Interview with Savan Devani, CEO, BioTrillion - Speaker at 7th Annual Global Big Data Conf - Santa Clara Aug 2019 Posted on : Aug 06 - 2019

We feature speakers at 7th Annual Global Big Data Conference - 2019 Aug 20 - 22 – Santa Clara to catch up and find out what he or she is working on now and what's coming next. This week we're talking to Interview with Savan Devani, CEO, BioTrillion Topic - "Digitally Detecting Developing Diseases"

Interview with  Savan Devani

1.  Tell us about yourself and your background.

I initially began my academic career obtaining BSE (UC Berkeley) and MSE (UPenn) degrees in Bioengineering and started my professional career as a Bioengineer at Life Technologies. However, I realized I was too much of a science nerd and needed to add more business experience to my skillset. So, I joined investment banking focused exclusively in the life sciences industry. I gained valuable experience there for longer than I ever imagined: 12+ years, promotions from Analyst through Managing Director, ~40 financing, IPO, and M&A deals totaling $35B+ in deal value, and the privilege of working with 100s of clients across the spectrum of drug, diagnostic, and device technologies. Life then brought me full-circle back to my bioengineering roots after a deeply personal and problematic healthcare experience and I founded BioTrillion to help solve this problem.

Since then, we’ve been assembling a team with a rare combination of expertise in the fields of life, data, and computer sciences, across business and engineering. As we move into the future, I believe innovation is going to increasingly require a multi-disciplinary way of thinking – and for HealthTech, an understanding of both the synergies and the boundaries at the intersection of biology and technology domains.

2.  What have you been working on recently?

BioTrillion is developing BioEngine4D, a mobile health tech platform using digital biomarkers generated from smartphone sensors for drug development and disease detection.  Our solution is intended to solve the problems of inefficient drug development and late disease diagnosis.  Our initial focus is neurological and dermatological diseases.

3. Tell me about the right tool you used recently to solve customer problem?

In order to address customer needs, we have conducted nearly 10 product-market fit consumer surveys and user tested our product prototype with multiple individuals to ensure that our product development aligns with and reflects consumer interest.

4. Where are we now today in terms of the Big data/AI, and where do you think we’ll go over the next five years?

We are still in the early stages of big data/AI, with much value remaining to be unlocked in many industry verticals.  In the realm of healthcare, over the next five years we will continue to see recent advancements in mobile and compute technology unlock tremendous value by evolving disease measures from intermittent to frequent; qualitative to quantitative; uni-dimensional to multi-dimensional; subjective to objective; and molecular to digital.

5. You’ve already hired Y number of  people approximately. What would be your pitch to folks out there to join your Organization? Why does your organization matter in the world?

Medical settings offer access to tremendous clinical experience and clinically validated diagnostics; however, the human population intermittently spends less than 1% of their time in a Medical setting, fundamentally limiting its utility. The Life setting provides access to something the Medical setting does not — that other 99% of time – creating both clinical and economic opportunities in the market for more accessible, affordable, convenient (“scalable”) and objective, quantitative, and frequent (“accurate”) solutions that leverage the ubiquity of digital smart devices.

BioTrillion aims to advance a radical transformation of the healthcare paradigm in which non-molecular disease expressions can be measured and generated by smart devices as “LIFEdata” and statistically related to disease as “digital biomarkers” – for applications in data-driven drug development and digitally detecting developing diseases – outside of a Medical setting. 

6. What are some of the best take aways that the attendees can have from your talk.

• Hear how BioTrillion is developing a health technology platform called BioEngine4D, by applying machine learning and AI to aggregated Medical data and unique LIFEdata – now generatable via the ubiquity of multi-modality sensors existing within key Consumer smart devices.
• Learn how novel digital biomarkers can be developed by computationally training and statistically mapping key diseases, via pathophysiologic-known pathways, to digitally measurable expressions. 
• Explore how BioEngine4D can yield entirely new opportunities – to augment existing molecular biomarkers, early detect, and develop novel therapeutics – for a broad array of diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Lung Cancer, and Melanoma.
• Consider how novel uses of multimodal sensors within common smartphones and smartwatches can effectively:

1. place “a digital doctor” in your Life setting to continuously check for key disease indicators and catalyze earlier clinical diagnoses and timelier intervention. 
2. place “clinical trials in a pocket” and disrupt the slow and costly pharma drug development paradigm.

7. What are the top 5 Big data/AI Use cases in enterprises?

• Healthcare: disease monitoring
• Semi-autonomous driving
• Data analytics
• Cybersecurity
• Marketing

8. Which company do you think is winning the global Big Data/AI race?

Amazon

9. Any closing remarks

Across industries, novel technologies applied to traditional domains have yielded entirely new opportunities to solve old problems in new ways.  Within healthcare, we are currently at a critical juncture wherein costs are rising – unsustainably – with little improvements in outcomes, necessitating radical, technologically-driven innovations.  We believe the future of healthcare will require solutions oriented around accessibility, affordability, continuity, timeliness, and data-driven outcomes.  Solutions that — in retrospect — will make us realize that we have been “in the dark” about our health 99% of the time.

We need to empower individuals with enhanced healthcare abilities, by providing access to better disease detection solutions and by facilitating accelerations in the drug development process.  Advances in technology have amplified our individual capabilities in many ways, and healthcare should be no exception.  After all, no one will have a greater interest in your health than you.