The Edge of Healthcare: Hacking Dementia: AI, Data, and the Future of Care

Martin Cody: Welcome to The Edge of Healthcare, where the pulse of innovation meets the heartbeat of leadership. I’m Martin Cody, your guide through riveting conversations with the trailblazers of healthcare. Tune in to gain exclusive access to strategies, experiences, and groundbreaking solutions from influential payer and health system leaders. This isn’t just a podcast, it’s your VIP ticket to the minds shaping the future of healthcare right now. Buckle up, subscribe, and get ready to ride to The Edge of Healthcare, where lessons from leaders are ready for you to use today.

Martin Cody: Welcome everybody! Martin Cody, SVP of Sales at Madaket Health to the Edge of Healthcare podcast, lessons from leaders to use. Today, I am at the HLTH, H L T H Conference in Las Vegas. It is a worldwide conference that has over 5000 registered attendees, and I am fortunate since it is The Edge of Healthcare to be talking to Scott with Secours. And Scott, you’re the founder CEO of Secours, and I would like you, I mean, there’s AI all over this convention hall and exhibit area, and it seems to be the buzzword du jour for the last year, and it doesn’t show any signs of slowing down. And one of the things that I was fascinated about, Secours, is what you’re doing with data, and we’ll talk about it as we get into the program. There seems to be a lot of challenges from, regardless of the size of the organization and structuring their data, sharing their data, mining their data because their healthcare produces more data, specifically patient data, clinical data, than just about any other industry on Earth. So, walk us through why you decided to start Secours based upon kind of the challenges surrounding the industry as it relates to data?

Scott Warner: Well, back in 2020, and by the way, thanks for having me today. Appreciate it. Martin, back in 2020, we did two studies with the Canadian government and the University of Waterloo on how do you develop technology for those who are losing their minds and i.e. dementia and those with the burden of care. And out of those two studies, it really came down to data science, data, and AI. The problem was back in 220; neither was there. And even now we talk about everybody’s got an AI. Okay, it’s here. I view AI as being in the sixth grade. It’s getting ready to go to middle school. The teachers need new teaching aids and curriculum, but it’s not going to happen without parental supervision. So what we did after those studies is we started working with a collaborative group from around the world to develop a new level of decentralized semantics, to move data to another level, because the challenge what you hear, for example, we’re all here at the HLTH conference, in every lecture, every stage event, everybody’s talking about our problem is unstructured data. 80% of the world’s data is dark. It’s not usable. You have a number of companies that say, well, we harmonize data. Well, what they’re really saying, they’re usually harmonize data, whether the an existing ecosystem such as fire, which is a great protocol unto itself.

Martin Cody: Let me pull on that thread a little bit on what unstructured data means, because there’s giant health systems out there. There’s giant payer organizations out there that have incomprehensible amounts of data. So what does structure actually mean from a standpoint of being able to access it, share it, use it. And you mentioned FHIR standards is just one set of standards that are out there, but pull on that thread a little bit with regards to what is unstructured data mean.

Scott Warner: So, if we look at today’s healthcare landscape, valuable health data is usually generated from multiple sources patient records, voice assessments, physiological measurements, and more. These data sets are often siloed in different formats and structures. And what that does is limit the potential for comprehensive insights. We’re working with an organization called Canary Speech that uses AI to do voice analysis of, say, cognitive impairment. Amazing technology. And so what we do is we help ensure the seamless interoperability operability and the data harmonization that becomes critical to scaling those actionable insights. For example, if you look at we’ve got a number of companies out there that are early detection companies, whether it be molecular, whether it be speech, whether it be gait. So the challenge is those organizations are going to have limited success without behavior modification. All right. So, I’m going to move out of the data a little bit for a moment to the clinical and get into a couple of use cases so people can understand part of what we’re talking about. So they’re going to have limited success because the reality is is people don’t change. And then you go, okay, well, what’s the solution? well, everybody here talks about the solution. It’s prevention. It’s early detection. But what do you need to do with that? Well, it comes down to coaching. Now, the problem is that you can’t scale coaching. The business models don’t work. People have tried it, and they’ve spent tens of billions of dollars, and you just can’t find enough qualified people. So, we started looking at how to democratize resilient aging behavior code via AI-driven nudge theory. So that brings us back to the data. And traditional data harmonization methods rely on harmonized centralized models. And those often lead to issues with scalability and governance differences and the unstructured data integration. So what we’re doing is with our decentralized semantics, which we house within a decentralized ecosystem that allows people just to tap in to it, take advantage of this new data, decentralized semantics, without having to change anything in their system. Think of us, for example, as the intel inside of data, and we reside under those application services and devices.

Martin Cody: There’s also a component, and you mentioned dementia. And I would love for you to share some of the statistics you may have and how fast dementia is spreading worldwide, and then, cost of treatment and why precision medicine capabilities will be significantly enhanced by the capabilities within the course.

