in pending events. So you have to create a sense of urgency in your customers. And so we would have all kinds of impending events with competitive hospitals, , with other surgeons.
We would schedule trainings and say, look, we're gonna have to cancel trainings if the surgeon doesn't have a Da Vinci system to come back and use. And so you have to create that sense of urgency in your customer base that, you know, basically incents them to work on our timeline versus their timeline because any rational business person will always delay capital expenditures, as long as possible.
And so we had to create that sense of, of urgency and, and I think we did a, a really [00:17:00] great job at it.
Kip Theno: No, you did a great job and in the, I mean, in the absence of, not all, of course, but evidence-based medicine, this wasn't a case by case, Hey, use this here because that's where the data shows you. What I was really impressed with what you did and being one of the architects or the architect, you took that network, you built a community.
You, you partnered, you had the patient, the awareness and the provider, and you created that network that was actually Intuitive's ecosystem in absence of ecosystems, right.
Jim Alecxih: Yeah, I, I mean, you know, if you talk about ecosystems, probably, you know, one of my regrets, about not being with Intuitive now is early on we knew the amount of data that the system could collect.
But it was early. And, um, and so, uh, you know, one of the things I think that Intuitive has been masterful at is starting to mine that data and to give surgeons all kinds of data back on their performance and the system performance and how they could do [00:18:00] better against a, against a standard.
There's just all kinds of data that you can mine, and I think they've done a wonderful job and them. And, and I, I don't have any specific knowledge, but I can look at it and say, you know, certainly AI is going to play a role in that. And so, you look at Intuitive and you think, you know, how could AI with all their data, um, how could you, um, you know, mine that, that database.
To improve patient care, to reduce complications, to reduce procedural time, uh, you know, to just make it an indispensable tool that is not just around specific procedures, but is a, you know, a, a ubiquitous, uh, you know, tool that everybody has to use. I think that's really the future, and I think, uh, I think the data will be one of the things that drives the implementation of, uh, of Da Vinci in the future.
Kip Theno: Well, you wonderful segue, Jim. 'cause here we go. I was on [00:19:00] Edia before the call and before the show here. And it's like a rap sheet looking at different AI solutions. It just go, it's as long as your arm, right? It's, and it's here to stay. And now you've moved over as CEO to DH Medical.
Why'd you do it? What are you guys trying to solve over there?
Jim Alecxih: You know, I had left my previous job , and thought that I would maybe just consult for a little bit. And I got a call from a friend of mine and said, you have to go look at this technology. I met a gentleman named Paul Reed Smith, who makes guitars for a living, PRS guitars.
If you haven't seen a PRS guitar, they're pieces of art. They're amazing. He's one of the smartest people that I've ever met in my life and is the chairman of the board of DH Medical. And he developed a multiple software packages and one of them is called the Precision Measuring Matrix, and it's a program that essentially processes, signals, electrical signals, which are, is also the same as [00:20:00] sound. Electrical signals can be transferred into sound and diagnoses them and dissects them in multiple ways. And so we took that into heart waves, ECGs and brainwaves. EEGs and so imagine a heart.
I'll just give you one example. Imagine how the complexity of a heart with valves, opening and closing, blood, entering and exiting chambers, compressing and opening. You have all all these dynamic, signals and sounds that are happening and it's suspended. And so imagine trying to take that those signals.
And put them in a two dimensional format, you'd be like, you really haven't dissected exactly what is happening with a heart. And so we measure a heartbeat in four dimensions simultaneously. We, we measure time, frequency, amplitude, and [00:21:00] harmonics in a totally different way. And we do it all simultaneously.
And so we can look at a heartbeat in four dimensions and we have a predictive analysis. We're certainly in the process the same with brains that we can look at a arrhythmias or potentially seizures and have some sort of predictive analysis based on the signals that are coming through our algorithm.
And so we're pretty excited about driving that forward. We've got some early partnerships in the industry that we're working on and, and feel like it's. It's really pretty amazing. And then, uh, our other technology is, is really an AI image software program. And we take images in near real time and we can totally clarify them, change the lighting on them, and we reduce the bit rate without compression by about 60%.
And so we can take a surgical video and make it, [00:22:00] uh, the, the clarity would be unlike anything that a surgeon had ever seen. We've talked to some folks that are in surgical video and we're gonna put some of our programs, in their systems and I think we've got a really bright future, so we're in the process of, like any small startup, we're getting our partners, we're raising funds, we're hiring people, and really excited about what this can do.
And the future of AI and medicine is pretty amazing.
Kip Theno: Well, you, you guys are writing, forgive the pun a wonderful song over there. I mean, you can envision a world where you have you. You, you're, you're doing your, your AI based computations and it's almost like having a million reads, that's amazing technology. And you, you've talked, there's so many definitions of AI these days, but you've said blunt AI and that's kind of the first time I'd heard somebody put it into perspective of healthcare.
