Science is revolutionizing healthcare faster than ever.

Insights: Medical Tech Innovators

 BETH KOWITT: We've seen startups pop up all over the space in the sector so there are some that are wearable so Ava bracelet, for example, is one that tracks ovulation. There are some that track menstrual cycles. We've seen some self-diagnostic tests. There's companies sort of all over the place here that are trying to get a piece of this market because it has been just so historically underserved. One really interesting startup in the space is a company called Modern Fertility. WOMAN: Meet Modern Fertility, the test that teaches you about your eggs and fertility hormones. AFTON VECHERY: Modern Fertility is a women's health company focused on making personalized fertility information accessible to women earlier in life. So our first product is the Modern Fertility hormone tests. We took the same exact laboratory tests that a woman would do at an fertility clinic if she or her and her partner were having trouble getting pregnant. We took those exact same tests out of the clinic and made them available to women earlier in life at a fraction of the cost that are really easy to access format. So we're able through, for example, testing your AMH levels, anti-mullerian hormone levels to actually understand the number of eggs that you have in your ovaries. And the number of eggs you have in your ovaries can help you understand really important things around your reproductive career. So it's not your ability to get pregnant right now, but if you're thinking about maybe kid number two or kid number three, what does the age of menopause look like for you and how do you think about that overall spectrum? We can have conversations about conditions like PCOS that have impacts one in 10 women. That's one of the leading causes of infertility. Conditions like POI, premature ovarian insufficiency that impacts one in 100 women that's associated with early menopause onset and a variety of other health conditions. And so it's really about just owning and having this window into your own biology to be able to use that information to make decisions that are right for you and your timeline. BETH KOWITT: Another company that's doing some really interesting work in the space is Carrot Fertility. And they're really much more of a benefits provider. So they're not an insurance company, but they are helping employers basically disperse fertility benefits to their employees. TAMMY SUN: I had a personal experience with fertility and the fertility health system. And I was fortunate enough that I had about $35,000 of my own savings in order to pay for my fertility treatments. But what I realized was that most people in America don't. Most Americans actually don't have more than $500 of savings. And 150 million Americans receive their health care coverage through employers in this country than any other way. That's more than Medicare and Medicaid in mind. And so we wanted to partner with employers to make it easy for them to deliver this aspect of health care coverage. And we want to make fertility benefits and fertility care a standard part of compensation packages at work like medical, dental, and vision. So we work with employers to create what we call a care plan design. Care plan designs are a first of its kind, flexible fertility spending. Every employer has a plan design of anywhere between $10,000 per employee to $100,000 or more. And again, there's no right number. It's really what is right for your business at your stage of growth. Once those parameters are set, we plug and play and it takes care of all of the rest as a software service. BETH KOWITT: One of the ways that I really do hope the sector continues to change as more money pours in is that it actually does increase access for more women. So I think fertility treatment has historically been viewed as for a certain kind of woman, a white woman, a wealthy woman, an educated woman. And I think that what really needs to change here is that access is broadened, and this really becomes something that is attainable for basically anyone who wants to get treatment. 

Investors funneled $646 million into the fertility sector in 2018.

Insights: Technology Is Democratizing The Fertility Industry

In 2018, investors gave $646 million to the fertility sector

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Technology Is Democratizing The Fertility Industry