Scott Warner: Yeah, so in the conference, people are finally catching on to the crisis of dementia, but they’re still not. Nobody’s prepared for it and nobody’s prepared for the cost of it. And our organization, four of us, five of us actually have had family members that have had dementia either. Currently, my business development person is now this week, not here because he’s doing his father’s celebration of life, and he just passed from frontal lobe dementia. So it’s coming on like a freight train. And the problem is nobody’s prepared for it and to pay for it. I’ll take my stepfather, for example. Memory care. Nine grand a month. That’s after-tax dollars. So what’s the solution? Again, as I mentioned earlier, it’s prevention. Now the also the challenge is it’s not so much about the person with dementia. There’s also the caregiver, right? Because as dementia goes up, the number of caregivers are going down. And so that’s another big challenge that’s happening. Who’s going to take care of these people. And that’s a big problem for countries like China, Japan, huge issues they have coming forth. Personally, we’re the future of caregiving goes as especially as it relates to memory care with severe dementia will be robotics. Who else can sit in the room and be able to listen to these people 24/7, watch them, observe them, record their data, and then be able to pass that data on so it can help research? And my stepfather’s case, and who’s going to be able to sit there in the case of my stepfather, who got up and who transitioned from that point of being going from frustration to agitation to anger to violence and gets up and starts taking swings at the staff, fire department shows up, police department shows up, and they don’t know how to deal with this, right? In their defense, they’re just not trained for it.

Martin Cody: And you mentioned detection or prevention rather. And I think a precursor of prevention is in fact early detection. I believe that’s where the organization shines. Especially you mentioned dementia. You know, neurological disorder. And you focused some energies and efforts there early on. I think it’s fascinating what some of the results you’ve been able to see from a predictive analysis perspective.

Scott Warner: Oh, it’s amazing.

Martin Cody: So because, I too, add me to the list of a parent with dementia who recently passed, so it is growing, but I love the early detection capabilities within Secours. So I want you to talk about that because I think it has far-reaching implications.

Scott Warner: So we have two partners right now, Canary Speech and Neurologic. Neurologic is another amazing company that does facial optical imaging. And then we’ve got Garmin. We’re a Garmin reseller and those type of things. But so, how do you take the biometric data from those different devices and services? And how do you take them? Because and harmonize that and put that in a structured semantic that becomes usable and then be able to contextualize that data in a manner that is useful and comprehensible for whether it be a physician or a coach or even a care partner because that’s one of the challenges. I’ve done some of these early detections of an organization out of Canada, molecular diagnostics. Amazing. But you get this information, and you look at this huge data of 230 metabolic biomarkers, and you go, what do I do with it, right? And so what we’re doing right now working with the Wyoming Health Innovation Living Laboratory and Dr. Alan G, who’s the neurologist and MD, PhD, who heads that up, is we’re doing and along with Canary and neurologic is we’re harmonizing that data. So, it becomes useful so we can ultimately change outcomes.

Martin Cody: And then incorporate some of the nudging behavior techniques to correct early and advanced detection to change some of the behavior modifications.

Scott Warner: Yeah. So what we’ve done is we’ve developed what we within the ecosystem is Sara, and Sara is a digital companion, an augmented intelligence digital companion. Because it’s our truth, Sara will not be sentient. You can’t take for our works. It’s not useful for us not to take the human out of all of this, especially in the dementia space. And anything, you know, two of our people in our team have children with autism. The burden of care in that is inconceivable, right? But again, how do you start making this use of data where it becomes structured, where you can now integrate these various platforms and then also be able to allow them to have governance, because it comes down to the governance of that data, how that governance can be adaptable across within different countries. And the other thing that I’ll touch on just real quickly, that people are not aware of that, this conference, it’s at other little sleeping giant, and that’s consent. Do they really have consent to use their data? Because the I agree button is going away. All right, September 2025. The EU initiates its new data privacy standards. We’ve got already got in the US, Illinois, California, and 20 other states are changing this. So I know for a fact on our team, one of the individuals on our team serves on the American Bar Association’s one of their working groups. There are two main issues is consent and identity.

Martin Cody: And the I agree button is the funniest button, I think, known to man because no one has read a single form of consent.

Scott Warner: Oh, it’s one of the biggest cons that’s been out there.

Martin Cody: Correct, so I am a little worried about what I have, in fact, agreed to over the last 20 years that may come back to haunt me. So that’s going away. So you have the consent. That’s a big thing. But I also believe what I see is kind of data ownership. So these companies that have these unstructured data sets, you’re democratizing them. You’re harmonizing the data so that it can be useful, accessible, shareable. But then, who owns that data?

