Episode 35: Innovation in a Regulated Industry

Hey listeners, welcome to SphereCast, a podcast all about technology, technology advice, technology inspiration, and how real entrepreneurs have used technology to build their businesses from the ground up. If you're wondering how technology can support your business goals, rest assured our guests have been there and done that.

Healthcare is a high risk, high reward industry. The reward: giving real hope to people who need it, possibly even saving lives. The risk: failing to comply with mountains of regulations and complexities that vary entirely from country to country. So, how do you change lives in new ways through new technologies while dancing through a web of strict rules and policies? It's a unique skill, a unique skill held by our guest this week.

Luke here for another week of SphereCast, and this week Xenia and I speak with Ansgar Lange, Chief Operating Officer at Nostos Genomics. Globally, nearly 300 million people live with a rare genetic disease, and, for many, discovering and diagnosing these illnesses can take years. Nostos Genomics is changing the game by leveraging new technologies to dramatically reduce this timeframe. Prior to his work at Nostos Genomics, Ansgar worked in various senior-level roles at other healthcare-related companies. Ansgar is a master of scalability. His resume tells the story of one who can prep a small company for fast execution. This skill is a difficult one to master, but its level of difficulty is elevated even higher considering Ansgar's industry of choice, that is healthcare. So, how does one go about building a rapid growth, innovative company in a highly regulated industry?

On the podcast, Ansgar discusses the challenges of a Chief Operating Officer in a healthcare startup and how to properly innovate within the bounds of your chosen industry. So without further delay, here's a conversation with Ansgar.

Hi everyone, Xenia's here with SphereCast, and today we're thrilled to host Ansgar from Nostos Genomics. Hi, how are you?

Hi Xenia, I'm doing very, very well. Thank you very much.

We usually like to start with an icebreaker. Could you share with our audience something interesting about yourself that no one really knows?

Yeah, I had to think about that one a bit, but I think I have a good one. I'm actually completely addicted to coffee, but that's probably not quite the unusual one. But the unusual one is that I started refurbishing old espresso machines when I was probably 22. Started buying a couple of old machines from eBay and, yeah, climbed up the ladder of coffee machines over time. So now I'm owning probably like, I don't know, five different coffee machines and some of them are quite unique ones, and I really love coffee. And yeah, sometimes also still working on these machines if I have a bit of time.

I wish I had known that before because I'm into coffee as well. Wow. I'm soon going to be acquiring a La Marzocco Linea. That's going to be my start, so that's what I'm hoping to get. I do collect a lot of different, you know, brewing apparatus, you know, like different things, different machines. I haven't reached that level that I will go for the barista kind of thing, like a Linea, but I did propose some cheap options to my wife and she's like, "No, if you're going for one, La Marzocco." She's into the the whole third wave coffee scene, so

Yeah.

so she's opening a cafe right now in Kyiv and here we are. So yes, exactly. So we are in coffee as well, into this new coffee culture, and we get the special beans and everything. Yeah, totally in.

Perfect. Amazing. I mean, we could spend a whole hour speaking about that. I just got a new one from actually a company out of Seattle called Slayer, so I love it. It's an amazing machine. But okay, I'm glad that

That's another podcast we could do.

Yeah, exactly.

Okay, great. Great. Amazing. Good to know. We're off to a good start.

So moving from coffee to on to the business, I'd like to start with your most recent venture. In your own words, what is Nostos Genomics and why did you join this company?

So Nostos is ultimately helping people with genetic diseases to get a diagnosis at the right time. And the reason why Nostos focuses on it is that only 30% of people with a rare genetic disease get a diagnosis when doing a genetic genetic testing. And there's a huge bottleneck in the interpretation of the data, mainly coming from new methods, in particular next-generation sequencing, and that interpretation is very time-consuming, difficult, and laborious at the moment.

