317. Interview with Charles Gellman, Co-Founder and CEO of HiDO Health: Revolutionizing Healthcare from Home Using AI

Susan Sly 00:00
Well, hey everyone, Susan here, and thanks for joining. If you have someone in your life who is perhaps someone who is needing some home care or has an aging parent, I'm excited for you to listen to this episode today. This founder took a deeply personal experience where he almost died and turned it into an incredible business, one that I'm super excited about. And you will hear in this episode, how he brought together the right team, how he is figuring out things along the way, including designing hardware that integrates with AI, and going out there and fundraising and all of the ways that we're challenged when we're getting a company going. And I hope that you fall in love with him as much as I know I did when I fell in love with his story and his heart. He's absolutely incredible. So I'm excited for you to be here. And today's episode is brought to you by Aim7. Aim7 is an app I personally use. It is there to customize your health based on biofeedback that you're giving that is going to allow it to know how stressed out you are, if you're rested, how much time you have, it's going to help to customize your workout. Like you know, hey, you only need seven hours of sleep today or you need eight hours or whatever the case is. I use this app myself. You can go and check it out at www.aim7.com forward/getstarted, use the code rawandrealaim7 and get your free trial activated. Full disclosure, I am an investor in this company and I use AIM7 myself. So with that, let's get started with this episode of Raw and Real Entrepreneurship.

Susan Sly 01:53
This is Raw and Real Entrepreneurship, the show that brings the no nonsense truth of what is required to start, grow and scale your business. I am your host, Susan Sly.

Susan Sly 02:08
Well, hey, what is up Raw and Real entrepreneurs wherever you are in the world, I hope you're having an amazing day. I am particularly excited about this founder. I've been having a lot of conversations lately with friends, like myself who are in Gen X. And we have aging parents, we have kids or kids in college or kids still at home. And you know, maybe we're living away from our parents. And the big question is, with increased healthcare costs, and also the burden on hospitals and care facilities is how can people age with dignity at home and this is something I'm going through with my dad, Joe. Right now my dad listens to the show every week. So Dad, this one's for you. My founder today, and I'm excited to dive into this is a visionary leader, an accomplished entrepreneur. He's currently serving as the CEO of HiDo health, which is a cutting edge healthcare technology company with a deep passion for improving people's lives through innovation. And he has dedicated his career to revolutionising the healthcare industry. And we're going to talk about his journey, we're going to talk about impact, we're going to talk about lives. And more than anything, we're probably going to talk about AI because he's also a data scientist. And so for longtime listeners of the show, you all know that that's the other world I play in. So with that, I want to welcome to the show, the one and only Charles Gellman. Charles, thank you for being here.

Charles Gellman. 03:36
Thank you so much, Susan, for having me. That was an absolute phenomenal introduction, probably the best one I've heard so far. So I might have to repeat that again some other time.

Susan Sly 03:44
You're very kind. I used to do radio. So I can do a radio voice. If you need me to introduce you anytime, like for a big speaking event. Just let me know. I want to jump in. I mean, you and I were talking just before we started, and this is a significant problem in the United States. 10,000 people turn 65 every single day. This statistic in Canada, our second biggest listening audience is that the last 10 years of the average Canadians life, where I'm from, are spent in illness. That's something to look forward to. What made you decide that this was a problem you wanted to solve?

Charles Gellman. 04:21
Yeah, I think like most entrepreneurs, it's not something that you set out to do. It's something that you uncover during either your research efforts, or a moment in life, or something impacts you that moves you in such a way that alters your trajectory. And for me, when I was doing my master's research, which was in clinical informatics at UC Davis Medical Center, it was really trying to figure out the Blueprint for Health. And when you think about the Blueprint for Health, there's really some core basic pillars. One is diet and nutrition. Two is mobility and exercise. And the third if you are challenged, the first two tends to be medications. And from my data scientist hat I gotta put on for everybody that's viewing. I need to find out whether or not those cocktails and medications are serving you the best. Are they maintaining your health? Are you progressing? Or are you actually improving over time? And what's unknown is that data input, it's not known whether or not patients or people are taking or missing their medications at home. And that was my question that I started to research night and day to figure out and figure it out that nobody knew.

