Advancing Health Equity with Marissa Fayer and DeepLook Medical’s Cutting-Edge Technology

Episode Overview

Episode Topic: In this episode of Skeleton Crew – The Rad Tech Show, Marissa Fayer, the CEO of Deep Look Medical, discusses advancements in women’s health care. Marissa is a multifaceted leader with extensive experience in med tech, engineering, and entrepreneurship. The conversation delves into Deep Look Medical’s cutting-edge technology and its impact on women’s health. Marissa shares her journey from engineering to executive leadership, emphasizing her passion for women’s health and her innovative contributions to the field. This episode provides an insightful look into the latest developments in medical technology designed specifically for women’s health.

Lessons You’ll Learn: Listeners will gain valuable insights into the dynamic field of women’s health care technology. Marissa’s journey from corporate engineering to founding her own consulting firm offers lessons in career growth, adaptability, and the importance of following one’s passion. She discusses the significance of 3D mammography and its role in early detection of breast cancer, highlighting the technological advancements that are revolutionizing women’s health care. Additionally, Marissa’s story underscores the importance of perseverance and resilience in overcoming burnout and achieving professional success in a demanding industry.

About Our Guests: Marissa Fayer is the CEO of Deep Look Medical and a pioneer in the field of women’s health care technology. With a background in engineering and an MBA, Marissa spent 15 years in the corporate world, where she rose through the ranks in med tech and played a pivotal role in developing 3D mammography systems. Her passion for women’s health and her commitment to innovation led her to establish her own consulting firm. Marissa’s expertise and dedication have made her a leading figure in the industry, and she continues to drive advancements in medical technology to improve women’s health outcomes.

Topics Covered: The episode covers a range of topics, including Marissa Fayer’s career trajectory, the development and impact of 3D mammography, and the innovative technologies being deployed by Deep Look Medical. Listeners will hear about Marissa’s experiences in corporate med tech, her transition to entrepreneurship, and her current role in advancing women’s health care. The discussion also touches on the challenges of burnout and the importance of resilience and adaptability in the ever-evolving field of medical technology. This episode provides a comprehensive overview of the latest trends and developments in women’s health care, offering valuable insights for professionals and enthusiasts alike.

Our Guest: Marissa Fayer, CEO of Deep Look Medical

Episode Transcript

Jen Callahan: Hey, everybody, welcome back to another episode of The Skeleton Crew. I’m your host, Jen Callahan, and today I have a great guest with me. Her name is Marissa Fayer. She’s like a powerhouse of a woman. She is involved in so much stuff and doing so much work for women’s health care right now. but her current role is CEO of Deep Look Medical, which I’m going to let her talk about the ins and outs of what this amazing company is doing for women’s health care right now.  Marissa, thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedule to be with me.

Marissa Fayer: Thanks for having me.

Jen Callahan: My pleasure. And I’m super excited for us to discuss, deep look medical and then the DL. Precise what the technology that you guys are using for women’s health care. I’m going to one. How about we just start talking about you first? Give us the little ins and outs of how you ended up where you currently are, because you’re involved in so many different things between being on advisory boards and committee boards and like, you know, you’ve just transformed through different paths of life leading yourself to here.  Give us a little bit about yourself.

Marissa Fayer: Yeah. I have no idea how I got here. Let’s be clear. It was not an intentional, linear ride. But, I’m an engineer by background with an MBA, and I started in med tech, so I spent 15 years in corporate as an engineer. You know, rising through the ranks, project management, product management did a lot of mergers and acquisition work as well. I developed the 3D mammography system and rolled the first ten off the production line with, you know, with a massive team. And then, you know, I was working for a very large women’s health company, Hologic, for nine years. You know, I kind of married my passion for women in Stem and, you know, women in general. And I kind of found my, my love but, you know, after 15 years and being in corporate and living in multiple countries and going driving everywhere and doing everything and, you know, doing, going really hard, I probably burnt out before it was a thing. Now everyone talks about it, but it wasn’t a thing back then.  I actually started my own consulting firm because I kind of became an entrepreneur. And again, I fell into it. Now people love to be entrepreneurs, but back you know, back then, that wasn’t a thing.

