Moving Mountains
Advanced Data Analytics for Better Health
The path to entrepreneurship is a strange one. Sometimes you hit bumps along the road. Sometimes roadblocks. And sometimes - without even stepping foot back in Colorado - sometimes you hit Mountains…
Spoiler Alert: Skip to the bottom to see Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson (Ser Gregor from ‘Game of Thrones’) get his advanced health diagnostic update in our latest collaboration with Fountain Life.
Pontem Health: Energy x Medicine Mashup
6 months ago (June 2023), we introduced you to Pontem Health. In that story, we spoke about leveraging advanced metrics in the healthcare space for better human outcomes. The combination of data and discipline, transcending our traditional energy roots and expanding into other verticals.
While the concept itself may be novel to a group of engineers, the synergy between energy and medicine is pretty well-established.
Houston Methodist Hospital has established ‘Pumps and Pipes’, which is an extension of the Dr. DeBakey CV (Cardiovascular) Education program, designed to bring together “the brainpower behind three of Houston’s leading industries: medicine, energy and aerospace.”
My previous business partner and co-founder of Assured Flow Solutions, Dr. Tony Spratt, received his PhD from Arizona in the field of amphiphilic molecules at
hydrophobic/hydrophilic interfaces, with a focus on enhanced drug delivery. Upon graduation, he was recruited by both the medical and energy fields, ultimately opting for the warmer weather and shorter turnaround times for chemical application development within oil/gas down in Houston. A true “red pill / blue pill” choice of where to apply the acquired knowledge, which was very similar at its core to both industries. Will leave it to the energy community who has worked with the Dr. Spratt to say whether he made the right decision…
My college roommate (chemistry major) used to debate who had the tougher courses: pre-med or engineering? Much of our course work and fundamental science was extremely similar, I just was able to start getting paid after 4 years of school - he could not. But don’t worry - he isn’t broke - he has gone on to be a successful cardiologist and co-founder of a biologics research company, leveraging data for better outcomes.
CEOs / Founders (Minutes before running the 1997 Naked Mile , Ann Arbor) And…we already have one successful energy/bio collaboration under our belts. At the start of COVID, we partnered to aid in developing some of the first at-home antibody test kits.
Point being: the collaboration and overlap between engineering and medicine has been with us for some time and will continue to grow stronger over time. Hence, Pontem’s foray into the medical space and our excitement about the possibilities to continue solving hard problems that make a difference in people’s lives.
Pontem Health / Galahad Capital Update
Through our subsidiary Galahad Capital, we looked to partner and collaborate with innovative companies in the medical space that shared the same Pontem ethos of merging data and discipline, bridging the gap to solve problems. The first of these efforts has led to a collaboration with Fountain Life (https://fountainlife.com)
Our mission at Fountain Life is to maximize the health and vitality of our members using advanced diagnostics to catch diseases before they manifest, enabling members to stay healthy and implement the longevity breakthroughs racing towards us before they show signs or symptoms.
Fountain Life has been active lately with getting their message out, so we thought it was a good time for an update. Below are a few interesting articles and videos, speaking of using advanced metrics and how they are being democratized / made accessible.
Can AI help you live longer?
In a fantastic article, Dr. William Capp speaks about how the medical community, particularly Fountain Life, are leveraging AI for better outcomes.
Detecting asymptomatic disease is challenging because the human body is amazing at masking symptoms, but leveraging AI technologies is helping physicians make key diagnoses earlier than ever before.
We won’t spoil everything, so see link below for full story.
Future of Medicine: Proactive vs. Reactive
Dr. Helen Messier, Chief Medical and Science Officer, speaks on shifting the focus from reactive (treating the sickness) to proactive (preventing the sickness) in this episode of ‘Your Mom’ podcast.
There are so many parallels to the energy industry, where we can shift the overall cost of our asset’s “health” by finding early warning signs of problems. Setting appropriate ‘Key Performance Indicators’ (KPIs) that are designed to give us an early warning sign, before we are in a remediation scenario (i.e. paraffin clean-out, hydrate blockage, corrosion-induced pipe failure, etc.). In a world of (a) limited time/resources and (b) ever-increasing access to data make this paradigm shift all the more important. Changing our focus to identifying those leading indicators - through the use of smart metrics - can enable tremendous savings. The old saying “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” has never been more true.
Heart Breaker
Per the US Center for Disease Control (CDC), Heart Disease remains the #1 cause of death, followed closely by cancer at #2. Preferring to leave heartbreak to sad country music songs, the ability to do proactive screening to foresee issues before they manifest themselves offers an opportunity to change that narrative. Shifting the focus away from ‘sick care’.
From a cardiac point of view, the AI algorithm should not only demonstrate plaques that reduce the diameters of blood vessels, but also distinguish which plaque is prone to rupture (i.e., to detect unstable, vulnerable plaques). If this technique can be sufficiently developed, it can clearly guide interventional treatment decisions for cardiologists before bad things are happening in the heart (Dr. Ernst von Schwarz)
See below link for story / video on how this is being implemented by harnessing the power of data and AI.
Mountain Living
As promised, here is a recent visit from The Mountain to Fountain Life’s Florida facility to get their health diagnostic check-up. Interesting and fun look at how early screening and detection is made accessible and leads to actionable insights.
Sorry, we are not in the video (need a few more days in the gym before the ego can tolerate standing side-by-side with them).
As an athlete, he is always looking for that performance edge. Optimizing on those variables that are measurable. But, shouldn’t that same approach be taken to our own personal health, specifically on those factors which are harder to measure…or at least until they are problematic? Sounds like The Mountain thinks so.
We will keep you posted on Galahad’s journey with Fountain Life, as well as other exciting areas that Pontem Health is looking at. Take care. Literally.