Susan Sly 05:42
And the truer words have may never have been spoken on this show. I have a story for you, Charles. So my dad is, is an engineer. He's not practicing anymore. He's 83. And not that long ago, he had gone, my aunt, in her 90s received an honorary PhD from York University. So my dad took the train to Toronto, and he's getting ready to take the train back and he collapsed. And so he gets rushed to the emergency room. They can't figure out what's wrong with him. And my dad, being an engineer decides to self diagnose. He's like, I think I took my medications incorrectly. I had been speaking at the Hewlett Packard, discover conference, I go tearing out of Las Vegas driving back to Scottsdale where I live, looking for flights, I fly to Canada. And he's like, I just took my medication incorrectly. And I said, is that what the doctor told you? And he's like, No, that's what I think. And so we go to the pharmacy, Charles, and we get everything done in these pillow packs so it's all organized. But here's the thing, the writing is, I think, for else, it's like a maybe a point five font. I can't even read it. And I'm like, yeah, it's smaller than that. It's so tiny. And and so now I'm like, I get the Sharpie out, Charles. And I'm like, okay, Dad, this is, you know, we have to, we have to figure this out. And to your point, tis is happening all the time. And it sounds to me too, this isn't a problem that just randomly came like what, you know, what made you decide that this was a problem that you personally were going to be involved in. Because as founders, if it doesn't get us up in the morning and keep us up at night, it's maybe not the right problem to solve.

Charles Gellman. 07:33
Yeah, so I had a personal experience within healthcare where I was misdiagnosed, I have a family history of kidney stones, my father had a kidney stone, I went to the doctor, and they did their best based upon the information that I provided. So just like your father, Joe, he was self diagnosing. I was in my, you know, younger age of 20s. And not really a, having the foundational knowledge or experience of how to communicate to my provider, and they thought I had a kidney stone. So I went home, later finding out that I had a ruptured appendix, went to the hospital, they cut me open, you know, full abdomen, but I'm here and I'm alive. So my experience was that because of my inability to communicate, and them not being able to diagnose me correctly, I had to suffer, you know, almost by giving my life. And that is happening to many millions and millions of people, there's medication errors, there's medical errors that happen right now to, no fault of physician or patient, it's just a question of understanding and communicating the right information. So bringing back a little bit, if we actually know, if we knew Joe is taking his medications, as prescribed according to the label, that wouldn't be a cause for concern. And then they can diagnose him by looking at the bloodwork or the labs or other information. So by ruling out some of these critical items, we can potentially impact many, many millions of people right now, where it's a question mark.

Susan Sly 09:09
That's profound. And that's why, that's what I wanted you to share your story because it's the, it's that personal side of things, and you and I know from AI and technology, this is not a simple problem solved. And the reality is, there's a lot of discussion. I know even at the conferences I speak at, which do you think a tech conference, but there's still a lot of misperceptions about AI capabilities, and the output is going to be directly related to the input. So going back to, you know, some of the studies that have been done at say, UMass through MIT, and looking at ways to solve this problem. One of the things is continuity of care providers or you have an individual who goes to multiple providers, has multiple prescriptions, or the data input is illegible or how someone input the data, they did it wrong. I mean, the list goes on and on and on. So you decided to solve a really complex problem. Oh, go ahead. Yeah

Charles Gellman. 10:10
We have spent the last five years 24/7, 7 days a week working on this problem. And you have to look to the patient, how can we assist the patient to potentially eliminate medication errors from happening at home. And in order to do that, you have to engineer it in such a way where you have essentially a doc in the box, you have AI enhancing patient care, not replacing it, enhancing it in such a way where you remove the burden on the side of the patient at home, or the caregivers that are supporting doctors and nurses with the right intent. And what's unique about the HiDo device we've, we have an embedded RFID chip in each cap. In each pill of medication, we know the medication, dosage, frequency and count so the patients don't have to. And by doing this, by dispensing the medications, with the right person unlocking face ID and documenting that they're taking their medications with a transparent pill cup, dose by dose, we know which cocktails or medications have the best outcomes based upon the disease state, age, gender, race, location, income, all of these different data inputs and parameters. We no longer have to guess what's working. We know definitively what is the best for populations that have been underserved or under representative all over.

