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First in Human

David Hindin

First in Human is a podcast about the stories, sparks, and spirit of health innovation. Hosted by Dr. David Hindin - a trauma surgeon, storyteller, and health technology strategist - each episode explores the human side of breakthrough ideas in medicine. From the first sketch on a napkin to the first patient helped, we go behind the scenes with the founders, clinicians, and creative minds pushing healthcare forward. Whether you're in medicine, tech, design, or just curious about how change happens in complex systems, this show offers an honest, inspiring look at what it takes to build something that could save a life.

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#31
October 28 · 42 min
Have a Medical Device Idea? Start With a Pen.
Got an idea for a medical device? Your first instinct is probably to build it: buy a 3D printer, learn CAD, make a small version of the real thing. But Ross Venook would hand you a pen and a piece of paper instead. Ross is a Senior Lecturer in Bioengineering and Associate Director for Engineering at Stanford Biodesign. He built new kinds of MRI hardware for his PhD, then spent 15 years at Boston Scientific working to keep implanted neurostimulators safe inside MRI scanners. Along the way, a boss who knew him well saw something Ross hadn’t fully seen in himself: he loved helping people learn. In this episode, you’ll learn: We talk about why building a whole device in one shot leaves you with problems you can’t pull apart, and why acting out a clinical scene can count as a prototype. Ross shares how a black 3D-printed model that nurses nicknamed “Darth Vader” taught the Novonate team what nurses need to see before they’ll put something on a baby, and why “I don’t know” is one of his favorite things to tell a team. Before you build anything, give this one a listen. Subscribe to First in Human: - Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/first-in-human/id1842644737 - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3C1xG5SxPei8m2lI63WSkd Connect with Ross on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rossvenook/ Biodesign Guide: https://biodesignguide.stanford.edu/
#30
May 13 · 38 min
Will Space Medicine Do What Longevity Medicine Hasn't?
Send a healthy 35-year-old into orbit and their bones start dissolving ten times faster than someone on Earth with osteoporosis. Their muscles waste. Their vision degrades. It turns out, space is a biological time machine - compressing decades of aging into months. And that means one thing: if you solve aging in orbit, you might have solved it on Earth. Matthew Kuhn is a 31-year-old biomedical engineer in Houston. And on October 13, 2024, he stood in a closet holding his newborn daughter, watching a SpaceX rocket land on his phone, when he had a sudden realization: the same problems we'll need to solve to keep astronauts alive longer in orbit are the problems holding back longevity on Earth. He didn't sleep that night. By sunrise, the bet that became Skybound Medtech had taken shape. In this episode, we explore what happens to a body in orbit, the strange logic of dual-use medicine, and what it means to build a company at the intersection of NASA, the world's biggest medical center, and a future no one's quite built for yet. This episode is a different kind of conversation for the show. We usually meet builders well into the work: companies with traction, devices with data, stories already taking shape. Instead, this is a rare look from the passenger seat, at the very beginning of a founder's journey. It's an episode about diving deep into understanding an unmet need - and the vision for what might be possible. Subscribe to First in Human: - Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/first-in-human/id1842644737 - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3C1xG5SxPei8m2lI63WSkd Connect with Matt on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-t-kuhn/
#29
April 21 · 55 min
Acquired for $340M: This CEO Built a Device for 25 Million Sleepless Americans
Twenty-five million Americans have restless leg syndrome. For decades, the best available treatments were Parkinson's drugs - medications so problematic that three of four have now been pulled from standard of care guidelines. Patients describe the sensation as Coca-Cola running through their veins, an uncontrollable urge that steals sleep night after night. Some were told it was all in their head. Shri Raghunathan is a neural engineer who went from studying epilepsy and building implantable brain stimulators to CEO of Noctrix Health, the company he founded to help close the treatment gap for RLS. His device, Nidra, uses a borrowed insight from the VR world to trick the brain into thinking the legs are moving -without any actual movement. It's now standard of care therapy for RLS. Inside this episode, you'll learn:• Why Shri spent a full year trying to kill his own idea before starting the company - and why that's the best thing a founder can do • The VR gaming trick that became the core mechanism behind a breakthrough medical device • How a small startup built the clinical evidence to go toe-to-toe with pharma - and won • What the "10 million nights" framework is and how Noctrix uses it to make every decision in the company A story about what it takes to build something so good it becomes the new standard of care. Subscribe to First in Human: - Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/first-in-human/id1842644737 - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3C1xG5SxPei8m2lI63WSkd Visit Noctrix Health online: https://noctrixhealth.com/ Connect with Shri on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shri-raghunathan-9b0a467/
#28
April 1 · 37 min
This Robot Draws Your Blood With a Needle. Patients Love It.