Scott Warner: You do. You own, the patient, or the patient, the person who’s generated that data owns it. You own it, you control it. You decide who gets it, because that’s part of what’s going on with the new consent and privacy policy is you’ve got to tell people you’re going to use that data for what reasons, for how long, and you’ve got to create an audit trail for it. So, in our case, we create that consent because, in our data semantics, we create provenance to that data. Where did that data originate? Who originated it? Who touched it along the way? So Secours doesn’t store we don’t touch your data. We don’t even move your data, and we don’t sell it. As a matter of fact, what Sara does do is if a doctor needs a piece of information, a data record from an individual, he can request that data, air the patient can, and that patient can give the doctor permission with consent and have a consent receipt. And Sara points to where that data resides because that’s where it needs to stay. You don’t want it centralized in one system. You want it decentralized. You just want to make sure you can get access to it when you need it and that there’s permission attached to it, consent attached to it, and a receipt for that consent.

Martin Cody: Interesting. Interesting. Yeah, I could imagine that the use cases for this are infinite.

Scott Warner: Yeah. Our challenge is an opportunity. It’s focus. It is infinite. That’s the thing about Sara, is we can take it and apply it to a horizontal marketplace. We intend to. But you can only chase so many jackrabbits, right?

Martin Cody: True. And before I let you go, I want to touch upon what I’m very impressed by with the bench of Secours and the talent that you’ve amassed in such a short period of time. So walk us through kind of the leadership, the folks that you’ve brought on board because this isn’t like you see a lot of technology conferences where it’s three guys and gals in a garage that have built some latest great tech. You’ve got an incredibly impressive bench.

Scott Warner: We’re very fortunate. I’m quite humbled to be part of it. If I bring one thing to the table, that’s it. It’s I’m able to attract good people because the secret to it is they’re all seasoned veterans. They’ve all had successful exits or successful milestones in their career. Some of them are still in those careers, and we don’t want them to leave those careers we have. Mark, chief CTO for AI, is the head of AI for Air Canada, for example, Pete Dugas. We look at that. The key thing in what’s attracted these people to us is the culture. And how do we set ourselves up, set each other up for success, both in our relationships with our partners but also internally? We’ve got the world’s what we consider the world’s leading expert in data science and consent in privacy. You know, whether it be our legal, in-house legal counsel, our CFO, and the list goes on, we’re we’ve got a full stack developer that just joined us. Well, guess what? His child has autism. So all of these people, like I said, they not only the work we’re doing is work that feeds the soul. You know, we’re all going to leave the same amount of money when we die, and that’s all of it. So, how do you make what you do being meaningful and have a sense of purpose? And the interesting thing about resilient aging in that light is there’s a great study that was done in 2016, a compilation of 19 different studies that said, look, the two primary elements of resilient aging is a positive mental attitude and a sense of purpose. So that’s part of what’s brought this team together. Like I said, I’m very humbled. But we also look at it, the team looks at it, and we come at our partnerships of what’s in it for our partner. How do we set each other up for success, because the genius is in the collaboration, right?

Martin Cody: Right, and so this is your first time at HLTH, and I’d be curious your impressions.

Scott Warner: Well, it’s extremely impressive. It’s one of the most well-organized events that I’ve been to. It’s expensive, as we were talking about, but there’s a lot of pay value here. You can get everything you want out of it. It’s amazing the evolution of what’s happening in healthcare. But without exception, the number one problem here is data. Nobody knows what to do with it. Everybody, without exception, is going, how do I deal with this unstructured data? How do we make it useful and understandable?

Martin Cody: Well, on that note, I think it’s a good opportunity if someone’s listening. How does a health system, how does a pharma company, how does a life science company, how does any company that has a significant amount of data that they want to leverage and mine, how do they get in touch with you to see if you can help solve their problems?

Scott Warner: So that’s Scott Warner with Secours, S E C O U R S .AI. I’m on LinkedIn. Go ahead there and ping me. You know, look at pharma companies for example. What are they one of their biggest challenges. If you take Sara and create in their care partner programs and doing their clinical trials, if you’re able to capture their data, real-time data, be able to run that through an AI, harmonize that data, and be able to deliver that data to pharma while they’re going through their clinical trials. They can then run it through their own AI systems and determine whether or not they need to continue to the next stage or not. Sure, it changes the game of research as well.

Martin Cody: Absolutely, and they can do it in virtual real-time.

Scott Warner: Exactly. That’s the beauty of it. It’s a real-world data.

Martin Cody: Awesome. Scott, thank you so much for sharing.

Scott Warner: Thank you, Martin.

Martin Cody: I am thrilled to see the progress of the company and looking forward to some great things in the near future.

Scott Warner: Well, we thank you and acknowledge Madaket as well. You guys are an amazing organization, and we see why your success is accelerating at the rate it is, because you and yourself bring such value to everything.

Martin Cody: Oh, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Martin Cody: Thanks for diving into The Edge of Healthcare with us today. I hope these insights will fuel your journey in healthcare leadership. For more details, show notes, and ways to stay plugged into the conversation, head over to MadaketHealth.com. Until next time, stay ahead of the curve with The Edge of Healthcare, where lessons from leaders are always within reach. Take care of yourselves and keep pushing the boundaries of healthcare innovation.