Susan Sly 11:46
That I mean, I've interviewed hundreds and hundreds of founders, my mind doesn't blow easily, my mind just got completely blown. Because it's, it's such a, Charles, as you know, and I'm sure you've heard many, many times, it's such a different way to solve the problem. Because there's, there's a lot of ways people have tried to solve the problem, whether it's using Wi Fi signals, or using computer vision or whatever it is, and you're taking a much different approach with multi sensory input. So you've got the RFID, you've got the clear cup, you've got, you know, all sorts of ways that you're getting different data points in order to, in order to provide the best care. Okay, so I'm so curious. So let's use my dad as an example. So if my dad wanted to have this in his home, like, what are the steps you would take? And what would it look like, in terms of dispensing to him?

Charles Gellman. 12:44
Yeah, so let's say your your father was part of a pilot program for one of the Medicare advantage health plans or a specific organization that was assisting him, he would be contacted, they would engage him, there's a mobile app that's synced up with the device. And we would find out which medications he's taking, we would document exactly who his physicians are, what are medications and make sure they're not contraindicated. So medication reconciliation has to take place prior to putting the HiDo device. So for everyone that's listening to this, medication reconciliation is determining which medications are the best based upon your disease state. And you're not taking contra indicated medications that can have a negative impact on your health. So this solely looks at the person and what they're taking before you make sure they're taking it at such a high rate because there are impacts to health, because doctors don't know if people are taking the medication. So oftentimes, right now, we dose up, we dose up titrate up, titrate up, now we're adding more medications, because simply people aren't taking the medications as intended. So once that's done, that's the most important component, then the device is a behavior modification tool. So AI can enhance his life by altering his habits and behavior so he can assist himself without being dependent on you, or a caregiver or somebody else that doesn't care as much as he does about himself. So he can be the engineer, Joe can take care of himself. And now he's got the engineering device to help him live a better life so he can live in happiness, and he can do what he wants, and he doesn't have to worry about this any longer. So my mission, our goal is to improve millions of lives and impact people so they no longer have to worry about this anymore.

Susan Sly 14:51
That is, it's huge because going back to something you said about contraindication of medications, and it happens all the time, someone goes to urgent care, and they don't list all their medications and then the doc prescribed something because the doc doesn't know or the person forgets the medications they're on or you know, the list goes on and on and on and on and on. And it's, it's massive. So I want to ask you this question because there's this whole concept, you know, in startup world and you know, about creating a piece of hardware, versus just creating the SAS that's somewhat hardware agnostic. What you've designed is not a device that I've ever seen before. So what was the process of going through the design iteration? You're, you're smiling, if people can't see, he's smiling because this is an engineering question. So there's, what was that process for you?

Charles Gellman. 15:50
Painful, very, very, very painful. So we're on version four right now. I like to joke around with my co founder who's not in the office, thankfully, he's a biomedical engineers, exceptionally talented, but our first design, you know, I like to joke around with him, it looks like a miniature Porta Potti. You know, it was just, you know, that was our first prototype. So it got us to be able to test things. And I always give the credit to the patients. The reason why we're at, where we're at, is based upon the feedback and the insights that patients wanted or needed to assist them to get better care. So we have a large screen, we have, you know, that microphone, we have recording, we have sensors, so it assisted them in doing things. So I'll give you an example. We have a patient, Anthony, had a stroke, paralyzed in half his body, in his mid 40s. He was healthy, he was exercising. But sometimes these significant events happen, and his wife, Helen, you know, as the caregiver is, you know, his wife and trying to take care of the house. And it's just a monumental undertaking, but he only had access to his arm. So we made it, I, I've never done this before, we never say no, we probably should really lower the device. So he could roll up in his wheelchair and take the medications by himself, he was no longer reliant on his wife, because he didn't have the ability to even take the pill cap off to take his medications. So a lot of the design, the structure and the engineering, it's very, very sophisticated and complex. And it's all driven by patients in the insights. And my engineers, if they're here, they're probably kill me. You know, we've done many, many, many different iterations. But it's by design, there was intent behind everything. It's not because we thought it was cool. It was really a support that people that really utilize this product.