Marissa Fayer: I started a consulting firm that I ran for about nine years. I started a global nonprofit focused on women’s health, that I still run as a CEO. I started, you know, doing a lot more speaking. I gave a TEDx and I was speaking at conferences and all of these other things. you know, led me to doing a lot of strategic advisory work. A lot allowed me to sit on, start sitting on some boards and advisory boards, and started working with some venture funds as well. I took a deep look, they heard me speaking at a conference, and two of the co-founders came up to me and said, you’re going to be our CEO. And I was like, we’ve never met, so let’s have that discussion first. But I joined them on the advisory board for several years and actually took it, through Covid. And then after a while, you know, they knew and I knew that there needed to be, you know, strategic leadership who was in the industry, who knew it well and who could be the spokesperson for the company. I said yes, finally. Yeah.

Jen Callahan: So then let’s dive into deep. Look, give us a background of what deep Look is.

Marissa Fayer: Yeah, it’s a software technology company with our flagship product called DL precise, which is already FDA cleared in commercial. We’re actually in the US, UK and Canada currently. We are software that can visualize soft tumor lesions, and we can do that throughout the entire imaging continuum.  ultrasound, mammography, CT and Mr. And for all health areas, about all 38 of them. But our special sauce is that we can see inside dense tissue and we actually visualize the lesion, not a generalized region in which so many of the other companies do. But we’re very lesion, you know, specific and being able to visualize in dense tissue makes us very applicable for breast imaging. Right. Thyroid liver, lung many of those are women’s health issues.  We are definitely a women’s health company first and foremost. but an imaging company and, yeah, that’s very much what we do. We are not diagnostic. We’re not decision support. We are a visual tool for one click measurement, segmentation and visualization of a specific lesion. It’s run by radiologists on demand when they need it. It is not automated. It doesn’t happen every time. That’s what we do. We’re a tool to help them visualize and hopefully reduce the amount of supplemental imaging that they have to send women for or biopsies that are unnecessary. Just because they can’t see.  if they have this tool to be able to see and visualize, maybe some of those could be reduced. That’s what we’re working on.

Jen Callahan: Would you say, or do you possibly know the stats behind this? Are a good amount of women percentage wise, have dense breasts?

Marissa Fayer: Yeah, 45% of all women around the world have dense breasts. It also disproportionately affects black women, Asian women and Jewish women, which means it’s an equity issue as well. And yeah, I mean, literally 25% of the entire world population includes men who have dense breasts.  I mean, you know, I hope nobody questions me if this is a niche area for us to be in.  I still get it, but it’s not literally affect 25% of the whole world. But yeah, 45%, 45 to 50% of all women have dense breast tissue. The issue obviously, you know, that you can’t visualize and see with the, you know, within it.  I mean you’re looking you know, you’re looking at the cloud and you’re trying to find the plane. Well, if it’s in the cloud you can’t see it. That’s unfortunately where, you know, where a lot of the masses seem to grow. The other stat is that of breast cancers that are detected. 71% of them are in dense breasts. Okay. I mean, this is a problem. And, you know, just because of genetics, 3 to 4 times more likely to develop breast cancer. A whole lot of stats out there, which just means having dense breasts makes you have a higher proclivity to having breast cancer. If you can’t see inside the tissue to see if something’s there, you often have to go for secondary, tertiary, you know, further imaging, which is, you know, expensive to sometimes the woman, but the health care system and, you know, imagine the stress and the anxiety, of having to do this.

Marissa Fayer: You have to do this every year, every six months or all of these things and not know. And then, you know, it’s stressful for radiologists too, like they want, you know, there’s really nobody who goes into medicine who doesn’t want to help their patients. Them not having answers or, you know, something definitive, it’s hard, it’s hard, it’s hard for everybody. This gives an ability to be able to visualize better. And listen, I’m not saying that we should not send, you know, if you have dense breasts, you should absolutely still go for your ultrasound and your secondary imaging. That is finally almost government mandated. And it’s in about 41 states now that insurance is covering it, but, I mean, you should still be going for that. I’m not trying to reduce that. We’re trying to reduce all the additional costs on top of that. And the other horrible statistic is that over 90% of all biopsies are on benign lesions. I mean, so women are being jammed with these horrible biopsy needles, and I used to manufacture them so I know how bad they are. And, you know, they’re not pleasant. It’s really an excruciating process. So even if we can reduce that and the anxiety and the unnecessary testing, I mean, that’s what we’re here for, right?

Jen Callahan: I like the analogy that you use with the, with the plane in the clouds, because I was reading earlier on the site, you know, talking about the difference between dense breast and non-dense breast. And unfortunately in that very even though I am a woman, I’m not very knowledgeable on dense non-breast, dense breasts and what they look like even though I do work in radiology, what they actually look like on screen.  It was interesting for me to read that like a non-dense breast appears to be, you know, it’s black and then you know, the lesion would show up as white. It’s very, you know, clear.  but for the dense breast the whole breast basically looks grayish. Right. Or white.

