Yeah. So I think AI in general has
great potential if it's developed and applied correctly.
I think that applications like cogensis that are geared to
improve loneliness and or social connection have an opportunity
to provide those insights around a myriad of conditions, not just
cognitive decline. And so there is an opportunity
to improve care management for patients to help clinicians with
data and insights that will hopefully reduce their burden
and burnout. Welcome to Women Disrupting
Tech. My name is dear Kanupkas, and on
this podcast, I give the women who work in tech the platform
they need to inspire and empower each other.
Join me on a journey into the world of entrepreneurship,
funding biases, and role models to discover the strategies for
success in the tech industry. In other words, how women can
disrupt tech. Are you ready to listen?
Hey, welcome back to Women Disrupting Tech and thank you
for tuning into episode 112. Did you know that loneliness
increases your risk of serious health problems by 59%?
Loneliness is one of the most overlooked drivers as we age,
and women are once again hit the hardest.
They live alone more often, they provide the majority of
caregiving hours, and they tend to delay care for themselves.
That's where my guest today comes in.
Her name is Raju Joshi and she's the Co founder and chief
clinical officer of Cogensis. Cogensis is a health tech
startup that uses AI to support people experiencing loneliness
and early cognitive decline as well as their caregivers.
Raju notes this problem personally, she lost 2 senior
family members in the same year, and even though she has 30 years
of experience in healthcare, she saw how I'll equipped even the
best prepared families can be. In this episode of Women
Disrupting Tech, Rajo and I talk about why loneliness hits women
harder and what long term effects on health are, how
Cogenesis uses AI to listen for, what caregivers often miss, what
ethical, inclusive AI in health looks like in practice, and why
building trust with users starts with usability, not with
features. It's a rich conversation about
loneliness, cognitive decline, technology, and much, much more.
And my biggest take away was how to have a better conversation
with my mother. The cue, I don't want to burden
you. So when you're ready to listen
and learn how Covjansis uses AI to tackle loneliness and
cognitive decline, please. Welcome to women disrupting tech
Raju Joshi. Raju Joshi, welcome to women
disrupting tech. Great to have you a question I
always start with. Is how you got into your current
position in your case as Chief Clinical Officer of Covjansis.
Thank you so much for having me Durkian.
I'm very excited to be on your show.
Yes, I actually joined the cogensis team over a little over
a year ago. I have a background in
biomedical sciences and epidemiology and I have been in
healthcare for over 30 years. I've had the good fortune of
working in a variety of different sub sectors within
healthcare including academic, research, payers, long term care
facility, supporting them. From a pharmacy standpoint, I've
worked at Medtronic, at Amgen, at a start up with Deloitte.
I was with Deloitte Consulting for many years and this gave me
the opportunity to really see healthcare at a very broad level
as well as in depth within each one of those sub sectors.
And so I was introduced to Cogensis through a mutual friend
who indicated that they were looking for somebody with a, a
clinical background from that standpoint, I mean, having
knowledge of how healthcare systems work and also understand
the biomedical sciences behind it.
So I was advising the company and then through that process
and being a board member, they asked me to join them in a
larger capacity as chief Clinical officer to help them
build a a company and a platform that maintains scientific
fidelity and integrity and generates the necessary evidence
to support the products build out and work with clinicians
within the community to ensure clinical relevance and utility.
OK, cool. And what what made Gogensis
interesting to you personally? Yeah, so last year I lost 2
senior members of my family. My mother-in-law who is 4 foot
11 and an ICU nurse was very, very bright and very brave.
She suffered from dementia and I watched her her decline
initially somewhat slowly and I thought this was just
age-related kind of, you know, cognitive changes to a, a rapid
decline. And then ultimately we did lose
her, as I mentioned in February, and then my father somewhat
unexpectedly on Father's Day. And he was a pharmacist, A
pharmacologist. He, he very well understood what
was happening to him as well. And, and even though I've been
in this space for 30 years, I have family members who are
physicians. I have family members who are
attorneys and understand the legal process as it relates to
healthcare decisions and healthcare policies.
We found ourselves I'll equipped to handle their late stage
conditions. And by that I mean we felt that
most of the conversations were centered around what medications
were they taking? What was their mood like in the
morning? Could we speak with them?
Often times they were too tired to talk towards those these
later, you know, months. And we just felt this sense of
of loss. And so I really wanted to help
build cogensis in a way that helped to not only meet patients
where they were people, where they were in their journey, but
also help preserve that journey for those that they left behind.
And so legacy preservation is, is one of our unique features.
And I'll, you know, given an opportunity to go into that in a
little more detail. But I really wanted to just
ensure that we were building a product that could help better
understand a patient's cognitive health, help better support
patients who may be socially isolated or feeling lonely, and
ensure that we could capture their lives in such a way that
it helps preserve their legacy. OK, so if, if I hear you
correctly, what triggered you was that all of the, let's say,
information exchange was around, let's say medical things like
did they take their medication? Were they feeling tired?
