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Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Personalizing Mental Health Care with AI and Precision Medicine with Headlamp Health
00:14:46
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- [00:00]
A
Hi everyone, this is Lucas Vath with Becker's Healthcare. Thanks so much for tuning in to the Becker's Healthcare podcast series. It's fantastic to have you. And we also have a very exciting topic today, personalizing mental health through AI and precision medicine. And joining me for today's discussion, I'm very excited to have Erwin Estegaribia, chief executive officer at Hatlamp Health and Dr. Felice Shea, Chief business officer at Hatlamp Health Earth. Erwin and Felice, thanks so much for being here today. It's great to have you.
- [00:32]
B
Thanks for having us.
- [00:34]
A
Yeah, it's great. It's great to have you. I want to start off with introductions for our audience here. Erwin, why don't we start with you if you could introduce yourself and share a bit about your background and journey in healthcare.
- [00:45]
B
Wonderful. So yeah. I'm Erwin Estagarribia, chief executive officer at Headland Health. Educational background is in chemical engineering. I grew up in Australia, which you might or might not be able to tell by the funny accent, but came to the San San Francisco bay area over 25 years ago to build a career in life sciences, really bringing back and providing real value to patients as well as doctors. And I spent the bulk of that career in personalized and precision medicine ranging from some of the very early work in stem cells technologies, so essentially bringing cellular therapies directly to patients, all the way to looking at RNA as a source of information for better health outcomes. DNA proteomics, so the study of proteins and glycoproteomics, which is where I spent my time at the last company, which is the largest layer of biology. So very, very data dense space. And so my real drive has been to bring medicine to not just individuals, but underserved communities and areas where perhaps we've neglected. And this is where I'm really excited about talking to you about what we're working on at Head Length Health.
- [01:57]
A
Yeah, I know. We'll touch on that here in a little bit. Super excited to have you on. Dr. Shea, over to you.
- [02:02]
C
Thank you so much. It's great to be here. My name is Felice Shea. I'm the chief business officer here at Henlam Health. I'm also a chemical engineer. I have a PhD in nanotherapeutics. But I've spent the bulk of my career around two decades in business development and corporate venture, been in the precision medicine across those 20 years and actually was involved in the first co development and co launch of an oncology drug in his companion diagnostic which was very innovative at the time. But kind of, you know, but normal, more normal should be nowadays. My driver throughout my entire career has been really pushing and advancing innovation and really bringing real precision medicine and real precision care across the board in disease states and particularly in mental health.
- [02:49]
A
Yeah. It's so great to have you both on again. Thanks for being here. And, and you mentioned that the mental health piece is so interesting. Right. And it's such a deeply personal issue for a lot of folks, but there's a lot of treatments that still follow sort of this one size fits all model that doesn't really apply anymore or shouldn't really apply anymore. Erwin, I'd love to start with you on this here. Why has the field been slower to adopt precision medicine there and what shifts are needed to deliver more personalized, effective care?
- [03:19]
B
Yeah, I think people's frustration in the space with this one size fits all model, or as I like to say, one size fits none, which kind of really drives the frustration, whether it's, you know, caregivers, teens, new mothers, folks that are at the end stage of life. Just overall, it just doesn't seem like we've got a formula that takes the individual into account. And so if we step back as a technologist at somebody who has seen the promise of precision medicine in other parts of medicine, like oncology, autoimmune, and cardiology, for instance, there's just a huge lack of tools available to clinicians and researchers. That's what we see. So when we talk to investors, for instance, one of the ways we explain this is that I can't use. And clinicians and researchers can't use advanced imaging, for instance, to take a look and take a snapshot and quantify depression, for instance, or anxiety or other disorders. At the same time, we're not able to really step back and look at the individual biology and tie that to chemistry, for instance. So like a molecule or a drug or. And so what we've done at Headlamp and the way we approach the problem is we take a real big step back and look at first principles and recognize that some, if not all of the challenges that we're experiencing in mental health is a lack of the appropriate data and making sense of that data. We classify them. We call that in technical terms, a multimodal data problem. And so that's how we're approaching it. And that's how we can really double click, triple click on the patient, which might be different today than how it was yesterday or how it will be tomorrow. So really having that level of fidelity and understanding the data behind that patient and everything around them to provide a treatment that makes sense for them.