Susan Sly 17:46
I love that you share that story. And the story behind the story is, when you're doing any form of hardware, it's going to have multiple iterations. And there are the, there's the designing it. So you, you have the engineering design, and then that sometimes doesn't work when you go to manufacturing, and then it's finding the right manufacturer, and are they going to get it and then protecting your IP, and the list goes on and on. I have some experience with this. So how did you go from, Okay, we draw it out, we kind of have an idea, you know, maybe use some kind of like, engineering software. Okay, this, you know, this is what we think we want to, how did you find your manufacturer that you ended up with the current one?

Charles Gellman. 18:28
Yeah, so my co founder has previous experience of contract manufacturing, he's worked with a number of different startups where they've, you know, developed and produced tens of thousands of units. And there's, you know, relationships within the industry. And we've had phenomenal support with our advisors and our investors. And what I always say is, our success is really dependent upon the team around you. So you always try to hire smarter people around you. And I have plenty of weaknesses, plenty of deficiencies. So it's fantastic that we have other folks to make up for the areas that you may not be good at. And that's perfectly fine. But you have to understand yourself, know what you're good at, know what you're not good at, and then build a team around you that everybody contributes in such a way where you get an exponential growth factor. So I attribute our relationships, our success, really to the folks that are around here that are supporting us to getting us to where we want to go.

Susan Sly 19:26
That's incredible. And I love that you said relationships because that is, it's so helpful. It doesn't matter what kind of product or service you're producing, relationships are everything. And how did you go from, Okay, we have this idea, to we're doing this, to we have the beta product? What was that journey like?

Charles Gellman. 19:47
I will go back to what I said before, was exceptionally painful. We were working 24/7, 7 days a week, and I started pen and paper and I don't even want to embarrass myself by showing you a piece of paper because my writing looks like hieroglyphics. Started from an idea, pen on paper, trying to explain to the engineers what I saw in my mind, and have them develop the design. So they could put it in a 3d rendering. And then we could show that to other folks and then producing everything. We started on 3d printers, we have 25 printers in my garage. I had people coming to my house every single day, to work on this project, without getting paid, because they had the passion, they had the drive to want to help others. And I could explain my vision, and our potential impact to so many other people. So the cast of characters that we surround ourselves by were so bought in in our potential impact, even with, you know, my my renderings that they went down this road of unknown. Intel started to become a reality. And what we've done so far, we'll unpack that a little bit, is, I would say nothing short of amazing of what the potential impact could be familiar to folks.

Susan Sly 21:15
I see it I mean, even in researching you, and the company prior to the show, I saw it so clearly. A lot of folks who listen to our show, they have ideas, we all have ideas, most entrepreneurs are super ADD, and to execute on an idea, like you said, it can be painful. And in the beginning, you might be bootstrapping it, you have folks who are working for free. So you're trading, hypothetical equity and a hypothetical company that might, you know, make it and you have to have that vision to do that. How did you get your first funding?

Charles Gellman. 21:52
I don't, I didn't, at the time, when we started, I didn't have a foundational network or relationships with folks that have the ability to invest in us. So what I did that was a little bit different in some of the entrepreneurs that are listening to this could probably do the same thing is never underestimate the power of networking, relationships, and also your persistence in following up with folks. So reach out to people on LinkedIn, go attend those events where you can mix with people, tell people about your idea. You know, a lot of this culminated from a New Year's Eve party that I attended. I was the last one up because they forced me to go up there and tell people about my idea. And in the crowd, there is happened to be people that were there that had experience in health tech. So you never know if you don't get out there and open your mouth and start talking to people who's listening or who may think about something very similar to what you're doing. And that's where I believe that the dots will connect in the end, but you got to get out there.

Susan Sly 22:59
Yeah. And that advice is so huge. And I interviewed Indus Khaitan, who's already had a successful exit, he sold that company to Oracle, he's on his new company. And he's an engineer, and he talks about, he's super introverted. He doesn't like going to those events. But he created a process for himself to make himself a situational extrovert. And that's exactly the same wisdom that he gave is getting out there, networking, because you don't know who's going to be in the room, which is huge. You mentioned, a big vision. And so when we're founders, and we're starting, Charles, you know, we have those first beta customers, right? And then we have like, they might be paying, they might not be, I've had both kinds of founders on the show. And then we have this, you know, the first early adopters, who are the paying customers, and how did you get your first beta, well, I guess patients in a way. How did you get the first beta patients?