Yes or no? Could they speak to you but not
around, let's say? How does this process work?
What steps do I need to take? How can I preempt maybe certain
declines that are inevitable because we can't treat them yet,
but at least we we can sort of signal them early.
Is that? Yes.
And to add, just to add to that it, I was really compelled by
this opportunity to understand what our loved ones were
encountering during the course of their day when I was absent
as their caregiver. I was absent because I'm
working. They may share some very
relevant information and relevant either contextually
from a clinical standpoint or relevant from a personal
standpoint, but I'm not there to hear it or see it or engage with
them on it. And so it so these discrete time
points that we have today, maybe it's first thing in the morning,
maybe check in on them during your lunch hour, maybe it's in
the evening after your work, you've missed a a good chunk of
their day and you really don't know what what they're
experiencing. So Cujensis gives them an
opportunity to speak whenever they want, and then you have a
transcription of what that engagement was so that you can
then reconnect with them in a more meaningful way and talk to
them about a topic that is specifically of interest.
And I wanted to build that out and help help, you know, make
that a reality. Yeah.
Well, that sounds like a really meaningful product.
Thank you. Before we go into the actual
solution that Gorgensis is building, yeah, we're getting
older because of medical advances.
So that's the good part. But does that also have a
downside like I heard you mentioned loneliness, but but
are there any others side effects of that, let's say also
maybe also comorbidities etcetera?
Absolutely. So, you know, as a normal part
of aging, we will start to see some breakdown of some of our
systems in some way, shape or form.
And it it, it, you know, we hear a lot about diabetes and
cardiovascular disease and some of those, you know,
osteoarthritis, some of these conditions that we associate as
a normal progression of aging. Perhaps the severity of each one
of those conditions obviously is attributed to a variety of
different factors, genetics, nutrition, sedentary lifestyle,
etcetera. However, what we do know is
that, you know, as we're, as we're aging and as we have this
opportunity to then, let's say, collect these comorbidities that
contributes to, you know, the, the cost associated with
treating those comorbidities and the cost of medicines, for
example, cost of physician appointments.
And then sometimes it also creates this shrinking social
connection or social circle because unfortunately, as we all
pass and in some point in time, we'll pass, you know, our, our,
our existing circle of friends can, can shrink.
And that creates this sense of, of social isolation or
loneliness. Furthermore, fewer and fewer
families are living in a joint family situation.
There was a time eonsible and not too, too long ago, where
many families lived together and that maintained that social
connectedness. Now we see fewer cultures doing
that. And you know, we, when we think
of the cognitive impact that that has, you know, the World
Health Organization estimated about $1.3 trillion was spent on
cognitive issues such as dementia and Alzheimer's in, in
2019. And that's only expected to, to
grow. And so we we anticipate that
this is, you know, the just the natural progression of aging
potential for dementia and the cost associated with that
dementia will will lead to health system burden and family
structure burden. I have two follow up questions.
One is is, is there a difference between men and women in terms
of how cognitive decline develops?
Yes. Well, so I mean it's interesting
because you know, I think in terms of how from a biological
standpoint, I think researchers are trying to understand this.
When we think about cortisol levels for example that are
higher in post menopausal women, impact of cortisol on areas of
the brain responsible for our memory, long term memory as well
as our executive functioning. So the hippocampus and the
prefrontal cortex when we see the impact of cortisol on on
these structures and therefore the impact on average daily
living activities, it it tends to create this difference in the
impact on men and the impact on women.
But preceding that is just the the statistics around how many
men and women can I speak to in in the US, how many men and
women live alone? And we see that 16.2 million
people over the age of 65 in the US live alone.
Of that 10.5 millionaire female and 5.7 are male are men.
So. It's 2 to one ratio. 2 to one
ratio of women who live alone who are then at A at a higher
risk of social isolation and higher risk of loneliness and
these people are then more susceptible to cognitive decline
you know cortisol related stress and.
Does it always also impact that, say, the timing of the start of
treatment? Because I can.
I do know from our previous conversation that you told me
something around that people are later to the game in terms of
diagnosis because they are lonely and because they're
thinking like it will. Yeah, maybe it's normal.
Maybe it's me. Yeah.
No, I thank you for raising that because it it is an issue.
I think, you know, this does affect women disproportionately
as a result of that, you know, and just in a few ways you
meant, you know, we, we talked a little bit about how people are
women are living alone. Women represent 70% of the care
hours associated with their their loved ones.
And that creates this sense of delayed health in their own or
delayed healthcare in their own health.
For example, maybe they put off going to the doctor even though
they have a symptom that they they think it's just kind of in
the back of their mind. I got to get this checked out.
