Health Tech: Shane Cooke Of Etiometry On How Their Technology Can Make An Important Impact On Our Overall Wellness

An Interview With David Leichner

Know your capabilities — do not try to be everything to everyone. Understand your “perfect patient” or “perfect customer” and the unique value proposition you provide to them.

In recent years, Big Tech has gotten a bad rep. But of course many tech companies are doing important work making monumental positive changes to society, health, and the environment. To highlight these, we started a new interview series about “Technology Making An Important Positive Social Impact”. We are interviewing leaders of tech companies who are creating or have created a tech product that is helping to make a positive change in people’s lives or the environment. As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Shane Cooke.

Shane Cooke joined Etiometry in 2019 as President & CEO, bringing over 20 years of experience in the medical device and pharmaceutical market spaces in a variety of sales, marketing, strategy and portfolio management roles. Before joining Etiometry, Shane spent 5+ years as Chief Strategy Officer of Cheetah Medical, which was acquired by Baxter International in 2019. Prior to Cheetah, Shane spent 11 years with Covidien in the patient care, vascular therapies and corporate sectors, with positions such as: corporate strategy, market and competitive intelligence, leading the market development center of excellence and leading strategy efforts for Japan, Europe, Australia and Canada. Shane holds a BA in psychology from the University of Rochester, as well as an MBA from Suffolk University.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory and how you grew up?

I grew up in a small, rural town in northern New York, with a very close-knit family. This experience certainly shaped the person and professional I have become in many ways. In the small-town experience, if something broke, we fixed it ourselves. This is an important mindset I have carried with me and which has influenced my career. I strongly believe that being versatile is an incredibly important skill set for success. I also very much favor being in smaller company settings, and the tight-knit family atmosphere it promotes, much like we have at Etiometry.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

I grew up professionally in a large multi-national med device firm, with more than 50,000 employees. It was an amazing learning experience, and I spent 10+ years with this company. I then decided to move to a 50-person med device start-up, which was a transition that shaped the rest of my career. Moving from an environment with many resources to one where there are far fewer resources, and having to wear multiple hats, was an interesting transition and one that more aligns with my natural tendencies and skill sets.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

There are so many to choose from, as I have been very fortunate to work with many fantastic managers and individuals who have helped to influence my career. If I had to choose one, I would go with Tom Harkin, who was my first manager as I shifted from field-based sales to marketing. This was an important career transition and having a Director of Marketing like Tom to help guide me was very important. Tom is an amazing leader, extremely smart, and taught me how to change my thinking from the sales to marketing mindset. I am forever grateful to Tom!

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

There are a couple of life lesson quotes I have found ring true in all aspects of life — personally and professionally.

How you do anything is how you do everything — I have found this to be true not only with myself and family members, but also employees that I hire. Assessing an employee’s approach to any task is something I focus on teasing out during every interview.

You get what you pay for — a classic life lesson that I have found to be true in all aspects of life. I also look at this beyond the economic aspect, to really mean that there are no shortcuts…put in the work and get the reward.

You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

Curiosity — this is number one for me. I am an intensely curious person, and it has served me well. I look for this trait in others I interact with and hire. Thought leadership is vital to any early-stage organization, and those employees that go beyond surface level to dig into areas they may not understand, or that can have a major impact on the company, are critical to an organization’s success.

Versatility — similar to the points above, versatility is critical, especially in a smaller company environment where all employees are wearing multiple hats. Being able to shift gears, manage many focus areas, and have intense prioritization are important for success. Moreover, being able to have cloud-to-ground thinking…seeing the big picture, while also being able to go into the details, is a very important skill that has served me well in my career.

Good old fashioned hard work — there is no replacement for this. I inherited an intense work ethic from my dad, and I think it is a very important trait in successful leaders, especially to set the tone for their team or organization.

Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion about the technology or medical devices that you are helping to create that can make a positive impact on our wellness. To begin, which particular problems are you aiming to solve?