[MUSIC PLAYING] SY MUKHERJEE: For those who are not familiar with what Livongo is, what is the company, and what is the service that it offers? JENNIFER SCHNEIDER: Disease management in the past has been people calling you when you're sitting down for dinner to tell you that you're likely to get a complication from your condition, so not helpful, not helpful in the timing, not helpful in the messaging. We have reinvented the system and actually designed solutions for people living with chronic conditions by mapping to all of the pain points that people have. The healthcare ecosystem, as you know, is really great at acute care, heart surgery, broken arms, delivery of a baby, but chronic condition management happens outside the walls of a doctor's office. It's asking yourself continuously should I have the bagel or should I have the salmon, and making those choices on a real-time basis. The beauty of what we're doing is we're giving these personable actionable messages right at the time when they're needed. SY MUKHERJEE: You use the Livongo platform yourself. Is there an experience you've had where it's really pushed you in the right direction, and helped you out? JENNIFER SCHNEIDER: So I'd been on the roadshow, right. We had one day where we were in three cities. I wasn't quite sure where I was, what was up, what was down. I landed in bed that night, slept for a few hours, and woke up completely confused, and I was confused because my blood glucose was low. My blood glucose value was 36, so normal is between 80 and 120, so at 36, you cannot think or act rationally. I checked my blood glucose. I got an immediate call from one of our certified diabetes educators, and because I was confused, she was able to talk me through how to access glucose to bring my blood sugar back up. She had me go to the minibar, for example, and I raided the jelly beans in the minibar, and the candy bars. It caused a big expense at the hotel, but I was able to get my blood glucose back up. What we've built and what we're bringing to our members is just very real, and it's changing. It's changing individual lives, and I cannot be prouder to be a part of that team and deliver those solutions. [MUSIC PLAYING]

The tech company helps adults to manage chronic health conditions through technology and support from healthcare providers. 

Insights: Livongo Offers Help with Chronic Conditions

Livongo helps adults with health conditions using technology

Livongo Offers Help with Chronic Conditions

[MUSIC PLAYING] CLIFTON LEAF: Do you find that patients are becoming more integral to the research agenda? MICHAEL J. FOX: Absolutely. Parkinson's patients, we're the experts on what we have. You meet 10,000 scientists and researchers but unless they have Parkinson's they don't-- they read all the books in the world and dissect all the brains in the world and do all that stuff, they won't know what it's like to have Parkinson's. That's why we have a responsibility as patients, if we expect these people to do what we need them to, they need to be fully informed and they need to be informed on our experience. They need to be informed what works for us, what we respond to, what we can contribute. So we have patients wearing wearables that measure certain aspects of their daily routines. And we have patient involvement in things like they're trying to find a biomarker. So patients are a huge part of what we do. CLIFTON LEAF: It's exciting, Fortune Brainstorm Health is really about the intersection of biology and medicine and technology. And the idea of wearables is a new thing and being able to identify symptoms in real time. And what excites you now, what's on the agenda? DEBORAH W. BROOKS: We've actually had a handful of recent drug approvals and that's been great news. They've been focused on treating symptoms that previously weren't really well managed by the drugs that we already have for Parkinson's patients. But we still don't have anything that has been proven to interfere with the underlying disease itself. And a lot of that challenge comes from us really not being able to objectively say what is Parkinson's. And so, to be able to engage the patient community and have them be part of unpacking this very complex disease by being part of research. When you think about doing things like being able to put a wristwatch on a Parkinson's patient and a cell phone in their pocket, and then collect just terabytes worth of data every day about their movements. And then add that to the patient's reported self experience. These are the kind of things that we think can really chip away at, if not break through this lack of disease understanding. And so it's one of the ways in which we think it's really important to bring patients in but it's also one of the ways that we leverage the state of science today, the state of technology to the day, and the state of how we engage with patients that is facilitated by things like our digital platforms and stuff. CLIFTON LEAF: What surprises you now looking back about where we're at in Parkinson's? MICHAEL J. FOX: In such optimism in energy and it happened in something like five years, 10 years, whatever, get it done. And I didn't realize that we were starting with Kitty Hawk and we wanted to build a space shuttle. and then realized that pretty early on that we had to rebuild the machine in a sense. And we made investments in places and we realized that there wasn't communication between researchers and they weren't sharing information farma, and everybody. And we just realized we needed to get a big pile of knowledge and have people that need it-- can we get it when they needed it and be able to use it and exploit it? And that's been our big thing and it comes to a patient, that we have all this clinical information. But unless we have the patients experience, the patients input, it doesn't mean anything. I mean, that's the matches that starts the fire. You get to be pile of stuff and then you need the patient to start the firing and to be a part of the answer. I'm so grateful for all the people-- the patients and their families, and scientific community and pharmaceutical community, and everyone that's embraced this challenge. It's meant so much to me. [MUSIC PLAYING]

Michael J. Fox, along with his namesake Foundations' co-founder Deborah Brooks, sits down with Fortune.