And that's where Nostos comes into play. We've developed a software that is helping genetic testing laboratories to improve the accuracy and speed of variant interpretation. So of of variants are kind of mutations in the end, and so the interpretation of that data we accelerate quite significantly and improve the quality. And we are using machine learning algorithms to speed up that process and really like bringing together all the necessary information and even beyond that, like additional information that can help to solve cases.

I joined I got introduced to the company through the network of Entrepreneur First, which is kind of a startup program based out of or based around the the globe, but originally coming from London. And I joined because I think it's and it's an amazing team. It's an amazing amazing vision to help people with genetic diseases to get like really a diagnosis which can help them to like get proper treatment. And then I think it's also really interesting from a technology perspective for me to use cutting-edge cutting-edge technologies to really like help and and innovate the healthcare sector.

That's that's an amazing mission. I mean, yeah, really ahead of the curve, I guess. You know, these are the things we haven't really heard of and people often get scared when, you know, there's there's science being used in genetic, etc. There's some stigma attached to that area anyway. But yeah, so I'd love to understand a little bit more in terms of the the business and technology challenges that you were faced with when you started off in this position and how's it working out now? What have you solved along the way and how do you, you know, where do you stand today?

Yeah, I think technology-wise, there's probably the main challenge for us right now is on the one side, capacity, which is a typical challenge that most small startups have, but the other one is focus. And on the other side, obviously the endless opportunities that one have when it comes to technologies. So I think we had to learn, and we we had to prioritize quite heavily what we're going to do and what we don't do. And like I'm I'm being like to be more specific, so do we develop this kind of feature, or do we develop that kind of feature? Or do we provide analysis for also not only rare disease cases and for hereditary diseases, or for somatic diseases as well? And there are endless opportunities, and I could probably build a roadmap for the next 10 years with endless opportunities, but like it's not going to help us in the short run.

So one of the main challenges we had to overcome is really like getting a clear picture of the space, understanding much better what customers want and what are the big what are the biggest bottlenecks for them, and then really tailoring our roadmaps and then our like development to it. So I would say that was one of the main technology-related challenges.

The other thing, clearly, was COVID, more in the sense of, I mean, there are many business-related challenges with COVID as well, which I can touch on later, but like for for me in particular, I think it was also when I joined the company, COVID, it was like remote-only working environment, and obviously that is like that's a unique experience. I've never had that in my life when I started a job that not seeing my my colleagues face to face. And I think that comes with challenges and which, yeah, we overcame over time.

I think now, the how like from a technology perspective, probably moving a bit back to that, how we try to solve it is obviously getting very close to our customers, finding ambassadors, finding the like finding power users where with who we can really work together closely and understanding on a regular basis what their needs look like. Because otherwise, I think I've seen it many times that people have great ideas, but if you don't play it back to your to your customers, you will never kind of get to a proper a proper product which is being adopted quickly.

We were speaking with another CTO a few weeks ago, and one of the things that this person talked about was the trust when you go and speak to your customer. And obviously when you have a new solution or relatively, you know, different kind of solution which they may not have tried out before. So how do you win Does winning trust matter here, like, and how is that something that you guys had to like do you have experts on board who are from this field, and scientists, PhD guys who can, you know, who are able to have these conversations, or were there any difficulties in that process?

100%. I think trust is, especially for startups in the healthcare sector or digital health sector, is is always a challenge. I think we tackle it in different ways. On the one side, we have an amazing team of experts on our side working for the company, and like, yeah, most of them are have actually a PhD. But I think on top of that, we also have quite a great network of advisors from across the globe that obviously can add academic validation to it or increase our reputation.

Additionally, I think as a company, we decided also to go down the road of medical medical device regulation. So in Europe, we recently got a CE certification within for in vitro diagnostic device, which is an important signal for customers in Europe, but also I think, for example, in the US, because it comes with requirements when it comes to quality management systems, for example, and validation.