Toon Overbeeke's friend had a father going through chemotherapy — and every hospital visit meant failed attempt after failed attempt to draw his blood, because chemo had damaged his veins. The question was simple: isn't there a better way? That question sent Toon — a mechanical engineer who'd left a partner-track career at Bain to ride a motorcycle 30,000 kilometers through Iran, Pakistan, and 28 other countries — on a mission to build something that had never existed: a fully autonomous blood-drawing robot. He Today, as Toon is CEO of Vitestro, the company behind the Aletta system: a robot that uses infrared imaging and ultrasound to find your vein, positions the needle, and draws your blood, all without you ever seeing the needle. They've completed over 10,000 blood draws with a safety profile that beats manual phlebotomy. And elderly patients — the ones everyone assumed would resist — turned out to be the biggest fans. This is a conversation about robotics, human psychology, and what happens when someone refuses to accept "that's just how it's done." Subscribe to First in Human: - Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/first-in-human/id1842644737 - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3C1xG5SxPei8m2lI63WSkd Visit Vitestro online: https://vitestro.com/ Connect with Toon on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/toon-overbeeke-a3012825/
#27
March 17 · 51 min
This CEO Wants to Reset Your Heart Rhythm with Jello
Patients with implantable cardiac defibrillators live with a brutal tradeoff: the device that saves their life can also shock them without warning — so hard they describe it as getting kicked by a horse. Many develop PTSD, anxiety, or depression. And until now, there's been no alternative. Allison Post is CEO of Rhythio Medical and a cardiovascular biomaterials engineer who spent years running the innovation program at the Texas Heart Institute. Her team has developed a conductive hydrogel that's injected into the veins of the heart, where it solidifies into a network that can reset cardiac rhythm at a fraction of a percent of the energy of a traditional shock. The FDA granted breakthrough designation on preclinical data alone. In this episode, Allison walks us through the science behind the gel, what it was like to prove out an idea that sounded impossible, and the moment in the OR that changed everything. We talk about the patient experience that drives this work, the Houston ecosystem that made it possible, and why she left a job she loved to lead this company herself. If you care about the future of cardiac care, this one's for you. Subscribe to First in Human: - Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/first-in-human/id1842644737 - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3C1xG5SxPei8m2lI63WSkd Visit Rhythio online: https://www.rhythiomedicaltech.com/ Connect with Allison on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allison-d-post-10103/
#26
March 10 · 55 min
500 Amputations a Day. Meet Three Founders Fighting to Stop It.
If a foot wound isn't healing, the clock is already ticking. Every day in the United States alone, 500 people lose a limb to peripheral vascular disease - and 40% of them were never even diagnosed before the amputation. Jill Somerset spent over 20 years as a vascular ultrasound tech before a moment of curiosity altered the arc of her career: she put a probe on her own foot and what she discovered led to inventing a metric - Pedal Acceleration Time - that could objectively measure blood flow in ways the standard tests simply couldn't. Today, that discovery now has over 30 peer-reviewed papers behind it and a global following. But... there was a problem: to use it, you basically had to be Jill. Enter Abu Khalifa, an ICU doctor who kept seeing these patients arrive too late, and Adam Gold, a veteran medtech engineer already well into his third career life. Together, the three of them founded Moonrise Medical to automate Jill's expertise into a device anyone can use - with FDA clearance and commercialization on the horizon this year. This episode is a conversation about curiosity, complementary obsessions, and what happens when three people from completely different worlds find the same unmet need. Subscribe to First in Human: - Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/first-in-human/id1842644737 - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3C1xG5SxPei8m2lI63WSkd Visit Moonrise Medical online: https://moonrisemedical.com/ Connect with Jill on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jill-sommerset-rvt-fsvu-68110010/ Connect with Adam on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-gold-4b2394/ Connect with Abu on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abubaker-khalifa-87171a107/
#25
March 3 · 47 min
This Surgeon Drew City Plans as a Kid. Now He Uses AI to Redesign Healthcare.
