Medsider: Learn from Medtech and Healthtech Founders and CEOs - A Physician's Guide to Turning Ideas into Reality: Interview With Canary Medical CEO Dr. Bill Hunter

Episode Date: June 26, 2024

In this episode of Medsider Radio, we had an insightful chat with  Dr. Bill Hunter, CEO of Canary Medical. The company is developing smart, implantable medical devices that report on function, patient activity, and more.  Bill is a former practicing physician with 30+ years of healthcare entrepreneurial experience and over 200 patents and patent applications to his name. He’s been intimately involved in the development of renowned devices like the TAXUS DES and paclitaxel-eluting balloons and spearheaded the success of companies like Angiotech and Correvio. As the CEO of Canary Medical, he’s now leading a new, smart, digital approach to patient monitoring and post-surgical care.In this interview, Bill talks about his perspective on innovation in medtech, discusses what it takes for a device to be commercially viable, how Canary is alleviating the workload of healthcare professionals, and offers advice to physicians contemplating the transition to industry. Before we dive into the discussion, I wanted to mention a few things:First, if you’re into learning from medical device and health technology founders and CEOs, and want to know when new interviews are live, head over to Medsider.com and sign up for our free newsletter.Second, if you want to peek behind the curtain of the world's most successful startups, you should consider a Medsider premium membership. You’ll learn the strategies and tactics that founders and CEOs use to build and grow companies like Silk Road Medical, AliveCor, Shockwave Medical, and hundreds more!We recently introduced some fantastic additions exclusively for Medsider premium members, including playbooks, which are curated collections of our top Medsider interviews on key topics like capital fundraising and risk mitigation, and a curated investor database to help you discover your next medical device or health technology investor!In addition to the entire back catalog of Medsider interviews over the past decade, premium members also get a copy of every volume of Medsider Mentors at no additional cost, including the latest Medsider Mentors Volume VI. If you’re interested, go to medsider.com/subscribe to learn more.Lastly, if you'd rather read than listen, here's a link to the full interview with Dr. Bill Hunter.

You now need to think more about how your device is going to be used and how it's going to be incorporated into the practice of medicine. So first and foremost, you know, if your technology converts an in-hospital to an out-of-hospital procedure or it allows earlier discharge or, you know, in some way, shape, or form shortens that episode of care within the hospital, that's really, really important. even if you're better, but it adds a two-day stay, that may be a tough sell. Welcome to Medsider, where you can learn from the brightest founders and CEOs in medical devices and health technology. Join tens of thousands of ambitious doers as we unpack the insights, tactics, and secrets behind the most successful life science startups in the world. Now, here's your host, Scott Nelson. Hey, everyone, it's Scott. In this episode of MedSider, I sat down with Dr. Bill Hunter, a former, practicing physician with over 30 years of healthcare entrepreneurial experience and over 200 patents

and patent applications to his name. He's been intimately involved in the development of renowned devices like the taxis drug-loading stent and various pactylatol-el-eluding balloons and spearheaded the successes of companies like angiotech and Correveo. As the CEO of Canary Medical, he's now leading a new smart digital approach to patient monitoring and post-surgical care. Here for you the key things that we discuss in this conversation. First, to find an unmet need in the market, you don't always have to look at niche problems with a magnifying glass. Examining overall trends and assessing structural gaps can also uncover opportunities. For example, Bill realized the growing tension between increasing patient demands for personalized care and the strain it puts on health care providers and decided to develop digital solutions that aim to solve this issue.

Second, innovation in MedTech takes as superior, just not an alternative, product approach framework. Moreover, you must consider its rural world impact on the health care system and the workflow of providers. Think about streamlining processes, reducing hospital stays, and empowering both patients and physicians. Third, if you're a physician contemplating a full-time move to a startup, embrace your entrepreneurial spirit by leveraging the stability of your medical career. Start small, experiment, and be honest with yourself about your priorities. Before we jump into this episode, I wanted to let you know that the latest edition of MedSider mentors is now live. We just published Volume 6, which summarizes the key learnings from the most popular interviews over the last several months

with incredible entrepreneurs like Dan Rose, former CEO of Limflow, Dr. Stephen Michelson, founder of Ferapulse, and current CEO of field medical, and other leaders of some of the hottest startups in the space. Look, it's tough to listen or read every Medsider interview that comes out, even the best ones. But there are so many valuable lessons you can pick up

from the founders and CEOs that join our program. So that's why we decided to create MedSider mentors. It's the easiest way for you to learn from the world's best medical device and health technology entrepreneurs in one central place. To check out the latest volume, head over to MedsiderRadio.com. forward slash mentors. Premium members get free access to all past and future volumes.