I think validation and and thereby obviously building trust is is ultimately always the issue, especially when we're speaking about machine learning because you're saying, "Oh, here's machine doing something that typically a human used to do, and you need to prove that the machine is not making any mistakes." So I think we have done validation on our side and have proven that it is performing much better than the industry standard. It can solve more than 50% more than that standard. But on top of that, we are also now doing validation with the data from Genomics England, which is kind of a project where they collected almost 100,000 genomes from UK population and we're using that data to also improve, yeah, the or like to prove the validation for for our product.

Ultimately, the other aspect from the technical side that we've done is our machine learning algorithms, we follow a a really a white-box approach. So we're not trying to give the result to users and say, "That's it, right? Take it or leave it. We're not going to tell you how it works." We really provide sub-predictions and follow a white-box approach there where we try to be as transparent as possible to that the user can make the final decision on their own. And that's what it's all about. We are a decision support tool. We're not meant to like take away any decision that an expert would typically take. We're just here to help.

I like that approach. I mean, I'm getting similar themes. So we spoke with somebody else who's solving challenges in the musculoskeletal world. That's another episode we released a few days ago. And similar things. Like, the patient should be the one who decides what care path they need to choose. And and yeah, so that comes through trust and giving them the best advice and helping them make a decision rather than deciding for them, which is which has been kind of how the industry is right now. The healthcare, it's it's not very much human care, it's healthcare, isn't it? So, yeah. Okay, right. Great, that's a good one. Xenia, did you want to talk about some product development process here and learn more from Ansgar?

You read my mind, Luke. Yes, thank you. I would love to understand your product strategy, Ansgar. How did you go with creating, you know, the MVP? Was it cheap and dirty solution, or did you go with a high-end technology to be scalable and future-proof? I would love to understand the thought process in selecting technology.

Sure. I can probably only touch on the surface here because the MVP was released before I joined the company, but happy to like, yeah, like explain that a bit. So obviously we are operating in a regulated market and very we need to be very careful about like releasing anything that is not has not been proven or like completely checked. So we really the company focused really the first two years on building a very solid foundation when it comes to technology, really making sure that all the data are correct, that they're properly curated, everything got tested, and that results like that the the algorithms were going through a first validation. This was extremely important to make sure that again, like coming back to trust, we're not like screwing it up very early in the days where we make mistakes, rookie mistakes, that you will hardly get away from, or like it will take quite a bit of time.

So I think like it's not like medical device industry and diagnostics for people with very severe diseases potentially, it's not a field where you can cut too many corners. Yes, probably like some of the interface bits, you you're not building the perfect interface in the first place, but especially when it comes to actually the data and the results that we're providing, they need to be 100% correct, and that's what we made sure.

And when you came in, obviously the product building process was ramping up. So at that point, were there any significant, let's say, changes in the direction at the point you you came in or was it just like, okay, let's carry on building, what's there? It's a good foundation. I know it's a tricky question. I know you're laughing there. But just, you know, if you can provide some some knowledge here, that'll be useful for the audience.

Yeah. Absolutely. Well, I hope that I I created some impact, but I think there are probably two things that changed around the time when I joined, and hopefully they are correlated somehow to it to me. I think on the one side, the product wasn't commercially used by anyone before I joined. So one of the things that I focused on quite heavily was also like bringing the product to the market and making sure that everything is in place. And I have experience from my previous jobs in scaling startups in particular and taking them pretty much from startup to a scale-up phase. So I think a lot of the things that I was trying to help with was, yeah, getting things ready, making sure that they're all in place and that we're ready to being used in a commercial setting.

And that included things like the CE certification, the medical device certification that I was talking about. That included, well, getting contracts ready, like getting privacy policies ready, like making it also proper from a legal perspective. But then also, obviously from a technology perspective, making sure that I like I can like we can scale up. I'm not not me changing the infrastructure or anything like that, but obviously bringing that up and making sure that this is a topic across the company.