Insights: How Technology is Helping to Find a Cure for Parkinson's

How Technology is Helping to Find a Cure for Parkinson's

[MUSIC PLAYING] SPEAKER: Drones have brought big changes to entertainment, to sports, to real estate, even to pizza delivery. But one company wants to use its drones to save lives. Its mission is bold-- bring life-saving medicine to the most difficult to reach places on the planet. Zipline is the world's only drone delivery system operating at a national scale. In 2016, Zipline launched in Rwanda, Africa, where just 25% of roads are paved. Impassable mountains and washed-out roads are no match for the drones which deliver blood and medicine straight to remote clinics. Here's exactly how it works. First, health workers at clinics or hospitals text their orders to Zipline. The medical products stored at Zipline's distribution center are then prepared for flight. Health workers receive confirmation that their order has launched. In under 30 minutes, the medical products are delivered by parachute into a designated area. The Zipline drone then returns to home base. To date, zipline has delivered over 7,000 units of blood and taken over 10,000 flights. Approximately a third of those have been in emergency, life-saving situations. Zipline has since expanded to Tanzania. And it hopes to launch in the US, too. Zipline's long-term mission? To build instant delivery for the planet. In a world where billions of people lack adequate access to essential medical products, that can't happen quickly enough. [MUSIC PLAYING] 

Drones are able to deliver life-saving medicines in underserved areas. 

Insights: How Drone Startup ‘Zipline’ Is Saving Lives

Drones can deliver medicines in underserved areas.

How Drone Startup ‘Zipline’ Is Saving Lives

Drones can deliver medicines in underserved areas. 

[MUSIC PLAYING] JEFF TERRY: If I had to to summarize a command center in one word, that word would be action, action now. Think of a team of people working around the clock to help caregivers deliver the best possible care, watching out for every patient on their journey. We know so much-- and we're learning more all the time-- about how to deliver great patient care. But putting that into practice reliably, effectively, 24 by 7 is breathtakingly difficult. And that's where command centers are making a difference. We partner with Johns Hopkins to create the command center as a new way to orchestrate patient care. And what we're doing now is pushing the boundaries to really help keep patients on their pathway and make sure they're getting the best possible care and the best patient experience that's specific to them. JIM SCHEULEN: I think if you think about the command center like an air traffic control center, that's one way that people understand or get a sense for what we're trying to accomplish here. Think about air traffic control and the fact that there are hundreds of aircraft all trying to get to the same place almost at the same time. And somebody has to control that flow. That's a little bit of what we're doing here in the command center, trying to get the right patient to the right bed at the right time. JEFF TERRY: So the impact at Johns Hopkins has been to increase by about 60% the number of times Hopkins can accept a very sick transfer patient who needs their care, reducing by about 25% time that patients spend boarding or waiting in the emergency department and decreasing by about 70% the time that patients hold in the OR waiting for somewhere to go after their surgery is complete. The typical patient won't even know that the command center exists. But what they'll experience is less waiting. What they'll experience maybe is an intervention that keeps them safe or helps them get better care. Again, they probably don't know that it happens. But they have a better experience, get home faster, and sometimes have a better outcome. RODNEY MATTHEWS: 2017 in July, mid-July, is when I had the aortic dissection. The blood was coming out of my heart but not going into the lower extremities of my body. And I just remember land on my back, looking up, not feeling a thing, and knowing that there was something major going on with me. They wrapped me up in this like a package in bubble wrap and flew me to Hopkins. And after that, I just remember waking up in the morning. JIM SCHEULEN: From the moment the call comes in, and the Hopkins access line expediter has had so much experience or has been trained so well to recognize certain priority one conditions, that they then alert all of those in the command center who need to be aware of the patient. The lifeline transportation group can be listening to the physician interaction. And as soon as they get a sense that that patient might need to be transferred in a critical way, they can dispatch the aircraft to go get the patient. They can dispatch the ambulance to go get the patient. RODNEY MATTHEWS: Little did I know it's a 2% survival rate. It was timing. Boom. Boom. Boom. Managing all the time, all the communication along the way is what saved my life. JEFF TERRY: The possibilities for command centers and data in health care are almost endless from access and throughput to population health to managing hospital networks and systems of care to quality and pathways and bundles. If you really think about it, the potential to make an impact for patients and for caregivers and for the efficiency of the health care system is massive. It's truly tremendous. JIM SCHEULEN: I think what excites me most about where we are in health care and where we're going is that with all of the information that's available now, people are going to be making better decisions. And that's the bottom line. The bottom line is patients are going to get taken care of better. We get these notes from patients and about patients all the time that talk about if you guys hadn't been here, this wouldn't have gone this way. RODNEY MATTHEWS: To this day, I feel like-- I feel the wind. My dog is pulling me as I'm walking him. My wife is yelling my name. I'm here. I'm alive. I could have been gone like that. So thank god all that happened for me. [MUSIC PLAYING]