And if you're not a premium member yet, you should definitely consider signing up. In addition to every volume of MedSider mentors, you'll get full access to the entire library of interviews dating back to 2010. You'll also be able to see all of our playbooks, which are thematically handpicked collections of the most insightful interviews covering topics like capital fundraising, early stage development, regulatory challenges, reimbursement, M&A, and much more. And last, considering that fundraising could be one of the most daunting tasks for any startup. We curated a database of over 700 VC funds, private equity firms, angel groups, and more, all eager to invest in medical device and health technology startups. Access to this database

is a premium member exclusive, so don't miss out. Learn more about Medsider Mentors and our premium memberships by visiting MedsiderRadio.com forward slash mentors. All right, without further ado, let's jump right into the interview. All right, Dr. Bill Hunter, welcome to Medsider Radio. I appreciate you coming on. Really looking forward to the conversation. Thank you for. having me. I'm looking forward to it as well. All right. Well, I usually like to start here. I recorded a very brief bio of your background at the outset of this episode. But if you can kind of, you know, give us an elevator-style pitch, right, of your journey kind of leading up to your work at Canary. Yeah. Well, I'm a doc by training. I actually never wanted to be anything other than a doc.

But I went to graduate school before I went to medical school. And one of the things I was was working on over the years evolved into what became the drug-coded stent. And that became the taxis stent and pachlactyl balloons and all that kind of stuff. And one day my research project had several thousand employees and manufacturing plants around the world. And that was the end of my medical career. So I spent 20-something years putting drugs onto medical devices. And then when And that business kind of ran its course. I've spent the last 12 years putting sensors on medical devices. So as I often say, old dog, same trick.

So, but that's kind of the thing that I've been doing. Yeah. You're being humble. And I think most people that are listening, or at least a fair number, probably are familiar with at least some of your work anyway. But you, you know, you started Canary. It looks like 10, 12 years ago now, something like that. Yeah.

You've been out of a while kind of early. And I think in the sensor. game, at least within the device space. So as it as it kind of pertains to to Canary, we'll kind of go back in time and learn a little bit more about your journey building the company. But for those that are familiar, give us maybe a high level understanding kind of of the device, the platform, and maybe touch briefly on the kind of the most recent cardiac application as well. Yeah, I mean, the principle behind the business was was really straightforward. You know, billions of dollars of medical hardware going to human beings every single day.

and the vast majority of them don't report back. They don't give the physician any type of feedback on whether the procedure was successful, how the patient's recovering. And anyways, to make a long story short, it isn't necessarily a technological problem. So almost everything you need to make a sensor-enabled device exists. The power sources exist. We have pacemaker batteries. We have things like that.

Transmission technology. We have Bluetooth. We have telemetry. The electronics industry is made. a wealth of sensors. So it was really just fabricating them together in unique architecture, and that was the vision behind the business. You know, it took 12 years part is just what it's like in medicine.

You know, you can't do this kind of stuff overnight. But it's been a very, very exciting journey, actually. I've really enjoyed it a lot. You know, we're starting to see and learn things that we've never seen before. If you love science, that's exactly the type of thing you want to be a part of. And just real briefly, I know the recent launch of the cardiac application is kind of a big deal in we're reporting this, you know, in early Q2 of 24. But the first kind of, the first swing was in the orthopedic space, correct? Yeah.

Yeah. So we didn't wake up one morning and decide to be an orthopedics company. when we, by the time we built the devices, and I know we're on audio, but that's the stem to a knee. And just the size of the technology in 2017 was about the size of a AAA battery. And so there were very few devices in the world

that were big enough to handle that type of architecture without changing. the function of the device. So, you know, at that point in time, you know, knees really, maybe hips to a lesser extent were the only thing is big enough that could potentially have that size of an implant. So we became an orthopedist company. So the first two, three devices we made, you know, the first device was knees, we're working on hips, working on shoulders. And that's how we got started. You know, as I alluded to, most of the technology actually comes from a pacemaker background. And my background's all from years in interventional cardiology and so are the most people we work