OK, I'll get to it.
I'll get to it. Because right now I'm busy
taking care of everyone else. So what ends up happening is
they, they themselves delay the appointment that in turn, you
know, potentially presents themselves in a more with a more
complex or advanced case of something.
So their diagnosis is therefore delayed and then the treatments
are that much more complex, costly and ultimately
challenging from an outcomes standpoint.
So that also answers my second question which was around the
impact of loneliness. Last question on this part is
how much do we understand of cognitive decline right now and
how important is it to get more data on that more let's say,
contextual information on how this actually works?
Yes. So cognitive decline can be
described in a in a lot of different ways and it's used
colloquially in a lot of different ways.
So for example, they have they look at age-related cognitive
changes and sometimes someone will say, I feel a decline from
that standpoint. But when we what we really want
to do is we want to focus on the cognitive decline that is
associated with changes to someone's average daily, you
know, lifestyle and our activities.
For example, you know, do they experience certain some some
memory loss or a reduced mental acuity?
These things are very important to pay attention to and are
often times just kind of pushed aside.
We pushed it aside because we're busy.
Everyone is very, very busy. And, you know, aging parents
also don't want to. You hear of them saying things
like they don't want to burden their children.
Yeah. They don't.
Want that many times? Yes.
So, you know, so then they don't mention these things.
And I think that that's a problem that we're trying to
solve for as well, because we all interpret importance and
relevance in our own way. And that that that actually
impacts how we understand and assess cognitive decline.
Because initially we need to report this information out to
our care team, our clinicians and our our caregivers.
And if we don't know that this is important, then they're not
going to know what to do. And if they're not around to see
it happen first hand, objectively, you know, they're
not going to know to report it to their clinicians and then the
clinicians are not going to be able to intervene in time.
So it's important for us, we don't really fully understand
everything that there is to understand about a decline in
cognitive health, but we are making such advancements in on
the biological side, on the medical side, we now need to
catch up on the social side and understand how social
determinants of health impact cognitive decline.
And that's that's something that we are focusing on at Cogensis.
So with that, let's now shift to the solution that you're
building. Can you describe what you're
building? Because I, I, when I heard about
it, I was like, OK, I got to speak to you.
Yeah, yeah. So, so we're actually building
an AI enabled platform that people can speak with.
So there will be a an avatar that somebody will be talking
into or talking to. And we want to engage people in
conversation just with them talking, so you know that
they're not talking only about. You know, the medication that
they are supposed to take and, and it's not just about hey, did
you take your medicine this morning Durkian or not?
Did you take your, you know, hypertension medicine?
Did you take your diabetes medicine?
Their lives are so much fuller than that.
And so engaging them, we, by engaging them, we, we hope to
alleviate loneliness, which is the subjective definition of
being isolated and also provide certain trends and patterns in
their cognitive health around memory, recall, verbal fluency,
all within this context of, of loneliness.
So that the care team and the caregivers have a better
understanding of what's actually happening to the patient.
What do they really feel? So do you then also provide
diagnostics? No, right?
We are not a diagnostic, so we are not diagnosing dementia and
we are not diagnosing Alzheimer's.
What we are doing is we are providing insights around
cognitive health that could help clinicians with their
diagnostics around Alzheimer's or cognitive decline.
OK. So it's more, let's say
qualitative data about quality of life, about how people are
feeling and with that, I guess also trend information that
you're feeding into the system, so.
What is the? Result for the, let's say the
caregivers, what can they do earlier or better as a result of
this? So let's just take a scenario
where you are busy at work all day and you call your mother in
the evening after work and you say, hi mom, how was your day?
How did everything go? What did you do?
And she responds, oh fine, you know, it's the usual, nothing
new, all's good. And you're now left to take that
at face value. Now we know our brain is, is a
wonderful organ and that it will compensate in any way, shape or
form that it can. And so if let's say, for
example, we forgot something, it may not relay that as a
significant issue. So what, you know, you forgot
about something, big deal. In the in the grand scheme of
things, is it really a bad thing?
And the answer may be not maybe it's not a big deal, but perhaps
that lack of information or the lack of recall when prompted as
a question could offer insights to something that is meaningful.
So what do I mean by that? Let's say, for example, you run
into somebody, and in the course of this conversation with your
mother, you say, how was your day?
And she says, fine. And you say, oh, great, you
know, I ran into Mr. Johansson, you know, And she just pauses.
She's like, I don't know who this person is.
And this is someone who, you know, you know, she absolutely
should know because this is someone that she has engaged
with routinely for many, many, many years, but suddenly she
doesn't recall who this person is.
If you don't know to ask the question or you don't mention
Mr. Johansson, she would not give you that response.
And so you would not have ever even noticed that there was
something missing. You would have just kind of gone
about your day and said, OK, well, great.