Utilizing cutting edge developments in technology and data collection, the G.E. Command Center at Johns Hopkins Hospital has been compared to an air traffic control system.

Insights: How Johns Hopkins' GE Command Center Improves Patient Care

It's been compared to an air traffic control system.

How Johns Hopkins' GE Command Center Improves Patient Care

 SY MUKHERJEE: What do you think is the single coolest technology out there in medicine right now? TOBY COSGROVE: Well, you know, I've seen technologies from companies that can analyze your voice and tell whether you're on drugs. I've seen technologies which can look at your fungi and diagnose 60 different diseases. I mean, there is tremendous technology out there, and we're just starting to see the tip of it. You know, where I think you're going to see a tremendous improvement in technology is going to be around neurologic diseases. And we're seeing pacemakers for the brains regularly for Parkinson's disease. I think we're starting to see it for depression. I think we'll see it for all kinds of other diseases. And I think neurologic disease is really where cardiac disease was 50 years ago. SY MUKHERJEE: So we discussed a little bit earlier the whole HoloLens program that Cleveland Clinic had. Where did that idea come about? TOBY COSGROVE: Well, I got a wonderful friend by the name of Craig Mundie, who was the Head of Innovations at Microsoft. And he called me up one day and said, Toby, I've got something I got to show you. And I said, well, what is it, Craig? And he said, you'll have to come see it. So I put the headset on, and I'm on Mars. And I look around, and there's mountains over there, and there's interesting rocks over here. And I said, wow. This is pretty terrific. And so we started to think about how we could use it. And we thought we could use it in the teaching of anatomy. So we're now going to be able to teach anatomy to students without a cadaver. The other day, for example, I'm walking around a heart that's out in space, and they say, Toby, stick your head in. So I go like this. My head's in the left ventricle, and I'm looking at the outflow track of the left ventricle, a view I never had in 40 years as a heart surgeon. It's very cool. SY MUKHERJEE: Are there other technologies like that that you think are going to be used by the Cleveland Clinic or other health systems in the near future? TOBY COSGROVE: Oh, I think there's going to be all kinds of visual technologies. But I think the important thing is that this allows the teaching to scale. Now what we've now taken this same technology and begun to use it, and our plastic surgeons have used it in face transplants. So they did a total face transplant, and they visualized what they needed to do to start with, and then wound up doing it with the help of HoloLens. That is just the tip of the iceberg. 

Dr. Toby Cosgrove, Executive Advisor of The Cleveland Clinic, explains the importance of integrating tech into the health space.

Insights: How Cleveland Clinic Is Making Health Tech a Priority

Dr. Cosgrove from The Cleveland Clinic explains.