I think the other aspect that I was driving from also the early days was making sure that we know where we're heading. Because I think like it's always important to have a fairly short-term focus as a startup because you're and that's quite natural, but at the same time, I've seen it that it also requires at least loose idea what where you're heading, what's your North Star? And so I I was pushing that quite a bit to make sure to understand what could a rough roadmap over the next 24 months look like, because then it makes it much easier to say yes to the one things and no to the other things, and that brings me back to the prioritization. So I think these are probably two things that I was trying to push quite a bit, and that obviously spills over heavily into the technology sector where you also say no to certain things, like, "Oh yeah, we could integrate with this partner to add another feature, but no, we're not doing it because it's not within our kind of scope or not within our kind of strategy for the next 24 months." So I think that these are kind of the two the two aspects that I'd like to highlight.

That's interesting. So knowing what you know now, what do you feel are the most difficult decisions from a COO perspective to make in a business?

Yeah, I think, I mean, first of all, like right now, well, COO is is a very let me start that again, sorry. So I would say like the position of a COO is defined quite differently in different companies, so it's I think there it's hard to give a general answer. But for me right now, there are a couple of things that were probably difficult decisions. On the one side, really making sure that things got prioritized according to the stage of the company. So like obviously like things, you could talk about getting legal contracts in in place for certain situations or certain policies in place that are really needed down the line, but is this the right focus right now? It's probably not if it's not like a legal requirement or regulatory requirement because it's just like not the best use of my or anyone's time.

So I think like a COO typically has to really juggle a lot of different activities and making sure that they're like aligned nicely in the end. So one thing I also did was introducing like the the tool of OKRs, so Objectives and Key Results, because I think I saw that not all parts of companies are super well-aligned and so that allowed us to really have a vision on like what are the main objectives for the company in this quarter, and hence then also align the activities.

So I guess saying no to things is the most it's one of the most difficult decisions a COO has to has to make. I think the other thing, at least in this company right now, is also saying no because of financial reasons, right? There are a lot of things I would love to say yes to, but like we are still have to live within our means and like spend our money wisely to really make sure that we get the proper return that we need in in in the right like in the right time. So I think that's not necessarily always the case, and in larger corporates, you have like CFOs and and other people, but I'd like to stay close to that because I think operations also need to really be closely aligned with financial aspects. So the other difficult decision is also saying no because of money, not just because of priority. So I think these are probably the two things that I find typically most difficult.

Very difficult to balance all this. Yeah, and yeah, must give you some sleepless nights at times after you've made the decision. So, yeah. Okay, thanks for sharing that. Appreciate that completely. So, I mean, we touched upon COVID a little bit. So, I just wanted to understand, has COVID impacted business? I mean, has there been a change in direction at all since COVID? I don't I mean, I I struggle to see the difference in, you know, the healthcare. If anything, people are more healthier for it. But yeah. Yeah, but what has been COVID's impact? I think it's a very broad question. It applies to so many aspects in in in any everyone's lives because there's been an impact. But yeah, let's let's learn from you. Maybe you want to highlight one or two key things that, you know, you personally were, you know, personally affected you or, you know, as an organization.

Yeah, absolutely. I'll touch on on a couple of things that I find really well like not surprising, but like that that will probably always stay the same for the foreseeable future. I think the first thing is, and and that's being widely discussed, is kind of what's the future of work, right? And I guess historically, like all or 90% of the people were in the office in Berlin office and and 90% of the time. So and obviously with with COVID, there was a proper lockdown here and and no one was in the office and up until now pretty much no one is in the office. So it's 100% remote. I mean, we we meet now and then, but like we had obviously heavily to adapt and people also decided to, I don't know, like work from a different location because it's it was a better place for them.

And I think one of the things that like that the company had to learn, but also everyone involved, is really working together remotely. And but I think in the end, they even though it was like a burden in the short run, it's going to be extremely helpful for us and for most companies, but also for us in particular in the long run. We need experts in our company, like, for example, specialists in machine learning or in genetic data science. So like really people that, yeah, there are not many out there. So like we really also need to hire people outside of Berlin, or even outside of Germany, or even outside of Europe. So I think one thing that like the the remote-first hybrid model is the opportunity that is offering is to work across the globe with different people in different time locations. And I think that is really a it was a negative impact in the short run because it was a lot of like difficult communications, but then in the long run, I think it's it's an advantage.