- [05:13]
A
Yeah, this is so fascinating. Dr. Shea, what does precision medicine look like then in mental health care? What is it? What. What can I imagine? What does it look like? And. And are there any examples that you can share that sort of highlight those outcomes that you're looking for, those insights that this approach makes possible?
- [05:31]
C
For sure. So I think mental health, precision medicine and mental health is definitely lagging across the board from any other kind of disease state. When we think about precision medicine, we really think about bringing the right drug and the right care to the right patient at the right time. It completely moves beyond that traditional one size fits all approach, or what Erwin said, one size fits none approach. But for mental health specifically, precision medicine really allows us to identify specific patient subtypes within broad disease states such as depression, schizophrenia, anxiety. We can already subtype, but we need to actually drill down even more than that based on the patient's biological, behavioral, and environmental profile to make this approach possible. As Ermine mentioned already, we need to be able to gather and generate multimodal specific data, patient specific data. That includes getting your historical medical records, current and past medications, genetic risk factors, behavioral attributes, even, like sleeping, caffeine intake, these kind of things, lifestyle patterns even, and then utilizing an AI platform to correlate this to biology, your mechanism of action of your drug, pharmacogenomics, pharmacokinetics, et cetera, and then building a nuanced understanding of a patient's disease, the outcomes that we can think through, and what we might be able to do even better in the future with these AI tools. And multimodal data lakes are be able to reduce trial and error in treatments. So that means removing the guesswork and reducing, hopefully eliminating really the need to cycle patients through drugs that they're probably not going to react well to. The second thing is reducing polypharmacy, for example, we might be able to avoid additional layering on additional medications to patients and things that might even be not helpful to them, where you could actually just have a lifestyle pattern change. Right. Instead of adding additional drugs to their repertoire. And then third, we want to be able to identify optimal patient profiles for novel drugs and clinical trials in order to advance innovation in a space that has seen very, very limited new drugs and new targets in decades.
- [07:43]
A
Yeah, and you both touched on the technology piece to this, And I think, Dr. Shea, you just mentioned eliminating the guesswork. Right. And technology is such a huge piece in eliminating that guesswork. And I'd Love to talk about AI a little bit more. A lot of behavioral health leaders are heavily investing in it. It's a must in healthcare right now, I feel like. And there's growing urgency around it, especially responsible use. And again, that's so important in mental health and the data around mental health. Erwin, how are you approaching responsible AI then? And why is that so essential?
- [08:18]
B
It's a great question. And there's no doubt that AI is a very hot topic. And with that, you have individuals that are somewhat skeptical of the impact in healthcare, where others are probably a little bit premature in their adoption and deployment. At the same time, we know that patients are hungry for solutions that will work for them. And we think that AI can provide a component that will increase efficacy and matchmaking and remove this kind of one size fits all approach and ambiguity. So we're excited about AI. We're big believers in AI. We actually use it quite conservatively in our technology. We use a methodology called human in the middle, which essentially means. Means that the AI is not exposed directly to patients and clinicians. There is some QC cross checking and checks and balances. That really stems from my personal drive in the earlier part of my career where I had a realization that everybody's a patient, it's just a matter of time. And so with any technology that we deploy out to clinicians, researchers or patients, the litmus test for us is what the technology be suitable for a family member and do we feel good and safe about it. And that's really what drives us now. What that can mean, for instance, is that things take a little bit longer to get to the end user or for that impact to be realized, particularly in healthcare. But I think when the stakes are so high, we've got to be very diligent in how we deploy that and we do that very rigorously through a variety of frameworks that we've developed internally but also have adopted as industry standards at headlamps.
