Podcast Interview: 3 Reasons Why We Must Consider the Global Impact of Decisions in Health Care Technology

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Am truly humbled to have recently been interviewed for the "Outcomes Rocket Podcast" improving patient outcomes. I messed up a bit. It wasn’t a biggy. Most people probably don't even notice it. But I did. Tell me what you think is the mess up. Here’s the full Interview.

https://outcomesrocket.health/rani/

Saul Marquez: Welcome back once again to the outcomes rocket pod-cast where we chat with today's most successful and inspiring health leaders. I want to welcome you to go to outcomes rocket.health/reviews where you could rate and review today's pod-cast because he is an outstanding individual and a contributor to Health Care. His name is Rani Shifron. He's a veteran MedTech and Digital Health Care entrepreneur, mentor and strategist. Having served in the field for 30 years, in the last six years as a consultant and coach to companies and products that focus on the health market, he also serves as a mentor and an industry leader in some of the main global accelerators such as MassChallenge, Techcode, MedTech Raanana, BioHouse and more. So he gets to see innovation and the whole ecosystem at work on a daily basis. He's very focused on patient outcomes and technology that makes things better so I want to give Rani a warm welcome to the pod-cast my friend.

Rani Shifron: Thank you Saul, it's a great pleasure to be here.

Saul Marquez: It's a pleasure to have you on anything that I missed in that intro that you want to fill in.

Rani Shifron: Certainly I'm a husband of a registered nurse so I get to see the health care system from all sides. A father of three lovely kids and the son of two great Academician parents and I also love photography and mountain biking.

Saul Marquez: That is so cool you have such a rich experience and a lovely family Rani. It's a pleasure to be surrounded with amazing people and that you are what made you decide to get into the medical sector.

Rani Shifron: Well in my birth doctors almost killed my mother and myself due to negligence caused me to be pretty sick for the first two years of my life and being handicapped for the rest of my life. But I never really considered myself as handicapped but that's a totally different story in itself for another time. So I therefore always strived to get into the health care field throughout my life. Initially I thought I was going to be a physician but when it came right down to it I saw that I was more of a technical person. So I went to study electrical engineering, while minoring in biomedical engineering because there was no real bachelor's in biomedical available at the time when I went to Purdue University here in Indiana. Very fast into my career I started working in medical device startups where I found my true passion really, and I always strived to bring for better quality of life and basically a healthier life. I guess that's one of the reasons I ended up calling my company, many years later, Healthier Globe and it's a beacon in front of me for everything I do in this space and throughout my whole career of 30 years now where I've been bringing about medical technology products to the world so you can call it Innovation Making if you may. And that's my true passion.

Saul Marquez: I love it so. Thank you. First of all for sharing that story it's hard to go through a difficult health situation and then turn it around to become a major contributor in health. You've done that Rani and major kudos to you and your accomplishments and the things that you've done. You also have you know some of your background. We had an opportunity to to chat beforehand listeners. Rani focused for many years in a Capnography solution that I currently work with. So the world is a very small place. You never know what you touch and lives that it affects and Rani you definitely have even touched my life. So thank you for that. What hot topic would you say should be on every medical leaders agenda today.

Rani Shifron: OK well one of the things that's been on my mind for quite a long time now is the topic of bringing affordable health care to all the world's population. And as we all hear a big part of our society does not get treated at all or partially at best. So that's a great challenge and not too many people or organizations have solutions for that. So I think that's something that really should be part of the agenda of the big corporates and all of society in general. One of the things we have tried to do recently within Healthier Globe we've joined forces with some counterparts in India to bring Israeli know how in the medical technology area which you probably know there's lots of things going on in Israel. Israel today in the medical arena actually it brings about one third 33 percent of the new innovation to the world the global innovation in the medical technology area which is amazing.

Saul Marquez: That's a big number.

Rani Shifron: It is a huge number and we have thousands of companies dealing with device and digital health care and other technology space. So I thought or we thought it would be most reasonable if we could try to harness that some or at least some of that technology and bring it to third world countries. So our initial pilot into this space is to bring it into India with a local counterpart to be able to customize these products to the local use in India and to be able to bring down the cost involved also by actually manufacturing those devices and consumables in India locally. So there wouldn't be any additional margins tacked on to the devices or the consumables for shipping. So far we've done it on a small scale but we really need to be able to scale it up, we need to bring the big guys, the corporates, the organizations, the philanthropy organizations all to join the efforts and to fund some of these activities. Obviously India is the first target but once successful we treat it as a pilot once successful we'll be able to take this sort of solution making to the other countries and it's been exciting to see what sort of response we get with this sort of solution bringing to these populations.