In fifth grade, while other kids were drawing cars and airplanes, Andrew Ibrahim was flipping over his homework to sketch cities - mapping where the hospital should go, how far the school should be from the park, and deciding whether anyone would want to walk past a police station to get there. That obsession with putting pieces in the right place has shaped every chapter of his career since. Today, Andrew is a general surgeon and Chief Clinical Officer at Viz.ai, where he's helping build AI that works like the best chief resident you've ever had: flagging critical findings, cutting stroke treatment times by nearly an hour across 2,000 hospitals, and freeing doctors from the endless clicks and workarounds that drain their days. But Andrew's path was anything but direct. He got here by way of architecture school in London, inventing the visual abstract, becoming a tenured professor with 200 papers and NIH funding - and eventually, deciding all of that still wasn't enough to move the needle. We talk about why he left, what it was like testifying before Congress two weeks into his new job, and why he believes healthcare's biggest untapped resource isn't a technology — it's the people already in it. Subscribe to First in Human: - Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/first-in-human/id1842644737 - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3C1xG5SxPei8m2lI63WSkd Connect with Andrew on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewibrahim/ Visit Andrew's Website: https://www.surgeryredesign.com/ Visit Viz.AI's website: https://www.viz.ai/
#24
February 24 · 46 min
Serial Health Tech Builder on Founder Skills That Actually Matter — From Artificial Wombs to Injectors
When you're building something new in healthcare, the instinct is to lock down requirements and ship fast. Eric Sugalski has spent his career proving why that's a mistake. Eric's journey started with a dream job at IDEO, where he fell in love with the messy, human-centered process of turning ideas into real products. He later went on to found his own design and development firm, spending fifteen years helping health technology founders bridge the gap between lab breakthroughs and market-ready products - including work on an artificial womb for premature infants and a wearable airbag that prevents hip fractures in the elderly. In this conversation, Eric talks about why he thinks the MVP mindset is "fatally flawed" in medtech, what it was like to use his wife's pregnancy as a nine-month countdown to launch a company, and why he sold the firm he'd built for a decade and a half to finally build his own medical device: a drug delivery system designed to make one of healthcare's most error-prone manual processes as simple as removing a cap. Whether you're an engineer, a founder, or just someone who's ever wondered what it takes to bring a health technology from napkin sketch to patient bedside, this episode is okay, great. Super helpful. Appreciate it. I love the episode description you put together. No edits. Can you go ahead and put together the one sentence summary for my podcast distributor platform, a list of tags separated by commas for you. Subscribe to First in Human: - Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/first-in-human/id1842644737 - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3C1xG5SxPei8m2lI63WSkd Connect with Eric on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/esugalski/ Visit Ampulis's website: https://ampulis.com/
#23
February 17 · 39 min
Office Hours: Former FDA Reviewer on the Mistakes Founders Keep Making
A single FDA class at Stanford changed Allison Komiyama's life. She was a neuroscience PhD student who thought she'd end up in academia. Then she discovered regulatory science and never looked back. Allison spent time as an FDA device reviewer before moving to industry, where she built and sold her own regulatory consulting firm over seven years. Now, with her new venture Blue Stocking Health, she's tackling a problem she watched play out for over a decade: founders who treat FDA clearance as the finish line, only to stall when the real challenge of getting their device to actual patients begins. In this conversation, Allison pulls back the curtain on how FDA actually thinks about risk, what reviewers want to hear in pre-submission meetings, how early design decisions can quietly lock you into a regulatory pathway, and why the best FDA interactions feel like collaboration, not confrontation. She also shares the career philosophy her father gave her as a kid that still drives everything she builds. Whether you're sketching a back-of-the-napkin illustration of your first device or preparing a 510(k), this is the regulatory conversation you'll wish you'd had years ago. Subscribe to First in Human: - Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/first-in-human/id1842644737 - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3C1xG5SxPei8m2lI63WSkd Connect with Allison on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allisonkomiyama/
#22
February 10 · 43 min
This CEO Is Helping Lung Cancer Patients Told to "Just Wait"