The other thing from the business perspective more is probably in the short run, because our our customers are genetic testing labs and at least in Europe, that's quite an overlap with the labs that also doing testing for COVID, or did testing for COVID in the in the early days. That meant that they had a strong focus on that, right? So like it was very hard to get in touch with them because they were completely overloaded with doing genetic testing. And obviously that was also like, let's say, a new business field for them that like was accelerating like crazy. So it was like it was a bit difficult in the in the first few months, I would say, to to get in touch with with our customers.

However, the other thing that really helped with, just to be also on the positive side again with with COVID impact, is the acceptance of of testing and genetic testing in general, right? Everyone knows nowadays what is a PCR test and and like in the end, it's like like a genetic test. Because everyone like being tested, right? At least the acceptance of testing in general in the population, but also with healthcare professionals, has increased dramatically. And like that hopefully like genetic testing, there's a whole discussion about the ethical aspects of that and and, well, is is that safe and what not. And and these things, I think, um, the the acceptance of that or the attitude towards it towards it has changed dramatically with COVID as well. And I think that will stay the same in the future. So it's a positive business impact as well from our perspective.

Could you talk us through the goals that you guys have set, let's say, in the next, you know, few years? Where do you see yourself going as an organization?

I would say I'm trying to break it down a bit. I think on the one side, we want to grow as an organization and that requires a great team. We really like we really value different personalities and to have a like very international team with different ideas, different backgrounds to make sure that our culture is great, but also it like it fuels innovation typically, and and we've seen it many times. So building a great team will be necessary for what we're trying to achieve.

I think in terms of what the business is trying to achieve achieve is obviously, first of all, a wide adoption of our technology. We really believe that we can help laboratories to do a great job in terms of genetic data interpretation. And so we we really have the ambition to become widely adopted and not just an edge case solution. And we will like introduce features that make that clear, but also our like business approach, pricing approach is focused quite a bit on making sure that any size of lab can you can benefit from this.

I think to do this, we also like trying to introduce features that we're not just doing on our like on our own, but introducing through partnerships. So we really believe in a collaborative approach here. There are a lot of great startups out there in the in this space that doing slightly different things than what we're doing. For example, a company in the US that we recently started partnering with that is doing literature research for like in the genetic space. So introducing that into our software was quite a straight-forward forward decision, but it really helps us to like to offer or augment our solution and and thereby offering additional value. So I think like that kind of integration with partners is is one of the clear strategies.

And ultimately, what we're really like trying to work on is connecting or working on the customer journey journey when it comes to genetic testing. So if you look at that, like it's still a very laborious and painful process for for patients, like starts from like giving the sample, not knowing what's going on there, sending it off, then getting sometimes results back that are really not well explained, or like really it takes a lot of time. So and these are different topics that we believe we can help with, partly through software, and and really build a well connection between all the players that are involved in genetic testing and improve that process for the benefit of the patients.

Thanks for breaking it down in a in that way. We'll be rooting for you guys here and looking out, you know, we'll be watching your progress and and supporting you along the way, definitely. So, yeah.

All right. So let's shift gears here and ask you some personal things. Hopefully you're not scared yet. So Ansgar, you're a highly intelligent and interesting person. I am curious to know, what does a typical day consist of for you? Do you have a routine? Do you meditate? What do you do to relax?

I would say I have kind of a routine. I'm not applying it every day, but I think three to four times a week, I'm like getting up fairly early and doing sports in the morning. So I tend to do sports around 6:30 in the morning. It sounds like from one of these weird vlogs that you read, but it's very like I had to force myself into it as well in the beginning because I was like, "Uh, it's too early. How can I ever get up at 6:00 and do sports right away without having breakfast or anything?" But it really helps to, on the one side, freshen up, like get a fresh mind and also have that done, right? Because after a long day of work, it's much harder to do sports. So like and and so I I'm trying to do that as as much as I can in right in the morning.