Marissa Fayer:  Yeah it looks it just and it depends on you know obviously there’s different gradients of density.  The other issue is also that the younger you are, typically the denser your breasts are. And as we’ve been seeing in a lot of the new reports coming out, younger women are developing breast cancer earlier. You know, there’s a whole host of things that can go into that. But it includes a lot of the environmental factors, a lot of the chemicals, you know, that we’ve been ingesting and its girls having, you know, going through puberty earlier which just sets, you know, sets everything in motion a little bit earlier.  Imaging in younger women, in more dense breasts, who, you know, because density oftentimes, evens out over time as you get older. but just generally, I mean to be able to see inside something, you know, that’s dense, it’s very hard and it’s the opposite on ultrasound.

Marissa Fayer: You know, so it shows up black.  but if you have an all-black, you know. A playing field. You know, you’re looking at the asphalt and you’re trying to find the little, you know, gray dot in there. Good luck to you. same thing. it’s, you know, and this applies to other tissues, which are, you know, thyroid and lung where you can have so many nodules.  you don’t know what’s what. You don’t know the measurement of all of them. You have to measure 30 nodules and it’s time consuming. And  yeah, that’s what we’re here for.

Jen Callahan:  the radiologists looking at the image,  like you said, it’s something that they can choose to use or not use.  would they click on a specific lesion or area of interest and then or does it just like highlight everything. It has to be click specific. It has to.

Marissa Fayer: Be click specific. Because what we’ve been seeing and what the industry has been showing us in general,  is that there’s a lot of information now on the screen. There’re tons of AI tools, there’s tons of triage, there’s tons of markings. It’s a lot. It’s a lot for the radiologist to see. We only want them to use this when they want to because they’re going to dismiss 80 to 90% of what’s on the screen. We don’t have to want them to dismiss something else. Like we don’t need to add workflow to their job. There’s already a, you know, radiologist shortage. It’s going to get worse over time. Everyone’s time is already crunched.  The point is when they want to use this, you know, they quote unquote double click and it activates and they can use it when they want. You know, you’re not going to use this often on a fatty breast because you already can see what’s there, you know, or if something’s very obvious. But you might want to also be present in color and we can show different shades of density within that mass. We can actually almost make it more interesting because mammograms are black and white.  Other imaging modalities are oftentimes shown in color, but mammography is black and white. And, you know what, eight hours a day staring at black and white, it’s boring. Oftentimes they’re like, wow, at least my eyes get a little bit of a treat to see something different. And it helps them almost visually cue that there is something different there.

Jen Callahan: Now the different colors that do show up for that. Does that specify like you know, well obviously it’s a denser area but that it could be something other than it not being something I don’t know. I don’t think so.

Jen Callahan: It’s the right way. But do you know, do you understand what I’m trying to say?

Marissa Fayer: Yeah. Malignant versus benign. Yeah. We’re not we’re not we’re not classifying yet we have the ability to we obviously have to go through those regulatory filings that’s, you know, a secondary filing. But,  we are not kind of making sure that we’re showing the different versions. I mean, you know, as radiologists, you know, everybody knows that something that is round and is uniform, it’s a cyst. It’s, you know, fibers, it’s, you know, you know, things like that non-cancerous, you know, but if you start seeing different levels of, of density, which the colors will just show up as different gradients, almost like a topography map. When you go, when you go hiking, you know, it’ll show the different areas so that you can see,  actually, this is starting to radiate out. It’s starting to get irregular, you know, it shows the boundaries of the speculation, which is highly indicative, you know, of a malignancy. But again, visually, just allowing them to maybe make it easier, faster, you know, move, move from, hey, you know, you’re going to a screen, hey, we’re actually going to send you straight to a diagnostic. We’re not going to send you, you know, to all the 27 steps in between. Like, we see that this is something we want to send you immediately or actually. Yep. This is the same as last year. No worries. Hasn’t grown, hasn’t changed, hasn’t morphed, hasn’t done anything. You’re good. We’ll see you in six months or a year. Whatever. You know the treatment is.

Jen Callahan: Al to reading that, the patient can leave that day knowing how dense their breasts are.  for them, I guess, excuse me, for the future then that they would be aware, you know, that maybe certain imaging might be required in addition to that because of, you know, how their breasts are.