How Cleveland Clinic Is Making Health Tech a Priority

[MUSIC PLAYING] SPEAKER: Let's give it an introduction, in just a minute or two, of what the technology is that you're doing. KURT GRAVES: Our technology, at Intarcia Therapeutics, for those of you saw the demo yesterday, it's basically a convergence of two technologies in medicine. So we innovate both on the medicine side, as well as two technologies. One technology we have, which is the fundamental one, stabilizes proteins, peptides, antibody fragments at body temperatures for three plus years. We had to figure that out from a chemistry point of view, because if you can't keep drugs stable at high temperatures for long periods of time, you can't really fulfill a vision we have, which is to open up a new way of delivering medicines just once or twice a year. The second technology that I demoed yesterday is this little tiny osmotic mini pump. This holds a year's worth of medicine inside it and the stability technology. And between the medicine, the stability technology and this mini pump, we're opening up a totally new category of medicines for the biggest chronic diseases in the world. And we're planning to use this to both treat the diseases better over time, as well as prevent some of these major diseases, like HIV, like diabetes and others. SPEAKER: So what are you calling this new class of therapeutics? Is there a general name? KURT GRAVES: Well, we give our platform the name Medici, because we believe it's a renaissance in the delivery of chronic medicines. ANDREW THOMPSON: Proteus digital health, we make medicines that when you swallow them talk to your cell phone. And we answer the two most fundamental questions in all of oral therapy. Did the patient take the drug? And if they did, did it work? So pretty fundamental. This is not an experimental technology. We've been in business for about 12 years. We've invested over $500 million. We've created new categories of medical device in the United States and in Europe and in China. We've created new pathways for the approval of a digital medicine that contains active silicon, and we expect the first of those drugs to be approved this year. So the idea here is that we now re-dimension what an ambulatory therapeutic product really is and we give consumers things that really improve their ability to make good choices. So measurement, feedback, and behavioral cues. And most importantly, we give them that information on their mobile. And I'll just talk about the merger of Time and AT&T. Randy Stephenson made the point that the reason why AT&T is buying Time is because consumers want premium content on their mobile devices. Nothing could be more premium than direct information, specific information about how your drugs are working for you, how they're working for your parents or how they working for your kids. So we see this as a really fundamental and important opportunity to really re-dimension in the pharmaceutical industry. 

These companies want to remove patient error from taking medicine.

Insights: These Startups Are Working On Changing How You Take Your Meds

These companies want to remove patient medicine errors

Two Startups Working On Changing How Patients Take Meds

[MUSIC PLAYING] DR. DAVID AGUS: Google Health has announced many things over the last several months, including-- astonishing to everybody-- working with archenemy Apple together on a product which is tremendously needed in this country, which is the concept of tracing encounters. Can you tell us a little bit about the mindset behind that and how you got to it? DR. DAVID FEINBERG: Yeah. Well, first of all, Dave, it's really great to be with you and with Amy. And the archenemy that I have is diabetes and opiates and, in this time, COVID and inequities in care. DR. DAVID AGUS: I'm joking, yes. DR. DAVID FEINBERG: And you know what? I think that Apple felt the same way. And we felt that together we were really hearing from the public health world that they needed help with contact tracing. And so for us to be able to set the phones so that the folks that would have the information about who's positive could use the technology to let people know have they been exposed. So think about it. If you came back with a positive test for COVID-19, you certainly could tell people in your family that you're staying with. You could tell people if you came to work that they'd been exposed, but you might not be able to tell the person you sat next to on the bus, right? And so if it was a 30-minute bus ride and you were within six feet, wouldn't that be great information for that person to now know they've been exposed to somebody? And they don't get your name. And it's all voluntary. And actually, Google and Apple don't keep any of the actual medical information. That's a public health level. But it was the technology to allow that notification to take place. We have multiple countries-- Italy, Germany-- I think there's 11 countries are using it and multiple states in the US are engaged in thinking about going forward with it. So we think it's a tool that's important in the big concept of how do you really do contact tracing. [CHIME] 

Google Health is working with Apple to develop technology for contact tracing. 