Charles Gellman. 24:00
Great question. So by having those conversations with the people around me, there are so many folks in great need of this home care assistance, and they're wanting to be able to care for themselves. So through friends of friends, we were able to get our beta patients or customers. And this was you know, Anthony and Helen, that stroke. This was Gloria Gina, and Jason, who Gloria has dementia. They were put in situations and so many different stories started to unfold in front of us that we started capturing everything on camera. And we have these patient testimonials because they felt so strongly with what we're doing an impact that they wanted to convey their message to a wider audience because there's millions of people that have the same plight that are undergoing the same challenges that we can potentially alleviate. And I'm exceptionally thankful and grateful for these folks because without their stories, nobody would really know what the possibility is, and I have my own self limiting beliefs. I would have gotten down there and thought that the HiDo device is going to work for dementia patients. I mean, that type of stuff just absolutely blows your mind that that's possible.

Susan Sly 25:18
You just mentioned self limiting beliefs. So someone might listen and say, Charles has it all together, he's got like the customers, he's got the funding and you know, how, what is one of your self limiting beliefs and how have you managed to overcome that, because I know that one of your big pieces that you talk on in your interviews is you know, focusing on the positive and being an overcomer. And I think for all the entrepreneurs listening around the world, they want to know how we have all overcome some of these things that other, might limit other people. So what is one of your beliefs and how did you, have you overcome that?

Charles Gellman. 25:58
So I always, I believe in falling forward. So I believe in, if you're driven and you're persistent, and you're gonna make it happen one way or another. So, you know, you're set, my self limiting beliefs, you know, you always think that well, what if I can't? What if I'm going to let people down? Well, no matter what you can always think about those What if moments, but what if you're right? What if you can, what if you can potentially push forward. We can control our activities, I can control how many folks I talk to, I can control whether or not I'm going to conferences, I can control how many people are within my network, how many speeches I'm doing, how many times or how many patients I'm talking to impacting the potential development. So there are areas of control that can potentially push us forward to get us to those next milestones, whatever that might be for your entrepreneur, whether it's, you know, putting on pen and paper, at least you started, are you talking to people about the pen and paper, are you moving it forward? You know, so I think there's steps that you can be accountable for yourself. But also, you can continue to push forward and maybe if you can't, or if you think you can't, that's when you start leaning on other people, your mentors, your advisors, investors, or people that may be outside your network that you can reach out to, so there's always something you can do, but you got to make the choice.

Susan Sly 27:22
And so that, that is huge wisdom, because one of the things we're seeing, you know, with a lot of folks who are struggling with, you know, depression, even, is that they aren't feeling fulfilled, they aren't feeling like they're doing something to move themselves forward. I love how you broke that down. You have an idea in your head, put it on a piece of paper. Okay, what's tomorrow's step, okay, maybe find research, the wonderful thing about, you know, my daughter, one of my daughters came to me, and she's like, I want to, I want to do modeling. And I said, Great, you can YouTube it and you can Google it, you can figure out what is the way that you're going to pursue this career path. And that's, we have access to so much knowledge. I want to ask you this question. You know, this, where you're at right now, looking back on the journey you've come through so far, is there something you wish you would have known? Like about could be knew about the process, it could be about mindset, but there's something you wish you would have known that you're like, I know this now. And it's a teachable moment. But I wish I would have known that.

Charles Gellman. 28:30
Well, my background is commercializing emerging technologies, and you have to be open to all the information coming at you and the decipher what is right and what's wrong. You know, I spent time focused on specific verticals, that may not work now. But we never know how we're going to connect the dots in the end. So I can't say definitively whether or not that wasn't a good allocation of my time, because we don't know maybe that expanded my mind in a different way, that I, I'll be able to connect it later. So I feel good about what we've done with the resources that we had. Could you have more, you could always have more, you could always have more abundance. Could we have done with less? Probably not. But I'm, you know, I've excited with what we've been able to accomplish, you know, developing a new technology and bringing it to market with a very small amount of very talented engineers.

Susan Sly 29:27
That's incredible. And so what's next for you in terms of funding and growth?