Marissa Fayer: A lot of density scoring out there actually that’s happening. There’s about 15 to 20 companies that are doing density scoring that are all augments. You know this is all AI that’s, you know, augmenting the existing mammography. And you know, for us we’re utilizing that information because patients need to know I mean, we a lot of us now in several, many states actually get a letter that says, you know, your denser your breasts are dense, you know, here’s your density score, here’s this, here’s that. And then you’re sometimes left with the, with the, the phrase, we don’t know if we saw everything, but see you in a year. I mean, I get that letter myself, and I’m in this industry and it makes me panic. So just imagine any other, you know, normal human who doesn’t do this for a living. We want to, so that they can say okay.  Did you analyze those areas of density with depth? Look, you did and you didn’t see anything, right? I feel like I feel better about it, you know? And the like. Listen, it’s not again, like I said, the radiologist wants to give the right information. Sure. I just don’t have the tools to do that. So where one of the, you know, the multiple tools that are able to do that. But yeah, in everybody’s chart, if you have dense breasts, it should show up with your density rating, your Bi-rads rating. and again, there’s a lot of great, great tools out there that are doing it. We are an augment on top of those things.

Jen Callahan: All right.  are you guys currently out in a good amount of, like, health systems within the country, or are you kind of in more a particular area like southeast or over on the West Coast or. I don’t know.

Marissa Fayer: Yeah, we’re working to scale right now.  We have just recently gone commercial, which is exciting. We’re working on our first sales now, but the way that we distribute our software is through our partners because it’s, you know, it’s just more efficient. These are multi-billion-dollar companies that already have sales channels and are already established in each hospital system.  they’re actually going out and selling our technology,  which is a benefit to them as well. And  so we’re working with them to leverage, you know, the contacts that we have and contacts that they have and, you know, making those sales. No, this is a global, you know, like this is a US wide UK Canadian, like we’re spreading it around. We want everybody to have these technologies and these tools.  but we just found it honestly just a little smarter to use economies of scale with very large companies. You know, it would take us two years to get into each individual hospital system between the cybersecurity and the, you know, approved supplier and vendors and all of these things. It takes years to get into these systems, and there’s very few individual practices left.  and so but yeah, we’re working on several of them,  many more to be announced soon.  So yeah, I mean, if anybody wants it.

Jen Callahan: I know. Are you talking? About like, you’re pairing with, say, like a company like McKesson, who already, like, has like a pack system open within, say, like, that’s the health system that I work for. That’s who they use. Are you? Is that what you mean? You’re pairing with them? Yeah.

Marissa Fayer: So first of all, I definitely want to talk to you about McKesson.

Marissa Fayer: But yeah, we’re Partnering with,  so one of our biggest partners is Barco, who makes all of the monitors for mammography. They own 90% of the medical monitor industry. All the OEMs use them. All the hospital systems use them.  they’re the best image quality, quite honestly, out there. So we’re actually directly integrated into their monitors. And so it’s kind of interesting, you know, so we’re the first kind of software augmentation,  on their new software platform that they can, you know, it’s like an app. You download it, it’s there. And  yeah. So that’s, you know, that’s kind of our partnership because again, they’re already in the hospitals. They’re already selling to them. You know, they’re through the OEMs. And then, you know, we’re working to work with some of the PACs systems as well,  so that everybody can communicate back and forth all the information.  And yeah, those are the types of channels that,  certainly I’m talking about because I mean, as a McKesson, you know, you’re, you’re integrated already to add another software that’s part of you takes very little effort versus multiple years of me trying to get into a system.

Jen Callahan: And especially, like you said, like we’re,  information can be integrated together.  So information can be shared across, like, platforms.

Jen Callahan: I feel like thankfully, we’re finally trending in that direction.  you still have some kind of company who, you know, I feel like. So not. I’m not, like, trying to, like, name, like name call or, you know what I mean? But we use epic where I work, and, you know, I work in the Philadelphia area, and I know that the larger health systems in the Philadelphia area all use epic. So it’s great because information can be shared amongst the three major health systems. I mean, it’s along with what you were saying, being able to share the information, for sure.

Marissa Fayer: Everything’s becoming centralized. And so that’s the important part. And when we think about it, we need the patients to have that information. And the physicians of those patients have all of the information together instead of having to say,   sorry, can you hand me a CD of my films so that I can walk across the street to the other hospital where my doctor is? That’s just not an efficient way. And you know, where in the health care industry. And half the time we don’t do that. So just imagine people who are not.

Jen Callahan: You’ve got the DL precise um is deep. Look in the midst of um like moving DL precise uh in a like not in a different direction but honing it more. Or are they looking to develop another product to go underneath the deep look name.

