Podcast Summary: DGTL Voices with Ed Marx

Episode: Streamlining the Clinical Trial Process Using Innovative Technology (ft. Scott Chetham)
Date: January 8, 2025
Host: Ed Marx
Guest: Scott Chetham, CEO & Founder, Faro Health

Episode Overview

This episode of DGTL Voices spotlights innovative approaches to modernizing and streamlining the clinical trial process. Ed Marx engages Scott Chetham, founder and CEO of Faro Health, in a wide-ranging discussion—from personal background and leadership philosophy to the specific pain points in traditional trial design and the transformative potential of automation and AI. Through candid storytelling and technical insight, Scott illustrates how Faro Health is aiming to make drug development faster, more efficient, and ultimately more impactful for patients.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Scott’s Personal Journey, Values, and Leadership

• Background & Upbringing

  • Grew up in Gold Coast, Australia: “It's about 100 miles of perfectly white sand. Whenever I take people...they go, why on earth did you leave?” (04:24)
  • Moved to the US for a job 18 years ago, originally planning for a 2-year stint.

• Life Mantra

  • “Just keep putting one foot in front of the other. Hard things are just hard...if you get knocked down, you've just got to get up again and keep going.” (02:07)

• Importance of Family

  • “I think dad is the most important [title] that I've ever had.” (03:13)

• Early Leadership Formation

  • Attended a religious, military-affiliated boarding school in Australia: “If you want to bear the palm of victory, you have to bear it. Basically if you want something good, you have to put in the work.” (25:07)

Challenges with Traditional Clinical Trial Design

• Static, Manual Process

  • Clinical trials designed in Word documents; process hasn’t changed in 25 years.
  • Sharing: “The vaccines for the pandemic, the trials were designed in a table in Microsoft Word, and that's state of the art.” (12:50)
  • Major workflow pain: Every learning is updated in redlines, then archived—leaving little opportunity for lessons learned to carry forward.

• Financial and Human Cost

  • “A typical clinical program to get a drug to market now is between 10 and 12 years, we're nearly up to $2 billion...you have a 6% chance of success as of this year.” (21:56)
  • The financial risk and time investment contribute to the high cost of drugs.

The Faro Health Vision: Making Trials Smarter and Faster

• Founding Story

  • Scott’s “aha!” moment came while surfing in Costa Rica, contemplating the frustrations of current clinical trial workflows and transforming them into a product vision. (12:29–14:00)

• Core Innovations

  • Structured Data, Not Just Words:
    • Faro Health replaces lengthy Word documents with smarter, table-driven definitions.
    • The system auto-completes operational details for common measurements (e.g., how to measure weight, what units, frequencies, etc.).
    • “Faro knows for these particular things, here is all the information required to measure it, operationalize it, here's what it would mean for a patient, here's how much it costs...all this really complex, laborious work is done for you.” (20:52)
  • AI-Driven Assistance:
    • Uses large language models (LLMs) to automate protocol writing and documentation.

• Practical Impact

  • Time Compression:
    • Potentially shrinks the planning stage from 6–12 months to 1–2 months, helping to drastically reduce overall time-to-market for new therapies.
    • “If we pull this into one to two months...we're pulling these timelines of 12 years eventually down to 5, 6 years.” (23:03)
  • Patient Focus:
    • Enables better modeling of the patient’s experience, improving feasibility and accessibility.

Big-Picture Implications

• Drug Pricing and Access

  • High drug prices are inseparable from the slow, cumbersome clinical trial process: “If you want to impact this, the best thing we can do is pull that 10 to 12 years down to six.” (22:21)
  • Speed equates to lives saved: “These drugs...they're helping people, helping in their lives. So the sooner we can get them out there in a safe way, the better.” – Ed Marx (23:30)

• Emerging Innovations

  • Scott highlights upcoming breakthroughs in mental health, particularly new antipsychotics with improved side-effect profiles, which Faro’s streamlined processes will help bring to market faster. (23:55)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Leadership and Grit:

  • “Most really good companies, much more linear, and it just takes a lot of time and continuous improvement to get going...You really have to constantly focus on product, market fit, listening to your customers, and then just slowly growing and improving.” (28:07)

• On Challenges of Traditional Trials:

  • “Every time I learn something, I make a change to the Word document in Redlines...we forget anything we ever, ever learned. And this is unfortunately the state of the art.” (17:28)

• On Passion for Startups:

  • “Make sure it’s also something you’re very passionate about...There is going to be some dark times and you’re going to need that to carry that vision in your head...” (28:45)

Timestamps for Key Segments

• [00:26–06:44] – Introducing Scott Chetham; personal journey, growing up Australian, family priorities
• [06:44–15:12] – Early biotech career, Alphabet/Google X & Verily, origins of Faro Health
• [15:47–21:26] – Clinical trial design explained; pain points in the process
• [21:26–23:30] – Faro Health’s technical solutions and impact
• [23:30–24:26] – The relationship between clinical trial efficiency, drug costs, and patient outcomes
• [25:07–26:43] – Leadership philosophy and the importance of hard work
• [26:43–28:07] – Recharging outside work, advice for aspiring founders
• [28:07–29:28] – Final thoughts on startups, perseverance, and vision

Conclusion & Takeaways

Ed Marx and Scott Chetham provide a compelling overview of how “old school” inefficiencies in clinical trial design slow innovation and inflate costs—problems Faro Health is purpose-built to solve. Their wide-ranging conversation touches on the intersection of technology, leadership, lived experience, and human factors in health tech. For anyone interested in digital transformation, drug development, or startup journeys, this episode is both educational and inspiring.

“There is going to be some dark times and you’re going to need [passion] to carry that vision in your head...through the times where you just frankly want to smash your head against the wall.” – Scott Chetham (28:45)