Saul Marquez: Rani that's very exciting and listeners when you innovate in health, you don't necessarily have to innovate a product you could do process innovation and sharing across borders like Rani's doing in this pilot. And it is pretty interesting what you guys are up to Rani. Can you give us an example of how you guys have created results by thinking and doing things differently.

Rani Shifron: Yeah we're actually being able to take some products that initial start ups are just now starting to go to global markets and have been able to take that into India and customize the product because you know usually in the western world when we develop products it's fully loaded. Basically we've been able to see if you correlate this to cars we've been able to take a stripped down model of the product and then spec it out. And then being able to work with local manufacturers to manufacture that and to come out with a much cheaper solution at the end of the day. So those sort of discounts we're conveying over to the end user. So nobody's really gaining from being able to reduce the costs on them. So that's basically what we've done on a couple of these technologies and we're looking to take more.

Saul Marquez: You know that's a really interesting point as we think across the borders of countries. We definitely have a lot of waste - we have a lot of waste here in the U.S. We've got a lot of waste in a lot of areas of the world. When you go into countries like India or other countries like China is it really necessary to have all the bells and whistles Rani talks about these things being fully loaded. Well if you're just trying to deliver care to a certain point of care and to a patient in a point of care then all you need is the basics and so it's very fascinating how you guys are stripping it down. It kind of reminds me of the TATA car that they came up with over in India which is basically a super affordable car to help people get around. And now you guys are looking to do that same thing with some medical devices.

Rani Shifron: That's correct. And another example is to actually take point of care devices. To take these point of care devices and group up with some local organization who are already working on building centers and rural areas to tap into that center and to create a small checkup clinic and being able to use those point of care devices in these clinics set up. So we're looking at the whole solution and not just bringing the device but also on how it is going to be used and how it is going to be implemented.

Saul Marquez: Super cool. That's an exciting project definitely thinking globally. And it's it right in line with the name of your company. So you think you're definitely doing some fascinating things can you share with the listeners a time when you had a setback and what you learned from that setback.

Rani Shifron: Sure. I have throughout my career failed several times. Some of those are trying to take products to foreign markets without really understanding enough the cultures and the way health care is practiced. Give you a good example of what I think is the second or third worlds largest health care market - Japan. With the example of the company you mentioned earlier we were actually able to easily or fairly easily sell the hardware to the OEM's, our corporate partners but it was very hard to sell the associated consumables through missionary distributors. It was actually a disaster. But really after understanding the need for a local expert and after hiring a prominent local expert who's lived a little bit in the West so he can understand both cultures, we managed to bring the business to skyrocket proportions. So it's happened more than once that you think you know the culture and how businesses practice but you really need that local expert. And today when I take companies and projects into local markets I always take a local expert and I know that that part of the whole ecosystem, obviously with medical technology the clinical validation part is the most important part. And you basically need to do local validation with your products in order to convince the users to use it in all these local markets so it's all together in one piece.

Saul Marquez: Rani what a great story and I'm glad you guys were able to figure that out. Get your local expert and today listeners if you're an executive at a company and you're tasked with growing. Many companies are now faced with having to grow outside of the U.S. and if this is you take these words of wisdom that Rani has shared and ask a local expert. And at the end of the pod-cast here too will we'll have Rani provide best way to contact him to maybe contact Rani. But whatever you do is don't try to do it on your own. I worked in Latin America for quite some time with their local manufacturer and I found that the minute we got help from a local expert we were able to get regulatory approval much faster and it just made our life a lot easier. So I love this share Rani and I think it's one that our listeners could definitely benefit from. So that was one of the setbacks. Maybe you could share with us a leadership experience in medicine you've had that you're very proud of.

Saul Marquez: Yeah. Throughout my career I both managed and coached several dozen projects taking them into global markets while today I basically have built a solid global ecosystem to assist companies to enter global markets with, like I mentioned earlier, the key experts in each one of the target markets. I am basically most proud of being able to affect medical care and to help bring that medical care into practice globally by creating specific mandates and training programs something that as a manufacturer you don't always think about. You don't always dive into that, but you can't just send your product out there, you have to be able to help implement it into the local markets.

Saul Marquez: It's a great great point there and you're building these programs. You're doing some pretty cool things. What would you say right now Rani is an exciting project or focus that you're working on.

Rani Shifron: Yeah well today I see that the biggest hurdles of any startup of getting into the markets especially in the MedTech field is to get properly funded. The financial road map. And without that you really can't do much. So at Healthier Globe we've actually built and are perfecting a methodical process to assist such companies to minimize the time they look for investments so they can actually do the work, pinpoint quickly the pain points and what needs to be worked on while at the same time creating additional value for their ventures and basically building a long term financial road map. Because we see that all too many times and entrepreneurs and managers are wasting their time quote unquote wasting their time almost full time getting financed rather than doing the work and bringing that added value to the market they have. So we're constantly seeking solutions how to solve that right now and for that reason we've actually built a system to help them.