Charles Gellman. 29:32
Yeah, so we're speaking with a number of folks, we'll be attending the TechCrunch conference in San Francisco ,if you happen to be there, or the HLTh conference in Vegas, you know, in the near future, and we're going to continue to push forward, we have a couple of unannounced contracts with health plans as well as veteran home health that we're excited with. And we'll probably be going for that series A around in about summer of '24. So we are actively engaging with future partnerships, as well as investors.

Susan Sly 30:04
Well, I might be at the TechCrunch event. So I would see you there. And I love that. And I love your transparency because it is, you know, it's an interesting climate in raising money, but in the healthcare sector, it's different because for those of you listening, it's a very, there's always money available, and there's always funding for the right health care, because health care is not a trend. It is, you know, you can look back on things that got funded or didn't get funded. And one of the things VCs look at is, what is the trend and where is this going, and aging at home or care from home, this is not a trend, this is an actual real problem that Charles and the team are tackling head on. And, you know, my mind is already thinking of all sorts of different use cases to add on to the device and really integrate with multisensory, and so forth, who really create, and it's beautiful. I mean, it's, uh, you know, I don't get emotional often on the show, I have fun, but it's emotional for someone like me, because I'm an only child. And I think, you know, all the things the device could eventually do without multiple, you know, with wearables and different technology in the sensors to provide like, you know, for caregivers or family members that can't be with a person. And look what happened in the pandemic, when so many, I didn't see my dad for two years. Right. So what you're doing is, the word that comes to mind, Charles, is noble. And it's going to be, I'm excited to see the climb. And I know you probably can't disclose like I, some founders, I'm like, the only way they're exiting is acquisition. But I could see a path to IPO, I could see like so many different things. And I'm sure you're thinking of those things as well.

Susan Sly 31:56
Yeah, it's very exciting to see, you know what the potential is. And again, like I said, we are mission driven and impact driven. And our goal is to help improve as many folks' lives as possible that are suffering from chronic disease. And anything is possible, if you have the right team surrounding you.

Susan Sly 32:14
I love that. And if someone is listening, and they're saying, Oh, my gosh, I need this device or my family member needs this device. You mentioned that you're working through providers, but how would they find out more, get on a list? How does that work?

Charles Gellman. 32:29
Yeah, so please visit us at Hidohealth.com. H-I-D-O health or if you want to drop a comment or a like on any of the YouTube videos, just query HiDO, H-I-D-O health, and you can find us there, feel free to message us through contact us on the website if you'd like to learn a little bit more information.

Susan Sly 32:45
That's awesome. And so I know VCs, listen, I have a lot of friends in Silicon Valley who listen to the show. They tell me it's so weird, Charles, like we'll be having drinks and like, one of my friends who works in NVIDIA, he was like, I listen to your show all the time. I'm like, Oh, I had no idea. So if you're, also if you know VCs in the healthcare space, or you are one, please share this episode with them. I always love to help my friends. And check out the YouTube videos as Charles mentioned. All of the social all of the handles the website, the transcript will be on susansly.com and you can get everything there are so Charles, thanks again for being here.

Charles Gellman. 33:22
Thank you, Susan. I really appreciate you having me on.

Susan Sly 33:24
Well, thank you. All right, everyone. Well, this has been another episode of Raw abd Real Entrepreneurship. God bless. Go rock your day. If you've enjoyed the episode, Charles and I would love a five star review, we would. And if this episode has helped you or if you have any questions, go to susansly.com and ask away on the Contact Us form. And with that, I will see you in the next episode.

Susan Sly 33:48
Hey. This is Susan and thanks so much for listening to this episode on Raw and Real Entrepreneurship. If this episode, or any episode has been helpful to you, you've gotten at least one solid tip from myself or my guests, I would love it if you would leave a five star review wherever you listen to podcasts. After you leave your review go ahead and email reviews@Susansly.com. Let us know where you left a review. And if I read your review on air, you could get a $50 amazon gift card and we would so appreciate it because reviews do help boost the show and get this message all over the world. If you're interested in any of the resources we discussed on the show, go to Susansly.com, that's where all the show notes live. And with that, go out there rock your day. God bless. I will see you in the next episode

Susan Sly 34:41
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