Marissa Fayer: Well so both  so we are right now optimizing DL precise  past uh breast mammography. Breast ultrasound. Lung. Liver. Thyroid. That’s kind of our pathway right now.  and all it is, excuse me, is an optimization. It’s not. We’re not doing anything different. It’s just, you know, ultrasounds are black and white versus white and black.  so you just need to, to augment those. But then. Excuse me.  We have our new products that will be coming out probably in Q3 of this year.  and it’s an augment to what we’re doing. It’s called lesion library.  and we’re able to visually match with known,  biopsied ground truths that have been loaded and I have been trained with it. And,  it can give a visual representation. And on a simple scale, it’s kind of like a kids matching game. Hey, you have an orange cat with stripes. Like, what are the 3 or 7 other orange cats with stripes that look the same? They have known pathology and we can state what the known pathology is to say. Here’s yours, here’s what it could match to. And by the way, it might not match anything. Which means you know, you have to make your own decision on what it is. Or we also have it loaded with benign. Here’s your benign, you know, here’s your lesion and it matches with benign. Again not decision support. Not yet. But like a visual matching to say here are there ones that the algorithm has been trained to um you know it’s just it’s a helpful hint.

Marissa Fayer: I mean, it’s a tool, you know, a tool to make a bit again, to make a better decision and make a more informed decision.  instead of having to, like, you know, leaf through all your medical journals, you just are able to, you know, look it up on the screen. It’s kind of the same thing.

Jen Callahan: So are you for, like, specific body parts at this point where you said.

Marissa Fayer: Yeah, we’ll be starting with breasts.  Just because that’s kind of our core,  you know, area. But,  yeah. And then we’ll be expanding to everything else.  Of course.  DL precise will be available for all other, you know, other body parts before that, you know, or in collaboration with it.  they don’t need to be optimized at the same speed, so. Or at the same time.   We’re actually currently optimizing for breast ultrasound now and starting with lung,  just because it’s a really hot area in imaging right now.  and yeah, yeah. Finally there’s this: it’s only the second,  annualized screening that’s been approved,  in many states,  and hopefully federally soon to be covered by insurance, especially starting with smokers and families of smokers and then eventually to everybody else.

Jen Callahan: Screening I mean, not to get on a big topic of that, but screening, does that mean in terms of just like chest x rays or a different type

Marissa Fayer: XRays or low dose CT?

Jen Callahan: That’s interesting. So that can happen two times a year

Marissa Fayer: One time a year.

Jen Callahan: One time. Okay.

Marissa Fayer: Also whatever is prescribed, but it’s based on risk.

Jen Callahan: And I mean, it’s crazy. It’s crazy how long that was probably in the works for it to come through. And it was finally. And that’s something that possibly I mean, like, I know we have to be radiation conscious, but I mean, honestly, getting a chest x-ray is like the equivalent of standing next to your microwave. Possibly everyone doesn’t go literally.

Marissa Fayer: I mean, getting, you know, people are so worried about it, but like, we’ll get into plane with no problem when, by the way, you have more radiation when you go on one flight than you do with your breast imaging.  You know, sure, if you’re going every day or you work in that room, sure. You should be protected. Right? But I mean, you know, if you’re if you’re happy to get on a flight multiple times a year, you’ve already had more radiation or stand literally next to your microwave. Thankfully, those have been shielded. So I think it’s a little better than the 80s. 

Jen Callahan: But, holding your cell phone like next to your right, holding.

Marissa Fayer: Your cell phone. I mean, you know, there’s all these things like you stand next to all these devices and, you know, they’re all radiating.  Like thatmyth has been completely debunked. And, you know, for anybody who uses that as an excuse, it’s completely irrelevant, especially if you’re okay getting on an airplane.

Jen Callahan: Well, that’s I mean, that’s great news then about the screening for, for lung cancer, especially for people who smoke or, like you said, family members. That’s amazing. Yeah.

Marissa Fayer: And unfortunately, women have a,  3 or 4 times higher likelihood of developing lung nonsmoker lung cancer.  and  you know, again, it presents a women’s health problem. And it’s not just, you know, the screening is first and foremost you have to start with someone. So start of course, with the targeted population of smokers and their family who are around it. But then, you know, lung cancer is actually growing quite frequently in women who are non-smokers.

Jen Callahan: So let’s talk about because you keep talking about equity and like, you know, with women and then certain groups within women. Let’s talk about your health equity. Right. Her health equity. Right. Is that how you say it?

