The People behind Healthcare Innovation: Interview with Gilad Glick, CEO and President of Itamar Medical

As part of our work, we have the privilege to speak with many inspiring innovators. Although the business community usually focuses on companies, pitches, and valuations—and less on the innovator—we thought it would be interesting to learn a bit more about the people behind healthcare innovation. In this series, we’re sharing some of our conversations with innovators in a condensed format: six questions and six answers about their experience, their opinions, and their learnings.

This latest conversation is with Gilad Glick, Chief Executive Officer and President of Itamar Medical, which specializes in devices and digital platforms to diagnose and manage sleep apnea.

 Gila: What’s your story and how did you become an innovator in healthcare?

Gilad: I used to work for a small company named Biosense Webster, which was sold to Johnson & Johnson. The company made an arrhythmia imaging and ablation system. The company developed technology to reconstruct heart and physiological parameters that could not be seen in traditional imaging. This technology is now the gold standard 20 years later. I believe that the best strategy to stay ahead of the competition is not to predict the future but to create the future—this is the philosophy that I use till today!

Today, I lead Itamar Medical, a global publicly traded medical technology and digital health company based in Israel, with US headquarters in Atlanta, GA. Itamar helps doctors diagnose and manage sleep apnea, through an end-to-end solution that includes an FDA-cleared home sleep-apnea testing (HSAT), and a digital care pathway that facilitates the patient’s journey from diagnostics to therapy, Our approach has been to enable access for the 80% percent of suspected undiagnosed patients who may suffer from but cannot get proper sleep apnea diagnosis and therapy. We designed a patient care pathway through a new point of care—the cardiologists. We have followed up with the first-ever FDA-cleared fully disposable home-sleep apnea diagnosis device.

 Gila: Where do you see the field of remote diagnostics and home monitoring moving to in the next ten years?

 Gilad: There is an at-home digital revolution and, in health, the easiest elements to move to the home setting are diagnostics and monitoring. Home solutions should be easy to deploy for both doctors and patients, intuitive and cost-effective—and this is the challenge. However, when done properly, home is the cheaper and easier diagnostics setting; with our solution, there is 98% completion rate and the main driver is that it is done in the comfort of the home setting.

There is an at-home digital revolution and, in health, the easiest elements to move to the home setting are diagnostics and monitoring

Other factors supporting the move to at-home are the ability to do continuous monitoring and to track “nighttime physiology”. Continuous monitoring is critical to track disease burden and progression with conditions such as sleep apnea, COPD, diabetes, and heart failure. Nighttime physiology is different than daytime physiology and often provide a “cleaner” insight without the daytime distractions; this is the time we have the least external interferences, so there is a lot that can be done during this time. For example, onset of hypertension during sleep occurs way before it becomes a chronic problem. Catching this early allows to mitigate the issue before damage is inflicted on the patient.

There are no perfect solutions today, but the need is clear: how to avoid exacerbation, how to increase patients’ access to personalized therapies, and how to avoid hospitalization and the costs associated with that.

That’s the future to me: based on the patient’s risk profile how can technology mitigate and prevent disease progression?

Gila: Looking more broadly, what are the biggest opportunities and obstacles you see for innovation in the healthcare environment?

Gilad: If we consider the US market, the biggest obstacle is the multistakeholder environment that is elaborate (and complex), with long waiting times. If we look at sleep (the market I know best), it starts with a shortage of sleep physicians to diagnose and prescribe, bureaucracy around selling or renting medical equipment, and follow-ups with sleep physicians for compliance management and to assess therapy effectiveness. This multistakeholder environment is very challenging for patients and patient care management is not optimized. In the sleep world today, the majority of patients are not making their way through to therapy. A home diagnostic setting, combined with a digital care pathway, helps the patient navigate the system without waiting times and loss of data.

 Gila: When you look at the health system as a whole (pharma, providers, payers, doctors, patients) who do you see driving innovation the most? 

Gilad: Well, I think tech companies drive innovation - but only when they are close to the customers / patients and deeply understand their challenges. It is rarely driven by the provider side or the doctors. We see some innovation on the business model from a payer perspective. When I say tech companies, I am referring to medical-grade companies. Wearables such as smartwatches are still in the pre-healthcare space in my mind.

Gila: How has COVID-19 affected receptiveness for innovation in healthcare?

Gilad: In my opinion, COVID-19 has been the biggest growth innovation trigger over the last 20 years. It forced the entire health system to accept remote consultations, home diagnostics, digital prescription, remote patient monitoring (RPM), and home care—digital solutions that already existed but were not widely adopted. Patients now expect digital interventions and communication with their doctors, while providers and healthcare professionals have accepted and adopted new technologies. Catching payers’ attention has been critical for telemedicine and the digital-interventions roadmap.

COVID-19 has been the biggest growth innovation trigger over the last 20 years

Gila: What do you know now that you wish you had known when you were starting out as an innovator and entrepreneur?

Gilad: I wish someone would have told me how long it would take and how many non-financial stakeholders there would be on the journey: FDA, guidelines, physicians associations, reimbursement, payers. Being an innovator and entrepreneur in the healthcare space requires stamina and resilience. It takes time; it costs money; and there are so many details on the route to success. Plus, every market behaves differently. However, once you get there, innovation also creates high and complex barriers to entry for competition.

 For more info see Gilad Glick and Itamar Medical

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and the guest contributor and do not reflect the views of McKinsey & Company.