Finding a lung nodule early is supposed to be good news. But for millions of patients, it means something terrifying: "We see something. We don't know what it is. Come back in six months." Joanna Nathan is the CEO of Prana Surgical, a company she spun out of Johnson & Johnson after the technology she'd watched develop one office over was about to be shelved. An immigrant entrepreneur and bioengineer, Joanna left her role running J&J's external medtech incubator to bet on a device that cores out tiny lung nodules — keeping the lung inflated, fitting between the ribs — so patients can finally get answers instead of anxiety. In this conversation, Joanna walks through the road from a freezing cabin phone call to a first-in-human study in Australia, what it took to herd four teams of lawyers through a corporate spinout, why she treats the FDA as a partner rather than a gatekeeper, and what lung cancer screening coming online means for millions of patients stuck in watchful waiting. She also reflects on what community means for medtech founders in a turbulent moment for the industry. If you've ever wondered what it really takes to pull a technology out of a giant company and build something with it — this is your episode. Subscribe to First in Human: - Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/first-in-human/id1842644737 - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3C1xG5SxPei8m2lI63WSkd Check out Prana Surgical's webpage: https://www.pranasurgical.com/ Connect with Joanna on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joannacnathan/
#21
February 3 · 51 min
The CEO Whose Company is Eliminating the Need for Skin Biopsies
What if diagnosing skin lesions didn’t require a scalpel — or even a biopsy at all? In this episode of First in Human, I sit down with Gabriel Sanchez, MIT-trained engineer, Stanford PhD, and founder and CEO of Enspectra Health. Early in his engineering career at Stanford, Gabriel began to see the limits of powerful imaging technologies that never made it beyond the lab. Instead of letting that work remain siloed, he set out to bring it into real clinical care. Gabriel tells the story of shrinking a room-sized microscope into a deployable medical device, and why he believes skin pathology is overdue for the same non-invasive transformation that reshaped radiology decades ago. We talk about the 150-year-old biopsy workflow that still defines dermatology, the massive bottlenecks it creates, and why so many attempts to change it have fallen short. Along the way, Gabriel shares what it really takes to introduce a brand-new imaging modality to the FDA, why studying past failures matters more than chasing hype, and how timing, patience, and persistence shape long innovation arcs. If you’ve ever wondered how scientific insight becomes real-world impact — or how medicine’s most entrenched habits actually change — this conversation offers a rare look inside the journey. Subscribe to First in Human: - Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/first-in-human/id1842644737 - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3C1xG5SxPei8m2lI63WSkd Check out Enspectra Health's Webpage: https://www.enspectrahealth.com/ Connect with Gabriel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriel-sanchez-a6719837/
#20
January 27 · 53 min
Doctors Said "Just Live With It." Her Team Built a $1B Startup Instead
Menopause isn’t gentle. For many women, it’s a physiological shockwave — flipping sleep, mood, metabolism, cognition, sexual health, and long-term disease risk all at once. And all too often, the healthcare system’s response has essentially been: “live with it.” In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Mindy Goldman, a UCSF gynecologist and nationally recognized leader in menopause and cancer survivorship care, whose career took an unexpected turn from academic medicine into the heart of a fast-scaling women’s health startup. What began as deeply personal loss and years of clinical frustration evolved into something much larger: helping shape Midi, a menopause startup now delivering insurance-covered care to women across all 50 states. Dr. Goldman shares the formative moments that changed her trajectory, from losing her closest friend to breast cancer, to realizing how many women are dismissed, misdiagnosed, or told to simply “push through” midlife symptoms. We unpack the care gap hiding in plain sight, why menopause became a systemic blind spot in modern medicine, and how Midi is using telehealth, clinical rigor, and scale to rebuild women’s healthcare from the inside out. This is a conversation about listening to hard experiences, translating clinical insight into infrastructure, and what happens when medicine meets venture-scale ambition. If you care about health innovation that makes a massive impact, this episode shows what it takes — and why it matters now more than ever. Subscribe to First in Human: - Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/first-in-human/id1842644737 - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3C1xG5SxPei8m2lI63WSkd Check out Midi's website: https://www.joinmidi.com/
#19
January 20 · 43 min
Why This CEO Is Building an EKG for the Gut - Literally