And then, I mean, having a shower, definitely a coffee after that, for sure. Having some oats. I'm pretty much having the same breakfast every day. I mean, with that, a home office helped quite a bit. I typically go through emails in the morning and then try to not touch them for quite a while to make sure that it's not like, "Oh yeah, another email. Take a look at it," to not get distracted every time. And and try to have the like kind of meetings in the morning, especially those where you have need to have like fresh mind and like, let's say, workshop style and where you need to be creative. Typically find that much easier in the morning.

Having a lunch. I'm I'm a big advocate of regular kind of regular meals because I think it's important. I've seen people skipping lunch because they're I say, "I don't need it." And I I I could live without lunch, but I think it's not helpful in the in the long run to be productive, and so I think some sort of lunch is extremely important. And then try to also work with I try to have focus work in the afternoon, working a bit with time blocking to make sure that I'm not just like people chipping in things in your diary. And then, yeah, I mean, I think in the evening, ideally doing something with friends. I'm a very social person, so I like to go out, meet friends. Yeah, so COVID wasn't the ideal period for me. And yeah, trying to get some proper sleep as well, and every now and then also, yeah, really probably properly having some some some longer evenings as well with friends. I think that's it's good to also have these kind of evenings every now and then.

Sounds like a plan. Yeah. I'm I'm curious what sports you're into.

Good one. So in the morning, I'm typically doing sort like some sort of fitness. So it's kind of doing fitness typically with weights. It's not like it's not weightlifting, it's more like it's more focused on really staying fit and kind of doing it in a way that are really like, yeah, it gives you energy, not just like building muscles. So that kind of thing.

And then outside of that, I used to play a lot of lacrosse, which is much more typical in the US, but like very rare in Germany. So, but I I still like to play it every now and then. And then other than that, I'm I'm open for any sort of sports, I would say. So I also did quite a couple of mud runs, which is just very a lot of fun. It's not for everyday, but like it's so much fun. I can recommend it to anyone.

That's amazing. I've it was on my to-do list to do that, the mud run, and it looks so much fun. Oh, my gosh. Wow.

Yeah, do it. It's a lot of fun.

I hear, you know, like like you need to have your hands in in the soil or mud every day. It really boosts your, you know, mood and everything. So the closer you are to the earth. So so sharing something, Xenia, never heard on the podcast, but I actually first thing I do in the morning is get up, I go out to the garden, and I walk bare feet. And I have to do 108 steps. So I I always stop during the snow period because we have like minus 10, 15 degrees Celsius temperatures here, so. But this year I'm planning to go ahead and, you know, keep doing it even in the grueling winters. So I've started out in the spring, summer, and then we'll see how it goes in the winter. But looking forward to doing it, yeah.

Sounds amazing. That's a good idea.

Let's move on here. So Ansgar, I have this burning question. You seem like very I mentioned this. You are a very highly intelligent person. How do you stay on top of the latest business and technology innovations and trends? Do you read any sort of newspaper, a blog, or maybe a different podcast that you listen to?

Yeah, it's I mean, the first thing I would say is like it's an illusion to stay on top of all this technology innovations. I think there's so many out there that you have to like focus quite a bit. I still like to like look at different industry and and see like learn new things, 100%, but I think staying on top of that is an illusion.

I typically I read when and follow a couple of really great companies that especially in the healthcare space supporting startups and that release regularly news about new startups, new technologies. So a company called Rock Health in the US focusing quite on healthcare startups, or Bio Eats World is a is a podcast by Andreessen Horowitz talking also especially about genetical or genetic-related topics. But it's in the context of a business world, and and I find that really fascinating and learning a lot of new things as well.