I'm glad everything is fine. I'm glad you're doing all right,
mom. You know, call me if you need
anything and I'll check on you in the morning.
Or the kid. My kids are fine and
everything's going well here. That's it.
And sometimes those discussions, by the way, do happen and they
they have a role as well. So maybe not to make few people
feel too guilty, but once in every while it's good to at
least drill down a bit on, especially if you met people
that you both know very well. Yes, absolutely and.
It's a good check that check. Yeah, it's a good check, right.
And then the other thing that, you know, and conversely, let's
say, for example, she was thinking about, you know, maybe
a childhood experience, a trip that she had taken with her
family. And for whatever reason that
came up in, in her thoughts that day, but you would not have
known that because she may not think that's important enough to
share with you. So she may, using cogensis, have
a conversation, you know, because cogensis may prompt her.
Can you recall a time in your life that you had gone on a trip
or something of that nature that was very memorable.
And she might answer that question in that moment and say,
Oh, yes, I remember we went to Bruges, for example, a lovely
time. OK, well, now when you come home
and you see the dashboard that you would have access to if she
gave you access to this dashboard, you have access to
this. And you see in the transcript
that she was recalling a trip she took with her family to
Bruges when she was 22 years old.
And you may be able to engage her at that moment and say, mom,
tell me about this trip that you took.
What was that like? Where did you go?
What did you see? Did you go to the Abbey?
Did you go? Where did you go to the center?
What did you know what? Tell me more about it.
And that might spark a very different conversation with your
mom beyond the oh, I'm fine, Nothing new today.
Everything was, you know. And also sort of makes people
feel hurt. They they're hurt and.
And and and and valued. Yes.
And alleviating that loneliness, right?
So they understand that you're connecting with them, you are
making a more meaningful connection with them as a person
and not just as your mother that you're taking care of.
Yeah. So this, this solution, it's AI
based. How does it differ from let's
say sort of a chat bolt or well, reminder app, That's sort of
clear, but is it a sort of chat function or how does this work?
How does the interaction with the lonely person?
Yeah. So it's not necessarily just a
chat bot, right, Because there are a lot of analytics that go
on in the background. We do prompt you to engage with
the with with cogensis, and obviously the more you use
cogensis, the more comfortable you become with the
conversation. It doesn't feel contrived.
Initially it might feel very weird, but.
Yeah, it's the same with Hey Siri on an Apple.
The first time you use it, everyone was probably like, OK,
I wonder what what is going to happen now?
And now everyone is doing. It and it's, it feels natural
almost, you know, so you know, we have intentionally used an
avatar instead of a human form because we, we don't want there
to be unhealthy connections with this.
We don't want them relying on this system as if it was an
actual person. They need to be aware that this
is not a physician that they are talking to as an example, but
that this is part of their care team now that they can have a
conversation with journal talk about anything that they want to
talk about. However, on the back end, unlike
a chat bot who may be just kind of recording an answer and then
just spitting out an answer. We I'm sorry asking prompted
questions. We are looking for those trends
on the back end to see whether or not there's a change in
verbal fluency. How much, how many words are
they actually using to respond to a question?
How long are they thinking about the response before they give
you a response? Is that considered consistent
with what we would expect for someone of their age and
condition, or is it an outlier in some way, shape or form?
So these types of it it can detect that people all of a
sudden start taking longer for their answers.
Which is. Sort of delta compared to and,
yeah. In that population or in that
subpopulation, like what would we expect in terms of a normal
pause before we respond? Do we see any frustration?
You know, is there, is there any sense of frustration?
Because that's very telling as well.
Is there sort of sensitivity or how do you say sentiment and
analysis building? There, there will be, yes, a
little bit of, you know, sentimental analysis and
understanding, You know, what is this person's emotion?
How are they responding? You know, semantically,
syntactically, from an auditory standpoint, we're looking at
listening to see, to hear whether there is frustration in
the voice or not. If they express concerns around
being lonely, you know, if they don't say this because they
don't want to burden their children, but they feel safe
talking into a computer who they don't necessarily think is, you
know, being burdened per SE, You know, the, the, the quality of
conversations may change. So we think it's, it's much more
than what the chat bot provides in terms of functionality.
And it's much more than a medication administration
reminder. Because remember, people are so
much more than just the medications that they're on.
That information is important. And we we don't.
And it's not to say that that won't be part of the solution
that is there, but it's so much more than just that.
OK, I was wondering about one thing.
Because yes, it's incredibly intelligent to have that
conversation even and, and to, to sort of being able to listen
to people what they have to say and maybe engage in a
conversation even if there's no other human in the room.
Can this, the word that came to my mind is how do we avoid that?
This is seen as spying or snooping on people.
