Highmark Interactive: A Medical Entrepreneur’s Journey
“Why did you start-up Highmark? You told me you were done with launching businesses”. The question is a genuine one, but I can see a glint of something in my wife’s smile as she asks me the question.
People say life is made up of moments that stand out from the daily rhythm of life. Almost like, “Flashes.” The older we get, the shorter these “flashes of moments” seem to be, and the faster they seem to fly by us. However, I remember a moment; a “Flash” if you will that eventually ended up being a catalyst for not only launching my next venture but doing what I told my wife I would never do again… Please allow me to share with you the thoughts and moments that led me to answer my wife’s question, and share this crazy concept called Highmark Interactive!
I am 15 years old, competing in the national sport Karate circuit. Full of confidence and power. I am a scrawny 140lbs, but an accomplished black belt, who feels as invincible as a superhero. That particular night, I was cocky enough to take on a 24yr old senior belt, without any protective headgear (though to be fair, this is the late 80’s, and the only protective equipment we wore was a mouth guard!). But, I was too fast, and there was no way I was going to get hit, so why bother with the mouth guard? 15 minutes into sparring, I’ve got him on the run, feeling pretty proud of myself; thinking “I’m only 15, and I am going take down this…then BANG…an overwhelming sense of confusion and wonder came over me.
Wonder, as I do not recall how I ended up lying on the ground. Confusion, as I was pretty sure I wore my white gi (uniform), but when I look down mine was all red. Then nothing until I am in the local ER. You see, I didn’t move quickly enough, and my reward was being kicked in the head, and having my lip sliced apart on my teeth. To this day I don’t remember falling, or the time between being hit, and lying on the doctor’s table as he began stitching my lip closed. When I missed school the next day, my friends asked my brother what happened. He just repeated what the doctor had told us: “nothing major, I just had my bell rung.” Today we call that a concussion.
That was not my first concussion, and wouldn’t be my last, but it stands out because of all the drama associated with the “external injury”; a simple lip laceration!
Flash forward to about four years ago (2013) and time slows as I am watching my daughter (at least she is wearing headgear) about to get kicked in the head. I cringe as she takes the kick squarely on her left temple, and crumples. My wife and I run over, and my heart is racing as I’m terrified she’s hurt. She ended up being “ok,” but people would ask me did she suffer a concussion?” The inability to answer that simple question, over time, would plague me, as I realized I could not give a definitive answer to my wife, our extended family, and most importantly my daughter. Four years later, that moment was a spark to do something I told my wife I would never do again.
January 6, 2014, the start of the work week after the holiday break and I don’t have to be anywhere. I have transitioned my last start-up, Wellpoint Health, to its new CEO and have taken a board seat to help govern the business. It’s been eight long years between showing a power point presentation to friends and family (2005) and building the company I am stepping down from (October 2013). During that time, my brother and I launched Wellpoint, and grew it through the worst global economic crash in almost 80 years, creating hundreds of jobs as our business expanded to have offices across Canada. Starting a business is a fantastic thing. Founders/entrepreneurs take an idea and make it real. They create something where there was nothing. It takes tremendous energy, passion, and time. It’s a lot of work, but it has its rewards, and I was proud of what we built during a very difficult economic time. However, after eight years I was also ready to slow down, attend more of my kids’ school plays, and enjoy life in a different way. I was content and told my wife “Honey, I’m done. I won’t do a start-up again. Been there, done that”.
Well, life carries on in that “daily rhythm of life” I mentioned previously. But one of the recurrent themes that seemed to be following me was the question “was that a concussion?” and “so now what do we do?”. Between my daughter’s ongoing sparring in Tae Kwon Do, and the number of concerned parents/coaches who brought their kids into the ER where I worked, those questions were becoming a constant in my life. As such, my inability to provide a clear answer became very frustrating and unsatisfying to both my patients and to me!
My research to find answers led me to a couple of conclusions around why the medical community had very little to offer:
- In part minor Traumatic Brain Injury (mTBI) was a newly identified condition, and;
- Medical professionals didn’t have a diagnostic test
However, the public was suffering from a new mysterious illness that was creating significant fear amongst the caretakers of our youth and active recreational adults. This condition would increasingly gain media attention as people were getting very ill, even dying, from both single “minor” concussions, and/or the accumulation of these injuries over a playing career.
I believe concussions are this generation of medical researchers’ HIV/AIDS challenge. It’s a new mysterious condition that we’re struggling to understand, that is being shown on tv with tremendous media interest and scrutiny. There is an immense fear amongst parents, coaches, and our kids/youth. Our professional athletes and heroes are struggling with the condition; sometimes with such severity that they end up hurting themselves or others.
I wanted to be a part of solving this issue. It felt like the past 20 years of medical practice, coupled with being a serial entrepreneur had prepared me to take on this “silent epidemic.” This time, I wanted to launch a business whose sole goal was contributing to finding an answer with technology being at the heart of the venture. Technology has advanced and is a true enabler today. We could launch a start-up in 2016 that didn’t require the massive capital investment required 20 years earlier that hindered individual clinicians from daring to take on the challenge of AIDS at the grassroots level. Today, if we’re bold enough, we can indeed make a difference.
Concussions are like snowflakes. Each one is different, even within the same person! For example, Johnny is a 13-year-old boy who’s suffered three concussions. Each one was different concerning the symptoms Johnny had after his head injury. Thus, throwing technology at trying to diagnose Johnny’s next concussion wasn’t going to be enough, though there were plenty of companies doing exactly that. I felt we needed to understand Johnny’s healthy state; when all his internal medical physiology was in equilibrium. However, asking a healthy 13 yr old to come to the doctor’s office every second day to run tests measuring his “personalized state of healthy equilibrium” made no sense. But I know that kids love to play games on their smartphones. Maybe we could design a game that helped us better understand everyone’s healthy state.
However, we still needed a diagnostic tool that was reasonably easy to use, as kids are constantly falling, colliding and having minor head injuries. It’s unrealistic to ask for Johnny to get an expensive, potentially radiation exposing test every time he hit his head. However, if Johnny could use his smartphone to quickly run a “point of collision” scan, perhaps we might be able to identify the head injuries that were suggestive of a concussion and required Johnny to go see a doctor. Additionally, we know that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being employed to augment the diagnostic capabilities of radiologists. If somehow we could use AI within our application…hmmm, the seed of an idea began to flourish…and that spark was becoming a roaring fire!
Therefore, as crazy as it sounded, our startup was going to be a medical technology company, that used neuro-physiological algorithms and AI to help diagnose an entirely new mysterious condition… while also being creative enough to build video games enabling us to better understood Johnny’s medical parameters while he was healthy. That information would then be inputted into our AI engine, thus augmenting the diagnostic accuracy of our algorithm.
So, to be clear, Highmark was going to have to fuse neuroscience, with video games, underpinned with an artificial intelligence engine to help diagnose an entirely new mysterious medical condition! With that realization, my co-founders and I knew we had to launch this tech start-up that would do all these things, as crazy as it sounded. A company that was solving problems in ways nobody else had, combining game developers with brain surgeons, artists with AI interfaces. Launching a start-up, whose mission was going to make the world a better place by creating a diagnostic test to answer those frustrating questions, alleviating fear while supporting people who needed it. Our start-up was going to have to be something pretty incredible in how unique and special it was. That was almost eight months ago, and we’re having a blast executing on our vision at Highmark Interactive. Stay tuned, as we’re only getting started….