with. But it took us until 2011 for the technology to get small enough that we could do things in the cardiovascular space. Got it. Got it. That's super helpful. And for those listening, if you don't get to the full write-up on MedSider, the website is canarymedical.com. It's spelled just as it sounds C-A-N-A-R-Y-M-A-MEDICAL.com, you can definitely encourage you to check that out to learn a little bit more about this technology that we're going to be talking about in great detail over the next, you know, half hour to 45 minutes or so. But Bill, if you can kind of give us an understanding, we touched briefly on orthopedics and then kind of the recent transition to the cardiac space, maybe kind of where the company's at currently in terms of, you know,

development, reg, clin, commercialization, et cetera. Yeah, we, the goal of the business really is, to work with a variety of medical device companies to turn their non-communicative devices into smart devices. That's what we do. So we work with Zimmer Biomet on knees, hips, and shoulders. We got breakthrough status from FDA on all three of those. The knee, which is called Persona IQ, has been available in the U.S. now for about almost three years, coming up on three years. So we're commercial. There are human beings walking around in the U.S. with smart knees in them right now. Shoulders and hips should be next in the next little while.

The cardiovascular that you're referring to is what I would call a monitor, a physiologic cardiac monitor as opposed to an electrical monitor. That is now, you know, has just been in human trials, so it's in development. And you'll see us go into spine and a few other things over the next. a little while. So combination of commercial to, you know, clinical development to preclinical development, about six or seven different devices. Got it. And I'm looking at your website now. And we'll go, we'll, we'll transition and kind of go back in time and learn a little bit more about kind of your cross-functional expertise and key learnings throughout your career. But the main headline on the website is giving medical devices a voice, you know, letting

medical data be heard. So if I'm a consumer, right, and I'm maybe talking with my, let's focus on orthopedics, since that's, you know, your commercial there. If I'm, and, and, and, and, and, you know, Dr. Smith says, um, you know, look, I'm gonna, I think this, this, this, this new kind of, uh, implant with this, these, these canary capabilities might be a good fit. And, and, and I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, what is this? Tell me about this. How do you, how do you, what's the, what's the, what's the, what's the end goal, right, for the patient, uh, with, with this sensing technology. Yeah, that's, that's a good question. I give you kind of a person.

approach that. So my older sister had her hip replaced. And, you know, she called me like every two, three days, you know, is this normal? When can I stop walking with a cane? You know, how long do I have to take my narcotics? You know, when can I drive? What should I be doing? How much exercise? Am I overdoing it? My underdoing it? And I think the reality is that most patients, when they have a major procedure don't know what to expect, you know. And we as physicians walk them to the front door of the hospital and we say, best luck, and come see me in two weeks, two months, whatever the case may be. But a lot happens on an hour to hour day to day basis between those relatively infrequent clinical visits. And what we now have enough data to do is, you know, and compared to your age and

sex and all the rest is show you what your recovery should look. And so you can pick up the phone on Tuesday and say, gee, you know, this is day 10 post-op. You know, my activity levels are normal or maybe they're not. Maybe they need to be increased or, you know, my range of motion is excellent or, you know, maybe I should be concerned because a lot of people just have no idea how active they should be on day 10 or how much the knee should be moving on on day 14. And they can't be calling their docs every day and they don't get the chance to see their docs every day. So this is really a way for you to monitor your own progress at home, see how you're doing, you know, have an idea if

things are going according to expectation. And I think that's pretty powerful for a lot of people. Yeah, no doubt. And I, we won't spend too much time on this, but this whole topic kind of resonates especially with me. So my mom has a metal on metal hip implant, right? And I don't think like my siblings and I, we didn't really, I don't think we fully realize that really up until recently because she had some higher metal toxicity levels in her blood. And it caused me to kind of rethink like, well, this is a like, especially as consumers get more smart around about implants that are being put in their body, this is going to become like really powerful, I would tend to think. Or like, in demand, right? Because these are things that aren't easily taken out, right? And especially with

sort of this burgeoning trend of longevity, enthusiasts, et cetera, they're going to want data, right? Even if there's nothing wrong, right, just to be able to have a sense of like, what's going on with that, that implant that's my hip or my knee? I think you bring up a really good point. I mean, first off, you know, when I was in medical school, it was, it was very paternalistic. It was, you know, yes, doctor, thank you, doctor. You know, consumer. patients have changed, right? People want answers to everything right away. They pick up the phone and they're going to get an answer. It might not be a good one, but they're going to get an answer no matter what. They're going to Google and, you know, maybe it's relevant, maybe it's not. But first and

foremost, people want to know what's going on. The second thing I would say is, you know, I worked in the emergency room a little bit when I was younger. And I would say, you know, 50, 75 percent of people who come in are just wondering if everything's okay. You know, no, you're not having a heart attack. It's, you know, it's the pizza and beer, right? I mean, that's the kind of thing they want to know. People are concerned. Something's not going right.