Right. And you know, this is a, a
challenge, I think for all passive listening devices,
right? And sort of virtual assistants,
etcetera. Over time, you know, I think
over time you start to build trust with Siri or with any
other virtual assistant and, or application.
And the, the, it's, it we need to be responsible in terms of
what, what is it that we're asking?
What, why are we asking certain questions?
What information is going to be relevant?
And perhaps they will find that talking into a computer system
is strange. They may initially think it's a
little intrusive. However, realistically, if we
take an example of someone living in a care facility as an
example or a care community, they are often asked questions
by staff, by their children, by others, and they may feel that
those questions are a little intrusive.
For example, my mom, who again, she, she, she, she, she became a
widow somewhat unexpectedly. And when we started asking her
questions, you know, how are you doing?
How are you feeling? What are you eating these days?
How, how are you sleeping? Did you shower?
You know, we, we were trying to, we didn't want to come out and
say, were you depressed? You know, because we knew that
would trigger her in other ways, right?
Like, no, I'm not depressed. My mother is a very strong
woman. And you know, she does not want
to feel helpless or feel dependent on anybody.
She she values her independence. And so initially when we were
asking her these questions, she sat us down and she says, I do
not want to be coddled. I do not want you to ask me
these questions. It is, you know, I'm eating
fine. It's none of your business what
I eat, what I don't. I mean, she doesn't drink
alcohol. So we were not worried about
that, but we were just more worried about her cocooning
herself and just not engaging with anybody and not eating and,
and not taking her medicines and all of that.
And she just kind of said, you've never asked me these
questions before. You never asked me if I took my
medicine or not. You assumed I took my medicine.
Why would I not take my medicine?
Now? Stop doing that.
She was very angry initially, you know, and so she felt that
that this human engagement was intrusive.
But for whatever reason, you know, when she talks to, she
actually talks to Siri and it's like, I don't know, I, I feel
like she, she, she just kind of gets it off her chest perhaps,
but doesn't feel like she's burdening anybody while while
doing that. And so it doesn't feel as
intrusive. Yeah.
Is it then also something around that it's sometimes easier to
talk to about emotions to a complete stranger?
Stranger totally. I was just about to use the
example of those people who sit next to you on the airplane and
tell you their entire life story in the 1st 15 minutes of a 10
hour flight and and you know, the longest time for the longest
time was like, why would anybody do that?
And then it, and then I realized that you're, you're sitting next
to somebody for 10 hours and you just want to know who that
person is or they want you to know who that person is.
Like I'm not one to share my life story with the person next
to me, but I'm often the person who is on the receiving end of
someone's life story. And then it goes into and by the
end of it, I feel like sometimes I'm a a marriage therapist, but
you know, the conversation, but, but, but I think it's all about
this, this need to feel socially connected, right?
And so I really think that that's at the end of the day,
what it, it is, the is, what is the root?
What's it all stems from? So trust is a big factor for for
elderly people, especially for elderly people.
And also what you see is that they're, let's say, less
inclined to adopt tech. How or at least be more
skeptical around it. How do you deal with that?
Yeah. Well, as as they should be,
right, as we all should be because it's a, you know, a
trust but verify kind of a situation we have to win their
trust. And you know, we intend to do
that by keeping the, the usability of this product very
simple. The the trust and the technical
literacy is very important. Now, from an aging standpoint,
each tech seems to fall into a single category as someone,
anyone over the age of ironically 55 or over, which to
me does not feel like very old. You know, I personally don't
like to be put in from a, from a tech savviness standpoint, don't
like to be put into the same category as let's say my 92 year
old father-in-law, right, because I'm involved in tech,
I'm working with tech. And so you'll have, you know,
senior, you'll have folks who are over the age of 60, let's
say, or 60, you know, 62 maybe even who are executives within
large organizations and large corporations.
And they are engaging with tech all the time.
Now, are they in the back end writing code for AI platforms
and machine learning algorithms and RPA remote, you know,
robotic processing algorithms and so forth?
Maybe some of them are, but not everybody is doing that.
And so, you know, when we think about AI agents and so forth,
maybe they're not engaging with AI agents to the extent that
everybody is, but they may have more knowledge of it than let's
say my 92 year old father-in-law does.
And he's adorable. He's a a wonderful, wonderful
person and he's curious. So we have to win the trust of
people who are within this spectrum.
People who like my father-in-law, may be naive
about technology and may be interested in learning more and
be less critical. And they may, he may actually
trust the technology more inherently because of that and
others who are, let's say, working professionals who are
now retiring, who have knowledge of technology and are perhaps
even more skeptical because they know of the potential negative
ramifications of, of technology. So it's, it's up to us to to win
their trust. And I think we're going to do
that effectively by focusing on the usability of the product and
keeping it simple to use and also by having very specific use
cases around, you know what, what problem we're trying to
solve for and, and namely cognitive health insights and,
and loneliness. OK.