You might be surprised to learn that a particle physicist — someone who knows how to work with massive particle accelerators slamming atoms together — is building a company focused on a sticker that sits on your abdomen. But once you dig a bit deeper, it makes perfect sense. In this episode of First in Human, I talk with Steve Axelrod, a longtime physicist turned CEO, whose entire career has been built on pulling meaningful signal out of noise. It's a skill set that's taken him from nuclear sensors at Yale all the way to Silicon Valley, ultimately as a medtech CEO working on a deeply personal problem. And along the way, what Steve discovered was unsettling: when it comes to gut-related illness, doctors often can’t measure what patients are feeling. Tests look normal. Symptoms come and go. And care is often based on educated guesswork. So Steve did what physicists do: he started measuring. We talk about why he’s now building a wearable “EKG for the gut,” how listening to electrical rhythms over days - not minutes - changes what we see, and why this approach could reshape how doctors understand chronic symptoms, recovery after surgery, and what’s really happening inside the body. This is a story about physics, family, and what happens when someone trained to study the universe turns their attention inward - and finally starts listening. Subscribe to First in Human: - Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/first-in-human/id1842644737 - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3C1xG5SxPei8m2lI63WSkd Check out G-Tech's website: https://www.gtechmedical.com/ Connect with Steve on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steveaxelrodphd/
#18
January 13 · 48 min
3 Startups, 1 Rule: Building Companies from the ICU's Clues
What does it really take to decide what’s worth building in healthcare? In this episode of First in Human, I sit down with Dr. Ryan Van Wert, ICU physician and serial health tech founder, to unpack how he’s built multiple companies by starting with the most vulnerable moments in medicine. From rethinking sedation for patients on ventilators, to ensuring people’s end-of-life wishes are honored, to helping adult children care for aging parents, Ryan shares how clinical pain points become startup decisions and how needs-first thinking guides what he builds. We talk about Stanford Biodesign, the discipline of needs-first innovation, and what years in the ICU teach you about human cost, timing, and focus. Ryan walks through how specific problems rose to the top during rigorous needs-finding, how his thinking has evolved across Awair, Vynca, and now Kin, and what he looks for before committing to build. If you’re a clinician, founder, or builder wondering how to choose the right problem to work on and how to build with both rigor and empathy, this conversation offers a rare, grounded look at how real healthcare companies actually get started and why that decision matters more than anything that comes next. Subscribe to First in Human: - Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/first-in-human/id1842644737 - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3C1xG5SxPei8m2lI63WSkd Visit Kin Concierge online: https://www.kinconcierge.com/
#17
January 6 · 43 min
Nothing in the OR Was Built For His Patient.
It’s one thing to talk about innovation. It’s another to realize, mid-surgery, that nothing in the room was designed for your patient. In this episode of First in Human, I sit down with Dr. James Wall, pediatric surgeon, serial health tech founder, and VP of Product Management and Associate Medical Officer at Intuitive, to trace his journey. It's a career that's been shaped by building where the market is small and the stakes are high. From completing advanced training in minimally invasive surgery in France to launching multiple startups, to leading pediatric innovation at Stanford, and now - most recently - helping guide the future of surgical robotics, James has spent decades navigating the tension between impact and scale. The conversation spans pediatric devices, biodesign, venture economics, and the future of surgery. But at its core, it’s about learning how to build things that matter when scale isn’t guaranteed—and why the hardest markets can produce the clearest thinking about what patients truly need. Subscribe to First in Human: - Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/first-in-human/id1842644737 - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3C1xG5SxPei8m2lI63WSkd Connect with James: - James on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jameswallmd/
#16
Dec 30, 2025 · 46 min
$150M Raised. A Blood Test Reshaping Sepsis Care.
Sepsis is one of medicine’s most dangerous guessing games. Patients arrive with vague symptoms. Clinicians rely on instinct. And too often, the ones who look “okay” are the ones who crash. In this episode of First in Human, I sit down with Dr. Tim Sweeney, physician-scientist and founder of Inflammatix, to trace the unlikely path from a tense moment at a medical conference to a breakthrough FDA-cleared diagnostic now shaping real clinical decisions. Tim shares why leaving residency was the hardest choice he’s ever made, how years of rejected grants pushed him toward entrepreneurship, and what it took to raise more than $150M to build a diagnostic tool medicine didn’t yet have. We go inside Trivarity, a blood test that reads the immune system itself to help doctors decide whether a patient has a bacterial infection, a viral infection, or something else entirely and how sick they’re about to become. Along the way, we talk about the limits of clinical intuition, why sepsis isn’t one disease, and how better decisions, made earlier, can change outcomes. This is a conversation about conviction, risk, and what becomes possible when we stop guessing and start listening to the biology. Subscribe to First in Human: - Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/first-in-human/id1842644737 - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3C1xG5SxPei8m2lI63WSkd Learn more about Inflammatix: https://inflammatix.com/ Tim on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-sweeney-a6589594/
#14
Dec 16, 2025 · 42 min
Doctors Laughed at His Prototype. Now Millions Use It.