They want to know, you know, is this minor? Is this major? And there's not a lot of ways to know that. And so I think providing technologies, I don't just mean ours, I mean, you know, any type of kind of feedback, just to let people know whether they're within the parameters of normal, whether this is concerning, whether this is not. concerning. I think that's really important. We don't have enough health care workers to be, you know, attending to everything. And to the extent that you can safely do that in a non-invasive

or a monitoring way that provides a patient with some at-home knowledge, I got to believe that's the way things are going to have to go. Oh, 100%. Yeah. No, no, I totally agree. And I have a bit of an atypical background in the sense that most of my careers have spent in traditional device, but I did spend a handful of years building a business that technically was a device company, but had much more of a consumer kind of bias towards it. And I just see this trend only continuing, right, especially as maybe the 30, 40, 50 year olds now that are in the biohackers, then longevity enthusiasts, et cetera, they get another 10, 15 years ago and they start getting implants, right? They're absolutely going to want this type of information. There's no doubt about it.

And incidentally, it's not just the people falling behind. there you know if you overdo it after a joint replacement that's not a good thing either yeah um and so more is not always better and i think having an understanding you know i i'm a die hard runner you know you don't you don't you just wake up one day and go run a marathon you pace yourself into that right you you have to do it in an organized and coherent way or you're going to hurt yourself and i think that's what we need in all kinds of of rehab we need an organized and coherent way to go through the recovery process to give you the best possibility of a, you know, a high quality outcome.

Yeah, yeah, no doubt. And you touched on it real briefly, but just that sense of comfort, right? And eliminating, I mean, there's, you know, healthcare shortages everywhere, right? I mean, there's exacerbated post-COVID. And, you know, just being able to pull up your phone and be like, oh, look, everything's good. Like that little twinge that I'm feeling in my knee or whatever, I'm good, or at least, you know, based on kind of the data that I'm seeing.

I don't need to go make that that expensive ER visit. Yeah. So it's really cool. So with that said, let's go back in time a little bit and learn about and kind of, you know, cover your journey, maybe even before Canary and then maybe, definitely,

definitely feel free to kind of layer in your experiences, building the company as well. So with that said, first question kind of, I've got for you, Bill, is take us back to kind of those earlier. I know you mentioned that you've been commercial with the orthopedic

in the orthopedic space for three or four years. but I'm sure the current sensor, right, looks a lot different than what it looked like back in, you know, 2012, 13, 14, et cetera, some of those early days. So when you think about just your experiences iterating on devices at Canary and even go back to, right, like some of the stuff you were doing at Angiotech, what do you think are like a couple key pieces of advice or really key things that any MedTech entrepreneur founder really needs to keep in mind when they're trying to like move through those early stages of development on a on a what's probably a pretty lean budget yeah you know in the interest of trying to keep a general answer that would be applicable

to everybody not just to to our experience i think for the most part and you did this in your past we we try and make devices that work so i'll take that as a given we're all trying to make a better device that's you know superior to whatever the current standard of care is i mean otherwise what's the point? So that's a given. But I think what's wasn't so important or maybe just wasn't apparent to me when I got started that now seems more more relevant is that you now need to think more about how your device is going to be used and how it's going to be incorporated into the practice of medicine. Right. So first and foremost, you know, if your technology, converts an in-hospital to an out-of-hospital procedure or it allows earlier discharge or,

you know, in some way, shape, or form shortens that episode of care within the hospital. That's really, really important. Even if you're better, but it adds a two-day stay, that may be a tough cell, right? I mean, we need to think about less invasive, you know, it's not just efficacy. Unfortunately, it's about, you know, getting the patient out of hospital as quickly as possible and doing that in the least invasive way possible. The second part is something that I've really only thought about in the last couple of years, and that's physician workflow.