Saul Marquez: Now listeners if you are starting a company and maybe Rani hit a sore point here on this one if you're spending a lot of time fund raising less time in your company and your solution definitely consider reaching out to Rani on some of the things that he's working on for building that financial road map. Rani let's pretend you and I are building a medical leadership course on what it takes to be successful in medicine. The 101 on innovation and so I like to write out the syllabus with you by getting some brief answers in this lightning round. You ready.

Rani Shifron: Sure.

Saul Marquez: What is the best way to improve health outcomes.

Rani Shifron: Well I always had the mantra Think locally, Work globally. It's been going with me throughout my career. And basically we think we know the solution as a template for all markets. But as I've already highlighted before as one of my failures you think you know a certain country and it's cultures and how they work. And you're totally off also in health care outcomes. What are they looking for. So you really need to always think locally but work on a global basis.

Saul Marquez: Love it. What's the biggest mistake or a pitfall to avoid.

Rani Shifron: I would suggest never to listen to naysayers and do what your gut tells you and what you think is right or correct. With a great team you could do anything.

Saul Marquez: How do you stay relevant as an organization. Despite constant change.

Rani Shifron: Constantly reinventing yourselves - there's no real way around it. You always have to continuously think how to reinvent it and do things differently. You can't stay the same. One of the examples I can bring to point with all of the digital health care that's coming about is the Pharma industry is going through a rapid change. They understand they can't continue as they've gone so far with all of this personalized medicine that's coming about. So they're looking into how to integrating technology into the pharmaceutical world to be able to give them the benefits. So they're reinventing themselves but they'll also be continuously reinventing themselves to.

Saul Marquez: Great share. What's one area of focus that should drive all else in your organization.

Rani Shifron: Innovation --- Innovation, Innovation, Innovation - without innovation we see big companies become obsolete. Look at the cell phone maker makers Blackberry and Nokia they sort of stalled on innovation and they became obsolete.

Saul Marquez: Totally agree.

Rani Shifron: Also in our industry if you don't innovate you can easily become obsolete and it's much faster than it used to be. So there's no no real time to spare.

Saul Marquez: Yep and it's tempting when things are going well and you've got a good business model to keep things as they are. But this innovation piece is definitely an important one to drive any events. So Rani, What's your all time favorite book that you recommend to the listeners.

Rani Shifron: Well I've got several that I like but a good book that are actually series of books that I'm reading now for entrepreneurs. It's called the Better Business Book by authors unite. It's a collection of short solution based stories for entrepreneurs and it's very practical, If you're looking for quick solutions.

Saul Marquez: That sounds pretty cool, so listeners it's called the Better Business Book by authors unite. A link to that book as well as all the things that we've discussed including the syllabus with Rani and all of the show notes can be found on outcomesrocket.health/rani. That's R A N I. And so go there get those things for yourself and stay on top of the game here. Before we conclude Rani I just want to ask if you could share a closing thought and the best place where the listeners could get in touch with you.

Rani Shifron: Yeah I think again as you can hear and understand I'm bullish about innovation and what it can bring to the world and the health care making this a better world. I urge everyone to get into innovating if they can. And myself I can be reached either through the MedTech Founder group on Facebook which recently created to share good practices and ideas among founders and management or directly through my direct email. [email protected]

Saul Marquez: Outstanding Rani this is really great. Listeners will provide that email address as well on the show notes and a link to has MedTech founder group get in touch and figure out a way to keep innovating and improve outcomes. Rani this has been so insightful, I really want to just take a moment to say thank you. On behalf of myself and all the listeners and looking forward to staying in touch.

Rani Shifron: Thank you very much. I enjoyed it.

Thanks for listening to the Outcomes Rocket pod-cast. Be sure to visit us on the web at www.outcomesrocket.health for the show notes, resources, inspiration and so much more.

Recommended Book: The Better Business Book: 100 People, 100 Stories, 100 Business Lessons To Live By

The Best Way To Contact Rani: [email protected]

Website: https://www.healthierglobe.com/

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To explore lots of great new up & coming technologies contact me @+972–54–688–0960 or email me at [email protected].

Rani Shifron is the managing partner at Healthier Globe, a medical device global MedTech hub and a strategic innovation partner that scouts, builds, nurtures, secures funding and scales up Medical Device Companies. Invited to Connect w/me on LinkedIN to access my network

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