What does it take to reinvent one of the most iconic tools in medicine? In this episode of First in Human, I sit down with Connor Landgraf, co-founder and CEO of Eko Health, to trace the unlikely journey from childhood tinkerer to building a digital-enabled stethoscope that’s quietly reshaping how clinicians listen, learn, and diagnose. Connor shares how a gradual realization in a Berkeley classroom led him to challenge a centuries-old design paradigm. Why do we still rely on a hollow tube and human hearing alone to evaluate heart and lung disease? From building early prototypes (which doctors promptly rejected), to the long, patient work of developing data, algorithms, and trust, this is a story about respecting medicine’s traditions while carefully pushing it forward. If you’ve ever wondered how real medical innovation gets started, or how technology can augment human judgment without erasing it, this conversation offers a rare, thoughtful look at what it really takes to change medicine from the inside out. Subscribe to First in Human: - Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/first-in-human/id1842644737 - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3C1xG5SxPei8m2lI63WSkd Connect with Connor: - Connor's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/connorlandgraf/ - Eko Health webpage: http://ekohealth.com/
#13
Dec 9, 2025 · 51 min
She Replaced an $80,000 Machine With a High-Tech Sticker
How do you fight a disease that hides until it’s almost too late? In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Maria Artunduaga, founder of Samay, whose work began with a moment she still remembers clearly: a conversation about air trapping, a flashback to high-school physics, and the realization that sound might reveal early changes inside the lungs before symptoms appear at all. That spark - in a problem inspired by the loss of her grandmother to a COPD exacerbation - sent her down a path to rethink how we detect danger in one of the world’s deadliest respiratory diseases. Maria shares the unlikely early days: late-night experiments in her living room, patients welcoming her into their homes, and the first hints that a simple wearable patch could capture some of the insights that previously required an $80,000, phone booth-sized machine. We explore why respiratory diseases have been neglected by med tech, what makes COPD so deadly, and how a founder from Colombia is building technology designed for the people most often left behind. This conversation is about invention, persistence, and what becomes possible when a eureka moment meets a problem the world can no longer ignore. Subscribe to First in Human: - Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/first-in-human/id1842644737 - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3C1xG5SxPei8m2lI63WSkd Connect with Maria: - Maria's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drartunduaga/ - Samay webpage: https://www.samayhealth.com/home
#12
Dec 2, 2025 · 41 min
Premature Babies Were Being Protected With Literal Tape. This CEO Saw a Better Way.
An innovator’s first step into the clinical environment - in this case, an ICU built for the world’s tiniest babies - can change everything. In this episode of First in Human, I sit down with Eric Chehab, a Stanford-trained biomechanical engineer and founder of Novonate. We explore how a deadly but unaddressed risk in premature newborns became the focus of his life’s work. Eric shares the moment he realized that fragile infants were being protected with tape, improvisation, and sheer nursing ingenuity, and how that small, almost ordinary detail revealed a problem no one had truly solved. We follow his unusual path from a class assignment to years of crude prototypes, a slow spinout from Stanford, and the lonely stretch of building a pediatric device company in a market most investors dismiss. Eric opens up about the doubts, the early believers, and the winding strategic conversations that eventually led to Novonate’s acquisition by Laborie. If you’re curious how real needs are found, or how a simple idea can become life-changing for the smallest patients on earth, this conversation offers a rare look at the patient and determined work behind meaningful innovation. Subscribe to First in Human: - Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/first-in-human/id1842644737 - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3C1xG5SxPei8m2lI63WSkd Connect with Eric: - Eric's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/echehab/ - Laborie webpage: https://www.laborie.com/product/lifebubble/
#11
Nov 25, 2025 · 43 min
They Chose the Problem Every Medtech Company Ran From. It Paid Off.
Some problems in medicine see so many failed attempts that they start to feel untouchable. Teams learn to move on, investors grow wary, and the problem becomes its own warning label. Kate Garrett and Dr. Dan Azagury chose a different path. Kate and Dan, cofounders of Ciel (later acquired by Vyaire Medical), found themelves confronted with one of those notoriously unsolved, high-stakes problems - the kind that had stopped other companies cold. What happened next changed everything for them, their patients, and for medtech. In this episode, Kate and Dan share how confronting that kind of problem shaped their partnership, what the journey taught them about trust and perseverance, and why some of the most meaningful breakthroughs begin with the problems everyone else have learned to avoid. Subscribe to First in Human: - Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/first-in-human/id1842644737 - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3C1xG5SxPei8m2lI63WSkd Connect with Kate and Dr. Azagury: Kate Garrett's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kate-garrett-464920/ Dr. Dan Azagury's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-azagury-ba70733a/

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