So the question that I forgot and now that came back is we
talked for quite a while and just now about your personal
experience, especially with your parents.
How did that does that help you in the development of the
software? It helps me tremendously, helps
me tremendously because I see myself as a user of this.
So I can take not just hypothetical scenarios, but I I
really understand the, the journey that the user will take.
So what is the workflow, if you will, the patient's journey, the
caregiver's journey, all of these different personas that we
will then be using in order to as as users and segmenting as
users and really understanding what that feels like, what it
felt like, what it's like for the surviving parent.
And, and you know, for, for the caregivers and then what
information do I want to relay to the care team, her care team
or his care team? It gives me that first hand
experience. And so I'm really, I consider
myself very fortunate to be part of this team and to be solving
this this problem. Yeah.
And I think there's a long way still ahead.
So I want to switch a bit to from the current state and the
problem you're solving in the near future to let's say later
stage. In our prep call, we talked
about first you, you, let's say, deal with loneliness in elderly
people, people in nursing homes. But we also discussed the impact
loneliness may have on veterans, on athletes, on maybe other
groups. How do you see cogensis evolving
from here? I think that cogensis,
especially as we start to understand some of the cognitive
health insights is really well positioned, will be really, I
should say, will be well positioned to help these other,
you know, groups who may be experiencing either loneliness
and or dementia like symptoms and signs.
You know, CTE is, is a, is a big issue in, in athletes who have
repeated injury to the point where they developed this
encephalopathy that resembles many times, presents itself many
times as a cognitive decline. And, you know, just a lack of
executive functioning, changes in behavior and mood and so
forth. And so we can easily see an
opportunity to engage with with professional athletes who may be
at risk for CTE as an example. So maybe maybe could you
describe what CTE is for the non medical medical schools among
us? Yes, absolutely.
So CTE is considered chronic traumatic encephalopathy and
this is a result of repeated impact to the head.
And we can see this in, you know, potentially like rugby
players or hockey players or football players.
And you you hear about it more in in the NFL, for example, but
there are a wide variety of sports that where where people
incur these injuries and. Yeah.
Also soccer. Yeah.
And soccer. As well, people are soccer
players are heading the ball and often with quite a bit of impact
it has on the on the skull, but also on the brain.
Yes, exactly. And so the, this, this condition
leads to many times dementia. And so once we start to see the
parallels of cognitive decline or cognitive health and provide,
you know, we have an opportunity to provide insights into that
group of, for that group of people as well.
And hopefully change behavior and maybe even Dr. innovation in
in gear and tools that could be used to in protocols that could
be used to, you know, and rule sets.
Yeah, absolutely. Policies, procedures, protocols
of how to treat patients or you know, who may have and
concussion protocols, for example, when I said protocol,
concussion protocols, things of that nature and what to look
for. It's a lot of this is patient
education and family education too.
What do you look for? So somebody is, you know, let's
just say someone is agitated and you know, they, it's like, why
are you agitated? OK, Is it, is it 'cause you're
bored because you're no longer playing a sport that you love?
Or is there something else that's going on?
Yeah, who knows, OK. For, for how would this work for
veterans? Is that then more in the PTSS
scope? So, so, you know, for veterans,
those who are repeating or recalling a, a, a negative
memory of, you know, something that happened in, in, in
wartime, they, they may feel that they want to socially
isolate. Either they're embarrassed or,
you know, they we, one of our Co founders is a, is a veteran to
tour of duty in Afghanistan and our COO, you know, and, and then
speaking with other folks who are veterans, these are people
who have seen a lot have endured a lot may suffer from some form
of, of anxiety, may from some form of depression, may in turn
isolate themselves as a result. And when they isolate
themselves, they're at a much greater risk for developing
dementia. You know, loneliness alone has
shown, like according to the American Academy of Sciences 317
page report, loneliness, you know, will increase has a 59%
increase risk of functional decline.
Let that sink in. That's huge.
Well, that's huge. And so it's not just about
people who are already diagnosed with dementia or already
diagnosed with Alzheimer's there.
There is a social component to this that is putting people at
risk for all of these other medical conditions and outcomes.
The odds ratios are incredible. How can cogensis deploy AI to
serve humanity in the long run beyond the the the cognitive
capabilities and signaling diseases like Alzheimer, like
dementia? Yeah.
So I think AI in general has great potential if it's
developed and applied correctly. I think that applications like
cogensis that are geared to improve loneliness and or social
connection have an opportunity to provide those insights around
a myriad of conditions, not just cognitive decline.
And so there is an opportunity to improve care management for
patients, to help clinicians with data and insights that will
hopefully reduce their burden and burnout.