And, you know, I don't know when you go back 10 years, it was something nobody even thought about. You know, if it required a lot of servicing or a lot of handholding or a lot of handholding or a lot of interaction with the care team. We just took that as a given. If you came up with the therapy and it was a better therapy, you know, people figure it out. That's just not the case name. We don't have enough human beings to do the work that needs to be done. You know, I just had a class reunion from my medical class. A number of physicians leaving practice early, you know, because of the workflow and burnout and that translates to health care team. You actually have to reduce the workflow in a practice, period, full stop. You have to reduce the number of in-person

visits. You have to reduce the amount of time spent looking at things and doing things. And it's got to be more streamlined and better. That's something we never really thought about. Now, I think almost about nothing else because, you know, we create a lot of data. If all I do is dump a bunch of data on the desks of overworked healthcare professionals, I've just made their life worse, not better. So we really have to figure out, you know, not just us, but anybody working in this space. How is this going to work in the day-to-day delivery of care? And am I making life easier or not? Yeah, that's such good points. And it's interesting. I was actually recording a podcast on the other side of the table earlier this week. And I mentioned a very similar thing because we were talking about this

notion of how do you, how do you decide if an idea is worth working on? Right. And it's so easy for like I think any ambitious entrepreneurial-minded, you know, a person, whether you're in MedTech or elsewhere, but obviously for the purposes of this discussion, we're talking about med tech. It's easy to get stuck in this framework where I'm going to add this new thing or I'm going to add this new thing. And this is this new feature over here is going to do this, this and that. And in reality, to your point, we should be to actually thinking about how can we, what can we remove, right? What can we remove from the process, the workflow, et cetera, to make things more simple, to make things more easy. And like just, it's, it's, it's,

interesting because we um at fastway which is the company that i'm i spend um my time at these days we recently completed a first in human study with uh with our devices and that actually that actually surfaced uh experience um and i won't go into into great detail but it was one of these things where like we had you know really talented interventionist doing these cases and one of the key learnings was like the the feedback run uh with the with the devices like how can we how can we make this modification where it's even more simple yes right like just make it more straightforward more simple. And it's, you know, I mean, you just hit the nail on the head. Right. It's like, yeah. Tie in your first question, right? Who wants to do more work? Well, the patient does, actually, right?

The patient wants to be more involved in their care. They don't want a passive experience, right? So transferring some of this workload, and I, you know, I say that in quotations, but transferring some of this workload to the patient, you know, where they're self-assessing, self-monitoring, doing some of that. That's something the patient wants. wants, right? So it's not necessarily, you know, doing less per se, you know, it's having different people doing the right things and not having the most overworked or overburdened members of the of the care team having even more things to do. It's about spreading that across and making it more of a collaborative effort because honestly, that's what patients want as well. Yeah. And so I think those two things that you've talked about, if you can get them to come together in the right

direction, that's something that's going to be a therapy that has a high probability of being accepted. Yeah, that's super insightful. I've actually never thought about in that sort of frame, if you will, like basically almost transferring the workload. Because there's oftentimes, as you just mentioned, there's there's inherent friction of like as a patient, I want access to more. Like, tell me more. I'm going to go, I'm going to go to Google, Dr. Google. I'm going to go to Chad, GPT, and I'm going to try to find out as much information as possible. And as a physician, you probably know this more than most, right? You're like, look, like, I don't have time to like give you all this information, et cetera. And there's like this, this, you know, almost like

budding of heads, if you will, right, but if we can find clever ways to transfer that workload away from health care providers to patients who actually want it, right, that's a really, really good way to think about it. I think of it as two diverging lines, right? So on one hand, you've got physicians who just can't, and I shouldn't just say physicians, nursing staff, who just don't have any more bandwidth for any more patients, right? So we need to reduce that. On the other hand, every patient wants personalized care. So that is saying, give me more, more, more. And the other line saying, give me less, less, less, please. And those two lines are completely going in opposite directions. It is my sincere belief in why I've spent the last

decade of my life doing this is that the only way to solve that problem is digitally. That's how every other industry does it. Right. You know, Amazon doesn't solve their problems. customer service contacting every single person, right? A lot of these things are done digitally. They're, you know, they get better and better as you do that. And people are able to have a personalized experience without necessarily having to go direct to the information source 100% of the time. That's what's happened in every other business. And the business of medicine, by whether it wants to or not has no choice but to go in that direction. Right, right. Simply because the scale of line demand. Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. Let's stick on this topic a little bit and talk about sort of transitions for physicians, right, in medicine to business, right? Because you obviously went through that and have a lot of swings at the plate now and have had, you know, quite a bit of success. And there's a lot of physicians, right, that listen to this list show that have, that are a more entrepreneurial-minded, right? They're fairly ambitious. They've got a great idea maybe in their head. Talk to us a little bit just about your experiences, right, making that transition. And granted, you know, I understand that you've been in industry for for a while now, but I'm sure you know a lot of docs in your network that maybe have an inkling, right,

to kind of go the startup path or maybe, you know, try to try to do their own thing. So what would you, I guess, what's the typical advice that you offer to them, you know, as they think about maybe making that change? I always give them two pieces of advice. The first is don't overthink it. So if you have an idea and you're passionate about it, And it's something you genuinely want to pursue. Go ahead and do it.