Jen Callahan: IQ okay. Sorry.

Jen Callahan: Talk to me about that. I mean, it seems great that you want to get, you know, medical devices. Are there screenings and things like that for women who I guess are maybe less privileged or it’s just like a lower income area or just across the board for women in general?

Marissa Fayer: Yeah, it’s typically in lower income areas. So we focus on   middle income countries. So not the US, not Europe, not, you know, Japan.  We focus on,  you know, middle income countries all around the world. In Latin America, Southeast Asia, Africa,  and we deploy medical equipment, sometimes it’s used, sometimes it’s new.  and it depends obviously on our donors and what is needed.  but we focus on the non-communicable diseases that really affect women that screening, prevention or detection equipment can help. So cervical cancer and breast cancer, two really big areas heart disease, maternal health, all of those. You know, I’m in the equipment space like I’ve been in the equipment medical device equipment space my entire career. So like that’s what I knew. There’s also a lot of other organizations that are working on, you know, pharmaceuticals and vaccines and so many other things that wonderful kind of, you know, benefit of when you reach this middle income level is that unfortunately, most of your,  your government aid and international aid turns off. It’s like, great that you’ve reached this status, but your international aid has turned off and people are living longer because you’ve kind of reached this middle income status as far as a country goes. But you now don’t have cancer prevention or maternal health services.  So you’re not dying of, you know,  waterborne diseases or malaria as much or, you know, things like that, but now you’re living long enough to develop cancer or have more children.

Marissa Fayer:  The burden of, of life in general falls on a woman, but most especially in a developing country. She’s the one who’s sending her girls to school, and the girls are being pulled out when their mother or their grandmother, their aunt, or their sister is sick. And  you know, being a woman in Stem, I want girls to go to school, and I can’t fix the education system. Like, that’s not my specialty. Mine is health care. So, let’s get them the equipment that they need so that they can continue to be in school because their family members are healthy,  and are contributing to society and to their family. And it’s something like 98% of a woman’s salary goes back to her family, but only 40% of a man’s does. Well, let’s get her, you know, healthy so that she can contribute to her family and make, like, pull them out of poverty. And   yeah, we want to make sure that there’s health care for women all around the world. And oftentimes the barrier is, is the cost of this equipment. Either at a low cost or for free, we deploy medical equipment to many, many countries around the world.

Jen Callahan: You’re paying then, I guess with companies like Hologic, like you used to work for or Kodak, I guess not Kodak. I’m thinking of a film.

Marissa Fayer: They’ve gone digital for sure.

Jen Callahan: Like Siemens and other companies who make, you know, different either ultrasound machines or breast imaging or even x ray equipment, I assume.

Marissa Fayer: We’ve taken it out of the imaging space too. So we do  imaging using colposcopy,  for cervical cancer,  viewers or  EKG machines or ECG machines for heart,  heart detection, you know, heart disease detection,  maternal fetal fetal monitors,  and, you know, things like that.   you know, certainly imaging is or to do a lot of things that I do and it is necessary in the world. But,  there’s so many other types of equipment,  you know, that are needed too.  Yeah, we partner with the medical device manufacturers,  to hopefully obtain the equipment for free or, you know, buy it at a very low cost. And then deploy them out to,  you know, to, to regions around the world. We’re currently in nine different countries, two countries repeated,  we’re about to deploy in about four other countries in the next few months.  You know, we’re moving. We obviously took a pause for Covid because nobody cared about,  you know, lots.

Marissa Fayer: Non-communicable diseases, but unfortunately, they’re now rising at a much higher rate. So we need to be focused on that.

Jen Callahan: What are the different areas that you’re in that you’ve gone into? Like maybe could you just tell the countries, the countries that you, if you know, off the top of your head that you’re already in?

Marissa Fayer:   We’re in Costa Rica,  Tanzania.  My goodness.  Burkina Faso has deployed to the US, actually a piece of equipment.  We’ve sent supplies to Ukraine as well. We are in Vietnam.  We are in Jamaica.  I think I’m getting close to nine, but I’m not sure.  but we have projects that are upcoming. In Nigeria, in Ghana, in Guatemala, in Mexico, in South Africa and hopefully Indonesia.  you know, we’re kind of spreading around certainly,  you know, the need.

Jen Callahan: Just like research to see what comes, not companies. Excuse me. What countries or, you know, in desperate need or are you reaching out to, you know, different health care providers in, in countries? How do you figure out where you want to go next?

