Adam Torres and Andy Bank discuss Octane’s Medical Innovation Forum.
Subscribe: iTunes / Spotify
Apply to be a guest on our podcast here
Show Notes:
Listen to Octane’s Medical Innovation Forum coverage. In this episode, Adam Torres interviews Andy Bank, Co-Founder & CEO at Myochron, explore Myochron and Octane’s Medical Innovation Forum.
Watch Full Interview:
About Myochron
Myochron elevates heart failure therapy by precise and individualized optimization of cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT). Through its cloud platform and proprietary algorithm, Myochron tailors synchrony to each patient’s unique anatomy and physiology, improving heart function – a direct predictor of reduced hospitalization and mortality. Seamlessly integrated into clinical workflows and compatible across existing CRT devices, the platform ensures clinicians can deliver personalized care, so their patients can realize the full potential of CRT. Myochron’s proven technology addresses the 30% of CRT non-responders – while also maximizing impact in responders – ensuring each and every patient can live their best life.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest on the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. All right, so I am in Irvine, California, and I’m at the Medical Innovation Forum powered by Octane, and Andy Bank is my guest today.
So Andy, first off, welcome to the show. Thank you. Great to be here. All right, Andy, what brings you to the conference today? Well, we were one of the presenting companies at the conference here today, and really, we’re just here to connect with like minded folks in the industry and hopefully help bring more innovation to market.
So tell me a little bit more about your company. Yeah, so at Myocron, what we’re doing is elevating heart failure therapy with a specific type of technology. That’s out there today to treat heart failure patients called cardiac resynchronization therapy. It’s basically a fancy pacemaker for lack of a better word.
The goal is to get the heart to squeeze in synchrony together. And the big problem that we’re solving is. A big portion of patients that get these devices today don’t actually respond to the therapy. So they get the device in and they don’t get any better, right? And for a 30, 000 pacemaker, that’s a pretty hard thing to sell to the patient and to the payers that are paying for it.
So you already did your talk, correct? Yep. So how’d it go? Talk to me, man. You’re coming off stage. Talk to me, man. It went good, man. It went good. We had the best slot, I think, in the morning session when everyone’s fresh and excited to be here. And. So, yeah, yeah, it was, it was great, and yeah, I think it landed pretty well with the audience.
Amazing. It’s, it’s hard to, you know, find a person out there who’s not affected in some way, shape, or form by heart disease, right. Now, for those that are, you know, sitting at home or watching some YouTube or otherwise that didn’t have the benefit of being at the event, like, what are some of the things that you hope the audience took away that we can share now?
Like, what are some of those takeaways? Hmm. Yeah, that’s a great question. I think, you know, first and foremost, like, you know, what can we be doing as, you know medical innovation community to really just look at simple, practical, noninvasive, cost efficient technologies to really, you know, change the game for healthcare, right?
Like I feel like oftentimes a lot of the medical innovation that we see, and this is needed as well, is, is really fancy, complicated, long R and D development projects. What we’re doing is. We’re trying to be as simple as possible with it, you know, it’s a software based product the algorithm analyzes all of the data and Recommends how to optimize a patient’s pacemaker so that they get the best results Now how’d this idea come about for myocron in general like how’d that come about?
Great question? Yeah, so the other co founder in our company is actually my dad. He’s a I like to hear that It’s a fun story, it’s a fun story Yeah, so He’s a cardiologist. Okay. I knew one of you two were. I don’t know. Exactly. It’s not me. I can tell you that. Yeah. So he, you know, he’s been practicing for decades and heart failure and.
You know, a lot of the patients that he was seeing, he realized he was the one that would read their echo or their medical imaging. So he realized he’s like, I got all these patients who have these pacemakers, but their heart’s still out of sync on the echo. Right. And he’s like, why is that happening? And so anyways, he dived into that in a lot more detail.
And eventually he realized like. Hey, actually, there’s something we can do about this, right? And, you know, years of R& D and process of developing and iterating and trying to figure out how to do that. And ultimately, he came up with a really easy way to do that, which is using electrocardiogram or ECG data along with our software algorithm, and the patient walks away, hopefully a new person.
So after, so you said that was years of development to figure out the answer to the problem. Like after that, like when did you know this would be a company? Like how, what did that part, or was that from the beginning he knew it would be a company? Like I’m trying to figure out the entrepreneurial side of when that happened.