Insights: Google Heath on working with Apple to develop Contact Tracing Technology

Google Health and Apple are on contact tracing tool.

Google Health and Apple develop contact tracing technology

Dr. David Feinberg, Vice President of Google Health explains how they're working with Apple to develop technology for contact tracing. 

[MUSIC PLAYING] DAVID ABNEY: We're in the middle of a digital transformation. We saw a few years ago what technology was going to allow us to do and how it was going to change our industry. We had to make a quick choice. Do we want to be on the leading edge of that, or do we want to let others kind of take it over, then we try to catch up? So obviously, the answer was to really act like an entrepreneurial company and really focus on what we think we do best. And we knew to have our first drone airline which we call UPS Flight Forward that we're going to have to work very closely with the FAA. We are an airline, we know their processes, their language, their procedures, their expectations, and we knew we would be competing with some companies that weren't airlines that maybe wouldn't understand that process, so we thought that would work to our advantage. So we were the first one to get the certification. And now, we have to make sure that we're the first one to scale and scale in a rapid way, so that's the next step. What we're doing controlled deliveries and these are commercial flights, and we've done well over 1,500 of them already, so this isn't about the future. And so we're picking up any samples in healthcare, and it would be samples, and blood tests, and urine tests, and stuff like that, and pick it up from one part of our health care complex, some of these are just enormous, and take it to where it's analyzed in the other. And so you have landing zones back and forth, and you're landing on the ground and then doing this. But we're also experimenting, and we're doing tests with actual residential deliveries. It's going to take the FAA probably a year or so to finish the regulations on how we would do this. In the test residential deliveries that we've already done, and it's from one of our customers, a CVS drug store to a retirement village or to an individual house, is you'd have the drone that would pick up the shipment at a landing zone at the CVS then hover within about 20 feet, I was going to point at the lights, but the lights at this place are a lot higher than 20 feet, but, however, 20 feet a tether will come down, and has come down, and the package is released on the ground, and then the tether releases very quickly. The tether would just be withdrawn back into the drone. That's to avoid hitting someone on the head, landing on someone's dog. This tether would be a very slow controlled delivery. And then the only way it would hit you in the head is you'd have to dive under it. I don't think you would do that. VASANT NARASIMHAN: One of the things that David and I were talking about backstage is how actually these drones are helping us also reimagine access to medicines. Both of us work with a company called Zipline in Africa, which is now really transforming how medicines are delivered in Rwanda and Ghana to people who can't access the medicines, and it's happening at scale. I was there in Ghana last week, and there are entire regions of the country that get their medicines now entirely through drone delivery through parachutes, and we're working with the country to tackle a disease like sickle cell disease using this drone technology. But it's extraordinary to see how it's happening so quickly in tackling some of the big health care challenges the world faces. 

Novartis CEO Vasant Narasimhan and former UPS CEO David Abney explain how their companies are working together to get medicine quickly to the people who need it most.

Insights: UPS and Novartis Team Up for Drone Deliveries

The companies are working together to deliver medicine.

Insights: Medical Tech Innovators

Insights: Technology Is Democratizing The Fertility Industry

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Investors funneled $646 million into the fertility sector in 2018.

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Insights: Technology Is Democratizing The Fertility Industry

Insights: Livongo Offers Help with Chronic Conditions

Insights: How Technology is Helping to Find a Cure for Parkinson's

Insights: How Drone Startup ‘Zipline’ Is Saving Lives

Insights: How Johns Hopkins' GE Command Center Improves Patient Care

Insights: How Cleveland Clinic Is Making Health Tech a Priority

Insights: These Startups Are Working On Changing How You Take Your Meds

Insights: Google Heath on working with Apple to develop Contact Tracing Technology

Insights: UPS and Novartis Team Up for Drone Deliveries