- [10:05]
A
Yeah, there's certainly a lot more work to be done. I feel like for a lot of organizations, for a lot of healthcare organizations and providers, I think that's such a big piece to the puzzle for the next couple of years. So I'm glad that you mentioned that. And again, I want to look ahead a little bit. We know that the nation's mental health crisis continues. The CDC has identified that it's not stopping. It's not stopping anytime soon. We're going to continue to deal with this as we look ahead. What next steps should healthcare leaders take? And how do you see Precision medicine helping shape the future of mental health treatment there. Dr. Shea, why don't we start with you on this one?
- [10:40]
C
Yeah, I completely agree. The CDC data definitely confirms what we are all seeing, that mental health disorders are on the rise. What is also interesting to me is that the stigma about talking about mental health disorders is gradually getting to a place where we are more transparent about it. And I love that. I love that we're able to talk about it as a collective whole, because mental health is a journey for everybody. Right. And it's not an individual journey. You're not alone in this. So I think as you look ahead, the health care leaders, the health care ecosystem, really, including clinicians, patients, your neighbors, patients, families, pharmaceutical partners even, we can really help shape the future of mental health and add precision medicine to mental health by really kind of starting to shift from reactive care to more prevention and proactive care. So you don't want to wait until there's an incident. You don't want to wait until trying to cycle patients through drugs that they're not going to be responsive to. Let's be more proactive in our care here. The second is really starting to implement multimodal, longitudinal, empirical and phenotypical data collection like we've been talking about previously, and then using AI to really drive insights at scale. Each patient is really unique, so we need to get that right treatment to the right patient at the right time. And then third, we really need to continue investing in research and in developing innovative and targeted drugs and targeted therapies and actually ensuring that we're able to get these drugs and therapies to patients globally.
- [12:16]
A
Yeah, just like Erwin said, it's just a matter of time. Right. We're all going to become patients at some point. It's just a matter of time. So that that proactive approach is going to become really important. Erwin, would love to get your thoughts on this as well, in terms of what we're looking ahead and how we can prepare.
- [12:32]
B
Yeah, look, what I think is really needed in this space is kind of a call to action, or what I would call a very strong invitation. I spent last week with tens of CEOs behind closed doors, and it's very, very apparent that specifically in mental health, where there are companies that are trying to solve small problems and build great businesses around that and return value to patients and clinicians, they're really does need to be a very strong need for above and beyond collaboration. So leading by example is a huge value at Headlamp. And so I invite anybody who would like to move the field forward, to reach out to us. We have to do much better by our patients. Our clinicians are low on time and burdened with huge caseloads. We want to be able to unlock, remove friction from the system and really get to that personalized conversation with the patient and deliver something that works for them where they're at. We've got to meet them where they are. I think that, as Felice mentioned, the stigma of mental health and being able to have open and honest conversations about that throughout different stages of life, because we see that through our patients, whether there are teens, new mothers, professionals that have lost a job, for instance, and are dealing with the pressures of normal life, we can manage all of that. We just have to all pull together, I believe, and collaborate across large data sets, but also being very mindful of the types of technologies and solutions we provide to patients. So I'm very excited about that and welcome any further conversations. And I appreciate you having us on here.
- [14:11]
A
Yeah, it's fantastic to have you again. This is such a fascinating topic and again, an important topic as we're continuing to see mental health evolve, but then also the treatment of mental health and behavioral health across the United States and across the world, really, which is so important. Erwin and Dr. Shea, thank you so much for being here today. This was a fantastic conversation. It's great to have you.
- [14:31]
B
Thank you. Take care.
- [14:33]
A
Yeah, it's great to have you. And we also want to thank our podcast sponsor, Hatlemp Health. You can tune into more podcasts from Becker's Healthcare by visiting our podcast page at beckershospitalreview.
- [14:42]
B
Com.