You know, just get started. Don't think through to the end game. Don't, you know, Gant chart it out because first off, nothing goes the way you plan to anyhow. So just get started. Roll up your sleeves. You know, if the idea doesn't pan out, it's going to become fairly apparent soon and off. And if it does, you know, you're just going to progress along the journey with it.

But don't, you know, don't start making a friend of mine help. always says, you know, don't make permanent decisions based on temporary situations. So just, you know, get started. The second thing I always say is, look, medicine is this wonderful safety net, right? It's a great profession. You can go back to it. So if you want to take three months or four months off and you want to try something for a little bit, you know, maybe you should. Or maybe you can do something part time for a while. And if it doesn't pan out, it's not like you lost your job and you're, you know, you're done for good, you know, you're going to be able to reintegrate yourself back into what you were doing. And so it really does afford you the opportunity to experiment

a little bit with your career. And that's what I did. For the first five, seven years, you know, I stayed. I had clinical practice and I spent a few hours a day working on angiotech. And, you know, that program happened to work out. So I followed that particular pathway. But if it hadn't, you know, I would have been very happy to go back into medicine and the like. So don't overthink it. Don't assume you need to have all the answers before you get started. There's nothing wrong with putting a toe in the water and just seeing where it takes you. And the nice thing about medicine is, you know, you've always got this wonderful fallback.

If it turns out that that's not, you know, not going to be the next career for you. Right. And for the physician that, let's say they've got, let's say they've got an idea and it's actually shown some life, right? There's, there's, you know, some signs of product market fit. There's maybe a path to venture funding, big market, et cetera. And they're trying to, they're faced with that decision of like, well, how, I mean, can I kind of do both? Can I, can I still practice and can I still run a company?

How feasible is it? At what point do you think they should maybe hand that off to, you know, a CEO or some sort of management team? You know, I always ask the same question when that happens. I say, what do you want to be when you grow up? The best advice I ever got when we started angiotech was just that. So it was myself, you know, I was a medical student, my graduate supervisor, and a very accomplished interventional radiologist. And they said, what do you want to be when you grow?

And my professor said, you know, I'd like to be involved in this. I'd like it to be, you know, I'm interested in the research. I'm not interested in the business. You know, he followed that role at angiotech. Larry Arsnow, Lindsey McCann, was the interventional radiologist, said, look, I'm interested in the clinical studies. I'm very academically oriented. I would like to be on the podium presenting the stuff I'd like to be involved in implementing

the studies and that's what I'd like to do. And in fact, that is what he did. I had no idea what I was going to do and I was still in training. so I kind of kept my foot in and my foot out until, as I've already explained, the decision got made for me. But the moral of the story is I think you've got to be honest with yourself. And you sit there and say, you know what, I really do like being a doc. And that's really what I want to do. And I want to practice medicine. I'd like to be entrepreneurial. I'd like to be involved. I'd like to have interests outside

of medicine. Then great. But keep that separate. Understand that you're going to have to hand, you know, your baby off at some point. And, and be. okay with that. Right? On the other hand, obviously, if you're like, you know what, I'm a control freak and I can see this through to the end, then accept the fact that, you know, it may consume your medical career along the way. But, you know, take a good, long, hard think of where you want to be in five years. Because the truth is, if it's successful, you will not be able to do both full time. It's, it's not possible. Hey there, it's Scott, and thanks for listening in so far. The rest of this conversation is only available via our private podcast for MedSider Premium

members. If you're not a premium member yet, you should definitely consider signing up. You'll get full access to the entire library of interviews dating back to 2010. This includes conversations with experts like Renee Ryan, CEO of Cala Health, Nadine Mared, CEO of CVRX, and so many others. As a premium member, you'll get to join live interviews with these incredible medical device and health technology entrepreneurs. In addition, you'll get a copy of every volume of Medsider mentors at no additional cost.

To learn more, head over to MedsiderRadio.com forward slash premium. Again, that's Medsiderradio.com forward slash premium.