Marissa Fayer: Based on partnerships. So we don’t run our own clinics. We don’t run our own centers.  We need to deploy the equipment to people who are running them in the country, quite honestly. And   we sometimes have inbound sometimes it’s through people we know, sometimes it’s through partners, sometimes it’s through,  you know, some of our donors that say, hey, we’d like to do a project in XYZ country,  because we have a facility there. And,  we’d like to give back to the community. And,  you know, that’s sometimes how we work, too. And,  so we work with other organizations and other NGOs. We work with, you know, people through our network.  and I have a great board,  who has great connections as well. And   you know, we deploy with,  with other people in the country. I will never set up our own clinic. That’s just not who we are. There’s plenty of incredible physicians, plenty of fabulous doctors and nurses in each country that are super trained. The only thing that they’re lacking is the equipment to do their job better. We’re just filling that gap.

Jen Callahan: That’s a huge gap to fill. And I’m sure that they are unbelievably thankful, you know, for that gap to be filled. Yeah.

Marissa Fayer: And we’re talking about people, you know, again, who don’t have equity and women don’t have equity, you know, We’re talking about people in countries that don’t have access. All this is, is access to equipment. That’s the important thing. And you can lead such a healthier life as a result of having access to, you know, screening, detection, prevention equipment,  just like we do here in the US and in Europe and around the world. And again, it’s an equity thing. Like, why? Just because they live in a country, a different country doesn’t mean they should have different health care. And we’re trying to just bridge that gap until maybe, you know, the government has the money to be able to,  you know, fulfill every single hospital that they’ve built.

Jen Callahan: You know, and unfortunately should be that way here in the US as well. You know, I mean.

Marissa Fayer: And that’s one of the reasons why we deployed some maternal health screening equipment to rural Mississippi, who to a great organization plan health care. And they run mobile vans up and down the Mississippi Delta, which has a very large gap in equity related to health care.

Jen Callahan: You’re deploying to these different areas like countries or even like you said, in the United States, are you going along and helping with this equipment, not setting it up, but you’re going with.

Marissa Fayer: Sometimes I am, and a lot of times I like to visit to make sure it’s in use.  You know, one of the things we require is that they send metrics and how many, you know, people have been using the equipment.  You know, I like to go, you know, I want to see it, I want to make sure it’s being used. It’s not equipment that I want sitting on a shelf.   Sometimes,  you know, it forces people to say,  yeah, we are using it or there’s a problem. We sometimes bring our partners with us to do some training,  or,  you know, or if there needs to be installation sometimes. And   yeah, I mean, I like it’s a benefit. I like to go to all these wonderful, incredible places. So it’s a benefit that we get to,  you know, that I get to travel to them.  Not all of them. Not yet, but,  hopefully soon.

Jen Callahan: The people that you’re partnering with do they say like a, like a QC on the equipment that they’re deploying out, say like once a year or do they? You know, I feel like working with medical equipment like it can be working today and tomorrow, it just stops working for no reason.  and, you know, if you’re working in a, in a larger health system or something, you know, you have biomed who’s on on call or on page, you know, so they can come and like fix it quickly. But, you know, if it’s in a different country, that’s not really the case. How do you know how that’s handled.

Marissa Fayer: So actually we make sure that there’s biomed available. And we actually ensure and we pay for  multiple uh year contracts for service. So if something breaks down and this is why we require metrics every quarter because then we can see what is, you know, what was the estimate. And you know, if you’re at zero, either you’ve completely solved the problem or something’s wrong with the equipment. And I want to know either way.  A lot of times we’re proactive, but not every country feels that way. They feel embarrassed. So the way to ask if something’s being used is to get the usage.  We make sure that there is service available either in the country remotely or we will send somebody,  you know, and make sure, you know, if it’s a part, we’ll make sure of that. Get there, too. That’s just part of, you know, we can’t send our trash somewhere.

Marissa Fayer: And, you know, just because we feel great doing it and it breaks down within three weeks and then it can’t be used like that’s just a complete transference of trash. And that’s not our intention in the least. I hope that one day that the equipment is used so much it is broken because they’ve used it too much. And if that’s the case, I’ll get them another one. Like if it’s used so much, you know, hundreds of thousands of times and it’s actually used up their useful life, no problem. That’s the best problem for us to have. We’ll get another one for you.

Jen Callahan: So speaking of challenges,  you know, obviously you face these different challenges with dealing, you know, with equipment and other countries. But what challenges have deep look kind of encountered with the development of the software and then implementing it,  getting it into like different health systems. But it’s great. Like you said, it’s already in the Barco,  detect, not detectors, but monitors.