Yeah. So, you know, it’s been a, not a linear journey. Never. It never is. A lot of business owners, a lot of executives, entrepreneurs that watch this. So if somebody tells you it’s a linear journey, man, you’re better than me. Exactly. Yep. Yep. You got it. So yeah, you know, a lot of the, the early days of the work that we were doing, like, you know, my dad, he’s a, he’s a scientist, right?
He’s a clinician. His goal is to help his patients. So I think from the outset. You know, it, it wasn’t always a business, right? It was how can I, how can I make discovery to improve the care that I’m delivering to patients, right? And so, you know, I think that’s where it started out. And then eventually, as he realized how effective this technology could be, really, the way to do that is to take it to market and take it to the world, right?
He’s, he’s limited, and one person’s limited in terms of the amount of patients they can treat. And You know, he treats several patients a week with our technology, right, which is great, but we want to get it out to the world, right? So, yeah, end of last year, we founded the company. Oh, okay. That’s when I came on board to, to really help.
How was that conversation? Was it like, hey, you’re in, no, no, you were probably jumping at it, right? Like it was exciting to be able to work with your dad and to launch this thing, right? Or. Definitely. Yeah. So I was working in the cardiology software space already. So you were already. With a different venture, a different startup.
Called heart lab out of New Zealand. Shout out to them. Very cool company doing a cloud based cardiology imaging. So anyways, I was running the sales team over there and this opportunity kind of came up, he said, we’re going to, we’re about to form a company to do this. Do you want to come on board? And. You know, I had to jump at the chance man.
That’s huge. So now okay. So now you’re at octane’s event This is a big deal. You’re on stage. You’re presenting it went well What’s next like talk to me a little bit about the rollout and what happens next for the company? Yeah, definitely So first things first product development, right? So we’ve got a prototype.
It’s We’ve performed our treatment in over 500 patients, so that’s fantastic. But really, now we’re in the build and scale phase. So taking that prototype and turning it into a production ready product in the cloud, scalable, deployable, at scale to places around the country. So that’s item number one. Item number two will be the The old chestnut of FDA approval.
So that’s coming up next year as well. And then third, it will be getting ready for commercialization, right? So everything involved in ramping that process up as well. Man, that’s exciting. I mean, lots of steps, but I feel like with each hurdle, it’s got to get more exciting as this gets closer to being like it to be able to help more and more people and to see that vision realized.
Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, it’s there’s a lot, a lot more steps in the journey, you know, but it’s, it’s a fun ride. And I think, you know, as an entrepreneur, that’s why we do this, right? It’s for, it’s for the journey, not the destination, right? You know, if we were to exit tomorrow. I’d probably be finding your next thing, yeah, you’d be finding your next gig.
We’re glutton for punishment, my words, not his. Final question, other than your performance and your, and this, being on this podcast and being on stage, what’s been your, because of course I’m putting words in your mouth, what’s one of your favorite parts of being at the Octane Conference so far? I know we’ve got a whole other day ahead of us, but so far, what’s one of your favorite parts about being here?
Yeah, look, I think particularly here in Orange County, I’m new to Southern California. Like I mentioned, having lived in New Zealand for almost the past decade, I think just the energy that you see here in Orange County for, for medical innovation is, is really second to none. You know, I think this area kind of flies under the radar sometimes people focus on Silicon Valley and.
Boston for all the biotech action going on out there, but honestly, Orange County, just the energy and passion and enthusiasm that people have out here for, for medical innovation is, is second to none. So that’s what I’m excited for. Awesome. , last thing, if somebody wants to follow up, learn more about the company or anything like that, how do they do that?
Yeah, they can check us out at myocron. com. We can send you the email info at myocron. com. Reach out to us. We’d love to hear from you. Anyone who wants to partner, work with us, be glad to hear from you. Perfect. And for everybody watching, just so you know, we’ll put the links to the website and all that good stuff in the show notes so that you can just click on the links and head right on over and speaking to the audience, if this is your first time with mission matters and you haven’t done it yet, Hit that subscribe or follow button.
This is a daily show each and every day. We’re bringing you new content, new ideas, and hopefully new inspiration to help you along the way in your journey as well. So again, hit that subscribe or follow button. And Andy, thanks so much for coming on, man. Appreciate it. Thanks a lot.