What's the blunt AI that you guys have?
Jim Alecxih: Basically the definition of brute force mathematics is that you look at every possible combination and the algorithm [00:23:00] decides this is correct, this actually exists, or, and so when you process really complex signals.
The ability to look at something from a computer algorithm perspective and determine whether it's real or not, or artifact is brute force mathematics. But our conversation was around the. Really the risks of generative AI. I think AI is super interesting but like robotics I draw a correlation, you know, as Intuitive started to be successful.
And started to create a market for surgical robotics. If you look at the number of companies that just put robotics into their name to try to, as, as you know, we talked about an ecosystem, you know, like, let, let, let me try to capture some of the momentum of Intuitive because they're creating a robotics market and really the, the truth is if you look at the definition of robotics, Intuitive is not even a robotics company.
They're a [00:24:00] computer assisted device. But everybody tried to use robotics and I think the same's true of AI, but I have two observations about AI that I think are very interesting. First is there is a risk around generative AI, which means, lemme give you an example. If you image the liver of a patient every day for a hundred days in a row and you put it into a generative AI algorithm and said, show me an image from day 101, the algorithm would say for a hundred straight days, I did not see a lesion. It was not there. And so it would draw, it would generate an image on day 101 of no lesion. But you and I know. That in fact, there is a first day where imaging would, would capture a lesion. And so I think that's one of the risks of generative AI that's gonna have to be addressed [00:25:00] is exactly how do you, how do you handle creating images, medical images that are based on the learning mechanism of the classifier?
And I think that's, um that's gonna be a big scientific challenge and, uh, particularly in radiology. And so I think that's, that, that's gonna be gonna be a problem. And then I think, you know, if you look at, the good side of AI is just how we can mine the data and really come to faster conclusions and, and really, uh, you know, new solutions.
But, and this is really the, you know, one of the selling points of DH Medical is AI is still bound by the rules of the quality of the input data dictates the quality of the output. And so if you put faulty data in an AI algorithm, it might refine that data, but the output's going to be [00:26:00] just slightly less faulty.
And so really, DH Medical is about putting high quality input data into an algorithm. And so that's our signal processing, our video processing, and a number of other things that we're working on. And so I think that's gonna be very interesting to see what kind of quality advancements can we make to make AI better and make AI smarter.
And so that's gonna be, it's not a panacea, it won't solve every problem if we don't concentrate on the high quality input data.
Kip Theno: Yeah. When we've, we've talked AI on a couple of shows here, Jim, and it always comes up, right? There's the ethicist piece of it where there's the human content and intent versus the AI content and intent, and there's gotta be human interventions.
It sounds like you've solved for that. I mean, you've gotta checks and balances system over there. You've thought through that equation.
Jim Alecxih: We have. And, I think one of the [00:27:00] risks of a new market. And it was the same with robotics. And, and the same with AI. I, I draw many com, you know, competitors, um, is people see a new technology like AI.
And I'm sure you saw Trump's thing with Masayoshi Son and Larry Ellison and she Yeah.
Kip Theno: Stargate.
Jim Alecxih: Yeah. And it was pretty, pretty interesting. You get this sense that all the world's problems are gonna be solved, by AI, separate from any kind of human interaction. And so if you look at, uh, I mean one of the, the leading, segments of our industry, that I think that's a prevalent belief is radiology.
So I can take an image and I can put it through an algorithm. And I don't need a radiologist to read in. I just think that's so shortsighted. Uh, you know, we, we have a, a big initiative in radiology. We can use our software technology to make the image much clearer and to turn down the radiation output, but you're still going to need [00:28:00] radiologists.
And that the idea that. It's going to be completely automated and that years of experience can be somehow written into a code. And I don't mean to be a Luddite, I'm a, you know, I've certainly dedicated my career to new technology. But I think there's a cautionary tale about how these are implemented.
And, and I think that's gonna be one of the challenge for healthcare executives in the next, , you know, 10 or 15 years.
Kip Theno: I agree, Jim, I, the , the big data, computational power of solving equations that are difficult for us to solve in general. That's one side, but I'll give you an example. I, I'm a not just a huge fan of Intuitive because of you and back in the day, but personal experience with it.
I was an observer and a family member and an emergent procedure, and I felt good that we were using the Da Vinci system. I felt better. The physician was sitting right there. So that's, I think always gonna be the balance. Well, Jim. This has been a profound discussion. Look, we're, we're gonna [00:29:00] follow the book closely.
We're gonna follow the podcast closely and of course, DH Medical. So I got two last questions for you, Jim. Sure. Where can, where, where do you want people to reach out to you about your book, the podcast, or, the, the really cool stuff you're doing at DH?