I think other than that, I'm listening to podcasts quite a bit myself. Actually, there's a there's a fun podcast, which is probably less relevant for the audience here, but like the German one, that from two scientists, and they they they explain five new papers or publications every other week, so twice a month, and they go through it. It's a really long one. It's like two and a half hours long. But it's really fun because they touch all sorts of topics from like space and biology and medicine and and what not. So I really like that because it's even though it's only small snippets and I think it's sometimes difficult to understand everything, I find it extremely fascinating and to to to learn new things.

I think the other thing I try to do is if I really feel there's a topic that I'm feeling attached to and I really want to learn more about is trying to do a spike into new into kind of topics every now and then. So this is not like something I'm doing once a week or so, but like on a irregular basis. I'm making notes for myself about interesting topics using Notion mainly. And then if I come across something that I feel like, "Oh, like seen this many times, I find it so fascinating. I want to learn about it," I I probably like would do a spike into it and really trying to learn more about it and then, yeah, I don't know, spending a weekend really diving deep into new topics. So that's I would say how I stay on top of it.

And I think ultimately also speaking to interesting people is is super valuable because that is a way to learn about new things in a fairly quick way and in a social way.

I agree with that. This is one of the benefits we've found of, you know, podcasting with with speakers and guests like yourself, that yeah, smarter by, you know, smarter by by the episode. That's that's the speed we are going at. So every time we learn something new, somebody sharing their daily routine, how they are, you know, overcoming the challenges, etc. So yeah, there's a there's a lot to do there.

I'd love to know from you, from a technology perspective or the product perspective, what what seems to be, you know, keeping you up at night? Like, what are these problems that you think like, "Oh gosh, you know, we need to think about this"? And you talked about creativity a lot, so obviously you're reading, but there are some things that you can't solve without trying. So what what seems to be the biggest challenge right now that you're facing? If you want to share something with the audience, and maybe there's an interesting approach that you're taking which you might want to bring to light on this episode.

I would say for for technology like from a technology perspective, there's great new things that happened over the last decade, so in in particular, let's say infrastructure as a service, everything from AWS and and Microsoft Azure and and what not. All these kind of services, it's amazing because like let's like 10 years ago that wasn't possible, and like hence building software that quickly wasn't wasn't possible at all. So I think that's one thing that I feel is is being solved really well.

What from our perspective and really coming from the healthcare world is not solved well is interoperability. And I know that's like a lot of people hate that world word, but I I think it's still valid for in in a lot of areas in healthcare. I think the challenge that we're seeing there is really connecting to different systems at different healthcare providers. So let's say a doctor has a certain software to manage manage patients, a hospital has a electronic health record system, and then you have a laboratory like that has a laboratory infrastructure system, a LIMS system, and then all these systems don't properly speak to each other. And so and or have some weird like standards for integrating data, and I feel like there's a lot of work that needs to be done on that side, and I almost feel sometimes that it it's kept that way intentionally because like a lot of people make a lot of money by giving consulting services to to integrate different kind kind of software solutions.

So I think we like, obviously analyzing a large amount of data, and for us data is key. Have the right data and and have it available when when needed to to provide our services. So getting that data in a much more standardized way and like in a in a way that is applicable ideally across the globe would be extremely valuable for us.

I think for small startups, and maybe here it can provide some some value also to the audience, is it's it's really hard to do integrations, and even though they're important because they can like be obviously a really good protection against potential other competitors, I would say, I think in early days it's very too difficult to rely on them. And I would say like if you can build as a small startup a a solution in a in a niche and create value there with a fairly good workflow without trying to rely too much on integration, that can still really help you to like identify like get to product-market fit quite quickly there, and then take it from there.