We've all heard of the extreme burnout that our clinicians who
are just such integral, integral members of our society are
encountering and facing as a result of the demands placed on
them. So there is an opportunity to
help them provide them those insights so that they are not in
turn so taxed that they are making clinical errors in or
clinical judgement errors that has an impact on overall
outcomes for for people of all different diagnosis and
conditions. So when we're thinking about
humanity, humanity is such a big scale, right, That, you know, if
we want to solve World Peace and solve a humanistic problem, you
know, we, we, it's going to take time to, to, to get there.
Cogensus, I think alongside other AI platforms, has great
potential if it's developed correctly.
It has the right governance, pays attention to ethics,
ensures that you know benefits outweigh risks.
How do you do that? How do we do that?
So we have to have a very clear understanding of what our use
cases are, know what our swim lanes are, know what problem
we're solving for, avoid overreaching in the sense that
you know, we don't we we want to take calculated risk, but we
need to understand how the risk compounds.
And so that it's not just transaction for transaction, but
how does each risk within each transaction compound to a point
where it may out weigh the potential benefit to the
patient. So for example, if the benefit,
the potential benefit to the patient is that we are able to
provide insights to clinicians, the potential risk is that the
information that is provided is either not applied in the manner
in which it was intended or is unused all together.
So you know, So what what's the impact of that?
And so if it is not applied as intended, then we have to
educate the and have to design so that the, you know, the
clinicians understand from a human factor standpoint, they
know what to do with the information.
Same thing goes for caregivers, same thing goes for the patients
themselves. We want it, we want patients to
have agency over their own life. And when we say we want people
to age with dignity and age in place with dignity, we want them
to have that agency. And so we hope that this will
provide that benefit is agency. Yeah, and I think agency is
something we all want to have until we die.
Yes, absolutely. So we have to think about this
responsibly. What are we doing so that we can
provide the right information at the right time so that
clinicians and and caregivers can intervene appropriately when
appropriate and can leave them alone, leave people alone when
they don't want to be, you know, interrogated constantly.
So it's the balance. It's finding that balance.
But, you know, overall, I think that, you know, we just need, we
need to make responsible choices.
It's an evolving field. We're not there yet.
This is very nascent in, in its, in its applications.
And you know, we, we need to just make responsible choices as
a human community and not just simply driven by individual
ambitions. So.
So how, how do you balance that? I mean, how do you avoid that?
It's becomes driven by personal ambition rather than solving the
the bigger issue is there some sort of is that done in, in
terms of governance, in terms of of how information is protected?
Right. Well, I mean, I think it's a
combination of all of them, right.
If we look at the World Health Organization and some of the
agreements that they have in place to help solve global
health issues, this is going to take, this is a, if you're, if
we're still speaking about humanity as a whole, it's a huge
undertaking and it cannot be solved by one.
It should not be solved by one person alone.
It, it needs to be solved by, you know, by, by, by all members
of, of, of the community, right and representing all members of
the community. So understanding voices that
need to be heard, having an empathetic approach to
understanding, but having an empathetic approach to
approaching cognitive decline or some patient's condition,
understanding what benefit looks like and agreeing to that,
having, having, you know, a charter in place that agrees to
the better good, the good of the the community over 1's
individual ambitions, I think will be important.
It's hard to it's hard, it's hard to really fight against
human nature, right? Because humans are are are
selfish by nature, I think. And so it's hard to kind of
fight that. You have to really want to solve
a problem for a community. And that's what we're trying to
do as as as broader ecosystem. Yeah, so I want to talk about
the, the, the big thing of humankind and and selfishness is
money. For a bit.
You are going to be part of an accelerator soon.
That's the start of of your fundraising journey as well.
So my podcast started when I read about two percent, 2% of
funding that goes to female founders.
I was wondering what your journey has been like as a Co
founder of a Med tech startup and getting funding in getting
accepted into this accelerator. Yeah.
We are so excited to be part of the Caduceus Health Accelerator,
Caduceus Ventures Accelerator. From what we are told, this was
a very competitive process and you know, and so we're delighted
to be part of this cohort. And so in terms of fundraising,
in our experience, we are in an economic time that is a bit
challenging. Equity is expensive right now.
People are are are a little bearish at the moment, but we
hope that this will be changing soon.
What we, if we had, you know, what we've been told over and
over again is that, you know, the VCs that we've spoken with,
angels that we've spoken with, family offices that we've spoken
with, love the concept, they love the product, they love the
team. And now it's a a matter of
timing. We want to, we're raising $1
million, which is not exorbitant so that we can build out this
platform. We have the team in place,
including the development team. We have letters of interest from
dozens of of entities including state governments, providers,
health systems, payers, senior communities, etcetera.
We would like to continue engaging with these investors to
invest in age tech and see the opportunity that we that that we
present the problem that we're solving for the solution that
we've created and and the benefit to our customers.