Jim Alecxih: Yep. Well, of course I'm on LinkedIn. Um, but the, the, um, the podcast is called The Success Chain, and it's at thesuccesschain.com and our website's just up and coming, our email's ready. And so we'd love to hear, uh, you know, we're, we're looking for people with interesting stories, kinda the same as you, Kip just reaching out and it's been great to, to reconnect with you and I'm looking forward to, there's so many interesting people in our industry and I get so many phone calls from young people.
I have three daughters that are. Just graduated from college and a senior and a sophomore. And so lots of young people call me and want to, want to get into the medical device. Uh, and I'm like, look, this is a hyper competitive, high stakes [00:30:00] environment. And um, and you know, we, I, I think the device industry is.
Is, you know, renowned for hiring the very best of their very best. And I, I believe in my heart that, I, I helped put together one of the best sales forces in any industry with Intuitive. And, so I'm anxious to hear people's perspective of, uh, of the medical device industry and success and out even outside the device industry.
But. Um, so we'd love for people to, to, to reach out to me on LinkedIn or@thesuccesschAIn.com.
Kip Theno: Absolutely. We will help you promote it. We will be a fan of that channel as well. I know , you're a fan of ours. And Jim, last question I got a chance to see your guitar collection. I'm encouraged that you're a, a new guitar aficionado.
As you know, my son's got a PRS, I've got a old Guild Blues 90 that I dust off once in a while. So here's my Easter egg question. Now that you're, you, you've got the guitar bug. If you could play one guitar song live [00:31:00] to a thousand to a stadium of 70,000 people, what song would that be?
Jim Alecxih: Well, Dancing in a Burning Room because my wife would totally dig me.
Kip Theno: That's, that's why people get guitars, Jim.
Jim Alecxih: Exactly. You know, I can tell you a quick story. You know, obviously Paul is, uh, Paul Reid Smith. My chairman is a guitar manufacturer, and. And, um, he ridicules me a little bit for, for trying to learn guitar at my age. But, you know, I am, I'm a big believer that one of the keys to success in life is to always put yourself in high learning environments.
And one of the metrics for success that I use personally is how nervous am I, if I wake up every day and I'm totally certain that I'm a competent and able to execute on whatever it is. I'm trying, you know, you, you're not alive. Being afraid and being nervous and having to really apply yourself, physically and mentally and [00:32:00] emotionally to do something is, is great.
And I try to do that professionally. I try to, to be around people that are so much smarter and trust me, I've, I've got some engineers that I work with that make that a pretty easy task. But, I. I have for the last, I don't know, 20 years, always pick something every couple of years that I thought would be really hard.
So I learned how to, uh, how to, uh, captain a boat. I learned how to fly an airplane, learned how to cook and, and guitar is one of those, uh, one of those things. And. It is, uh, it, it's magical when you make a, uh, a noise that is pleasurable. But, up until that point, I, it's not so pleasurable and it's the learning, the learning process.
But I, I really like it and I'm just, uh, I mean, so blessed to start with such high quality guitars as PRS, it's a, i I don't underestimate the privilege that I have, so it's a, it's a great process. I'm certainly not ready to play in front of a group of people, let [00:33:00] alone stadium. But if I could,
john Mayer would be a good place to start.
Kip Theno: Yeah. There you go. Well, fear, fear can be fuel. Jim, we've talked about that before too. And, and, uh, look, we'll, there's one song I will tell you if you really want to be scared when you pick up the guitar. Yeah. Something you can do your whole life. Um, is, uh, Eric Johnson, Cliffs of Dover?
Yeah. The hardest song to play. I don't know that anybody can play it. I certainly can't, but, uh, look, if we don't go on tour together, at least when you do end up on the PGA tour, which I've been bugging you about for a while, Jim, I only charge you a hundred bucks for the loop and 15% of any earnings to be your caddy.
Jim Alecxih: Exactly. You would, uh. We, we would be an interesting combo, that's for sure.
Kip Theno: Guitar on my back plus your Titleist bag. Sure.
Jim Alecxih: Exactly. And a hockey stick.
Kip Theno: That's right. Well, Jim, thank you so much for joining the Road to Care podcast. We really appreciated your time, sir.
Jim Alecxih: Great talking to you again.
Thanks for connecting and I've certainly enjoyed it.
Kip Theno: Thanks, Jim. Talk soon.
Jim Alecxih: All right.
Kip Theno: Thank you for joining the Road to [00:34:00] Care podcast, hosted by SamaCare, the leader in prior authorization technology and services, where through a script to therapy operating system, we enable connectivity with clinics, payers, and manufacturers focused on optimizing patient care. Tune in next time as together we can make things right.
Enjoy the music written, produced, and recorded by Jamestown.
Podcast produced by JFACTOR, visit https://www.jfactor.com/
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