Clinicians in the ICU are faced with many challenges as they are caring for the most critically ill and fragile patients in the hospital. These challenges include the narrowest of margins and incredibly high stakes, given the condition of the patients, complications and comorbidities that the clinicians must assess and manage continuously. Given these high stakes, making timely decisions regarding care and interventions for critical care patients is paramount. This becomes more challenging with information overload in this complex setting. Additionally, the ICU has and continues to have resource challenges with staffing turnover the past several years.

How do you think your technology can address this?

Etiometry’s clinical intelligence platform is a comprehensive, AI-driven platform that pulls relevant information into one visualization and utilizes proprietary, FDA-cleared risk analytics to highlight when patients are deteriorating (or conversely, when they may be stable). It also automates clinical workflows to streamline communication and decision-making for care teams. Etiometry’s platform provides insights that help enable informed decisions that lead to improvements in clinical outcomes, such as length-of-stay reduction, reduced time on ventilation, and reduced vasoactive medication usage. All these outcomes are shown in published studies supporting the Etiometry platform.

Can you tell us the backstory about what inspired you to originally feel passionate about this cause?

The company has roots in aerospace engineering, where the founders were focused on solving complex aviation problems through control engineering, which included continuous risk assessment and management, in critical life and death situations. Etiometry has focused on utilizing these same principles by solving the most complex problems in the most complex environment in healthcare: critical care.

We are passionate about patient care and focused on improving the lives of patients and clinicians every day by providing unparalleled insights through our platform. The company started in pediatric ICUs and the platform is now utilized across both pediatric and adult hospitals.

How do you think this might change the world?

Etiometry is already changing the world, albeit on a small scale currently. We are just scratching the surface of the patients and clinicians we can impact with our platform, but we are growing rapidly.

Keeping “Black Mirror” and the “Law of Unintended Consequences” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?

I do not see drawbacks from our platform itself, but being an AI technology, I feel the market and perceptions of AI are still in a nascent phase. There are many discussions in the industry regarding how AI will impact patient care, and I think it is important that clinical intelligence technologies, such as Etiometry’s platform, are described accurately. Our technology was not designed to replace a clinician, or clinical judgement, which is critical for patient care. Rather, our platform is utilized to provide a holistic view of a patient so clinicians can better assess trajectories and make informed escalation and de-escalation of care decisions. Streamlining care team communication, automating clinical workflows, and driving improvements in clinical outcomes that reduce the cost of care are the key measures of success for Etiometry.

Based on your experience and success, can you please share “Five things you need to know to successfully create technology that can make a positive social impact”?

1. Focus on solving a meaningful problem that affects many people. At Etiometry we focus on complex clinical situations in the ICU, which affects millions of patients per year, and seeing the impact our platform brings to both patients and clinicians in this setting is very fulfilling.

2. Know your capabilities — do not try to be everything to everyone. Understand your “perfect patient” or “perfect customer” and the unique value proposition you provide to them.

3. Ease of use is critical. The best technology will not be utilized if it is difficult to use, access or figure out. This is a major factor in driving adoption, which is the foundation for successful technologies and a determining factor for widespread growth.

4. Constantly learn and iterate. Voice of the Customer is critical to success — at Etiometry we view all of our customers as partners and meet with them regularly to get their feedback and ideas so we can ensure we are meeting their needs.

5. Surround yourself with a team of people smarter than you! Easily the most important entry on this list. The team you assemble makes all the difference, and I am fortunate to work with such a talented, passionate and amazing team at Etiometry.

If you could tell other young people one thing about why they should consider making a positive impact on our environment or society, like you, what would you tell them?

There is no greater feeling than positively impacting the lives of others and their families. It is incredibly fulfilling to know that all the time and hard work spent in your job is making an impact on others.

Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them.

Bill Gates would certainly be interesting. As a successful technology leader whose innovations continue to influence our everyday lives, it would be great to sit down with him to get his perspective and insights on what we are doing at Etiometry, and the important lessons he has learned along the way.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

Visit www.etiometry.com to follow along on our journey.

Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational, and we wish you continued success in your important work.