Jen Callahan: Monitors.

Marissa Fayer: Listen, it’s hard to implement another technology. And, you know, we get a lot of resistance, like I already have, I. Okay. Yeah. You do. And,  you know, you’re using about seven AI tools, actually. But,  here’s another eighth one that does something totally different. So it’s a lot of convincing.  Listen, like, we’re not replacing radiologists, we’re not replacing anybody. The thing is, like an AI is never going to not for, you know, 50 years. But the radiologists that don’t use AI are going to be replaced. And that’s the important part. Like there needs to be an adoption of technology. Took it took ten years to get 3D mammography,  you know, really adopted on a worldwide scale at 50%.  I mean, you know, it’s going to take time. Just working with them and convincing and saying,  how else? How can this help you? Things like that. That’s always a challenge. And I think that’s a challenge for any technology. We have the added layer that we’re not handling sales directly.   you know, making sure that the other teams are, you know, moving forward on the distribution of our technology.  That’s just a management thing that has to be managed.

Jen Callahan: Have you received Feedback from, you know, radiologists who are using it? 

Marissa Fayer: Yeah. Of course.   

Jen Callahan:   The Thoughts I’m sure of are amazing.

Marissa Fayer: Well, yeah. I mean, you know, of course, and I’m never going to tell you the bad stuff, but,  but, I mean, you know, we had one radiologist that I thought was just going to be a big old no. And she said that she was like, oh my God, this actually makes my day easier. And I was like, I’m sorry. Did those words just come out of your mouth? You know, like, really? Did that happen?  and she was like, it just makes me feel more confident. It makes it easier. And so that’s great.  You know, especially from radiologists who sometimes are non adoptive of technology, you know, thankfully in radiology and especially in breast imaging, it’s been the first area that AI has really taken, not taken over but been implemented. And now it can go throughout the entire, you know, pathway.  and so  there’s a lot more people who are willing to adopt it. Listen, the fullness of it is super helpful. It just makes it clear and more obvious and either to say a yes or no yes, to move on to, to other imaging or no, you’re good.  and it just gives them more confidence. And that’s a lot of the feedback that we’ve been given.

Jen Callahan: Besides the FDA approval, was there anything that had to be done with the MQ essay that you know, was in place for, you know, standards of mammography?

Marissa Fayer: No, it doesn’t affect us. And actually, we’re helping everyone stay within their standards.  because they’re not ordering excess imaging, which a lot of them are actually,  over their cavitation rates. And no, we’re, I mean, like, we’re, we’re, we’re compliant to all standards.  But,  you know, we’re not fully integrated. You know, related to that, we are obviously going after CE Mark, so we have to go after MDR and all of those requirements as well when we go into Europe.  That’s a very long process with a lot of paperwork. So we’re just starting now.

Jen Callahan: So that’s like a two year type process for two years.

Marissa Fayer: And it’s and it doesn’t, it’s yours only because,  I personally just don’t think they’re staffed very well. I mean, they just don’t have enough people, you know, very similar to the FDA, but it just takes a long time to get through the process.  and certainly it’s not. I’m not the only one saying that, like, this is a big uproar in the industry.

Jen Callahan: Okay. It was Canada along the same lines of approval time,  with the United States or.

Marissa Fayer: So Canada,  Canada, Mexico, Israel, UK, they accept the FDA.

Marissa Fayer: And so a lot of times it’s, you know, paperwork and registrations and things like that.  We’re using our US FDA in any location that we possibly can.

Jen Callahan: Interesting that so many different countries do accept it. But Europe as a whole. Will not. Interesting.

Jen Callahan: This was great. I mean, finding out about all this,  especially for myself, I’ve shared with our guest before that I just turned 40, and I’ll be getting my first mammogram as soon as I go get my script.

Jen Callahan: I’ve talked to yourself and, you know, a few other guests about, you know, the world of mammography and things like this just has my mind churning.  but it’s great. And it’s, you know, it’s it’s it’s nice to know that there’s technology out there that can help, you know, ease your mind. You know, I don’t know if I have dense breasts, but, I’ll find out soon.

Jen Callahan: If I Did, I would hope that possibly something like this would be able to be used, you know.

Jen Callahan: At my imaging. So Marissa, thank you for taking the time with me today. Everybody, this is Marissa Thayer with us from Deep Look Medical. Excuse me.

Marissa Fayer: Great. Thanks so much for having me.

Jen Callahan: All right, guys, we’ll see you next week. Thanks again.