I think I've seen it many times that people have great ideas about how we could do this and that, and we could integrate here and get the data from there and what not, and that's all great ideas. But if you have a like, I don't know, one or two developers at your hand, and like working on this solution, really relying on something that is like takes 9 months just to build it and and get it to live, that's very difficult. So I would clearly recommend on trying to, yeah, I mean, uploading data, for example, and these kind of things may work also as a at least as an MVP version without being scrappy, but like at least to to not focus too much on integrations, and so that's probably one of the recommendations I would I would give to towards the audience.

All right. If I may interject here with the last final part of our podcast. Ansgar, if you could go back to the beginning of your career, what's one thing you wish you had known before you started, or what's an advice that you would give to your old self?

Good point. Always love that question because it makes you think about the things that you did in life. I would say I focused quite a bit on academic achievements in the early days, and I would say in the healthcare sector, it certainly helps every now and then, but I would say in hindsight, I could have spent that time in a in a better way. So I think in particular, people value commercial traction and commercial achievements over academic achievements typically, a lot more, especially when you're speaking about the startup the startup field. And I have friends with little or no academic track record, and I would say they still like they they they like build up great businesses because they they do something that they love and they they're really good at that.

So for me, one of the the things that I'd I would like wish I would have known is like that that focus is quite away from the academic achievements, but rather on what you actually did in the on the commercial side.

I think the other aspect, and that's somehow related, is more towards building networks earlier. I think like network of great people can help you with a lot of things. And I'm not speaking about like closed-doors kind of deals or things like that. I'm more speaking about things like people that can give you advice, people that can work with you, people that can really connect you to other great people. So like I think having a network of different kind of people is extreme value is extremely valuable, especially in building a company, and you will never regret that. I think obviously it's not easy to build really good network that's just not superficial people there. So I wouldn't say it's an easy task, but I think I could have focused more on that in the early days and outside of my, let's say, academic bubble, looking for great connections.

That's a great advice and I completely agree. When I was back in college, my mom always encouraged me to build a healthy network. When you get out so that you have, you know, people to, you know, maybe open the door for you in the business, or maybe help you not just academically, but you know, in business or maybe in the other situations. Looking for a mentor. So I completely agree with that.

Yeah, I think my behavior just on that note, my behavior changed quite a bit later down the line. So when I lived in I lived almost 5 years in London, and I spent probably the first year going to three or four meetups a week to meet people on the one side and and really build a network. And then there were some other benefits like free pizza and and a couple of beers every now and then. So that was another benefit in expensive city like London. But yeah, I think it helped me a lot later down the line.

Yeah, thanks for being honest. I think happened the same way for me. So I didn't really go out that much and believe in this until I saw it in effect. And yeah, since joining, I think where I am right now, it's been amazing. I'm constantly connecting with a lot of, you know, brains that have done achieved a lot, you know, in in various business sectors and industries. And I think there's there's things you can learn. And like you said earlier, I think, Ansgar, you made a very good point about not just your industry, you you you reach out or read about other industries as well. So you know, you're thinking outside the box, and that helps you understand the wider space and how, you know, what you do is making an impact maybe. So yeah, great information there.

I want to thank you, Ansgar, for taking part in this episode. I think it was it was a blast. There was many useful points that came out of this. And and yeah, like we always say to our guests, and we genuinely, this is heartfelt, that we'll be following your success and and if you need us, we are here for you. We'll back you. And we would absolutely welcome you and love to have you again 6 or 12 months down the line. Would love to feature you once more on our podcast. So with that note, I want to thank you. And Xenia, any anything from you? Anything you want to add?

I want to thank you for your time today and I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. So wishing you best of luck.

Thank you very much. I did enjoy it quite a bit. Thank you very much for the opportunity, Luke and Xenia. And yeah, looking forward to speaking again in the future.

A special thanks to our podcast guest this week, and once again to our sponsor, Sphere Partners, for bringing this episode to life. If you enjoyed this episode, drop SphereCast a five-star review on iTunes and share this content with your network. For any relevant links or notes from this episode, check out our podcast website at www.sphereinc.com/spherecast. And always remember, when you think you can't, technology can. See you next time.