OK. What kind of investors would you
like to attract? Because Med tech is difficult
anyway, right? You're in software, so maybe
that's a bit easier and it's AI well.
We're, I mean we are honestly, we're, we are working with
health specific investors, we are working with generalists as
well who have more of an impact who want, you know, impact
investing and are interested in social impact.
So I would say health people who are interested in solving a
healthcare problem and people who are interested in making a
social impact, those are the two that we tend to attract and, and
so those are the ones that we've been speaking with.
But this has broad, you know, broad reach.
There's a broad reach here and broad scale implications of, of
building out an AI platform like cogensis.
So the opportunity exists for a variety of different investor
types, if you will. So and and have you been
involved in in the pitching process?
Yes. So what is your experience
there? The experience has been very
generally very favorable. What we have found is because
we're pre product, most of the conversations have been kind of
like this. We love the idea, we love the
team, we love the product. You're a little too early for us
because we tend to invest in Series A or Series B or maybe
even seed stage funding. So we think you need to be
involved with an accelerator or you need to go through, you
know, some precede Angel funding, etc.
And then once you have that, then go ahead and reach out to
us again. And so we actually have a, a, a
short list of VCs who have asked us to contact them.
We also have a short list of technology companies that have
asked us to contact them again because they are interested in
integrating our product into their technology platform.
And so, you know, they have actually been reaching out to us
just to kind of keep tabs on, on the progress that we're making.
So we're hopeful, very hopeful that this admission into the
Caduceus Venture Accelerator is going to catapult our our
progress and and enable those conversations to to move
forward. Well, I hope so too.
Any tips for other female founders who want to try?
Yes, do it. Just do it.
Get out there and, and, and build something.
There is a need to have the female perspective in the work
that is being created. I can speak from a healthcare
standpoint because that's my career, but I can see this, you
know, female founders in every single industry have an
opportunity to go out there and do it.
Don't be afraid. Sounds like a great place to
move to my last question, which is I'm on a mission to make
inclusion in tech the new normal by the end of 2032.
Based on your experience, what is the one bold move we all need
to make to get there? Yes thank you for this question.
Honestly, I feel like we, we just need to, and I use the word
just in air quotes, 'cause I realize this is not a just, but
shift our mindset to allow inclusion.
I think that the framework or the process of innovation isn't
a sex based trait or a culturally driven issue.
We identify a problem we create. We want to create a solution
using calculated risk to solve that problem and we want to
benefit our customers. That's the process.
It doesn't matter whether that is a, it shouldn't matter,
right? From a process standpoint, it,
it's the same. So, so that's right.
And so, you know, the, the, in my opinion, the issue is really
just changing our perception and getting out of our own way.
We talk about failing fast and innovation.
And you know, if this is an accepted principle, then why
should we place caveats on it based around?
The sex or the ethnicity of the team, what difference does it
make right if if you are going to apply a basic principle of
failing fast in innovation because you have an innovation
that it because you've identified a problem, you have
created a solution using calculated risk and you are
potentially benefiting a customer and will produce good
outcomes. What difference does it make if
the founder is female or male? If that's the only factor, then
I think perception is the issue. OK, so change to perception and
also change then change then our own mindset.
Yes, it's a change in my opinion.
We need to shift our mindset to allow for inclusion, full stop.
Sounds like a great place to close Kathy Joshi.
Thank you so much. Yeah.
Thank you for being a guest and thank you for the wisdom and for
sharing what the wonderful work that you do with Cogensis with.
US. If people want to learn more
about you, or connect with you, or learn more about cogensis,
where would you like to send them?
Well, you can learn more about cogensis at at cogensis.com,
www.codensis.com. You can reach me by e-mail at
raju@cogensis.com and I would be delighted to hear from your
listeners. I'm very grateful to you for
what you do and and for driving this mission that you have to
make inclusion in tech the new norm.
I think you said by the end of 322032.
Thank you for doing that. I know you're busy and I know
you could have done 100,000 other things, but I I appreciate
and I'm grateful that you've felt this was an important
enough issue to take it on. So thank you for doing that.
You're more than welcome. We'll include all the links in
show notes. So once again, Raju Joshi, thank
you very much for being my guest.
Listeners, thank you very much for listening.
And until the next episode, keep being awesome.
Well, that's it for episode 112 of Women Disrupting Tech with
Raju Joshi on how Gogensis uses AI to tackle loneliness and
cognitive decline. Rajo and I hope that you found
our conversation as inspiring and insightful as we intended it
to be. And if you have any questions
for Rajo, please leave them in the comments on Spotify, Apple,
or YouTube. I'll make sure you get an
answer. If you'd like to learn more
about Rajo and Cogensis, there are links in the show notes.
And as usual, you can find the show notes at Women Disrupting
Tech dot blog and that link is also in the description.
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