This visionary man is exploring patient-centric and prevention strategies in healthcare.
In this episode of Bite the Orange, Innocent Clement, founder and CEO of Ciba Health, shares insights into his vision of healthcare, focusing on patient-centricity, prevention, and empowerment. Dr. Clement explains Ciba's strategy, integrating genetic, environmental, and lifestyle data for predictive analytics, ultimately fostering patient engagement. He talks about how Ciba Health's patient-centric methodology stresses the urgency of personalized prevention, improved patient-doctor relationships, and the significance of sharing health data through open APIs for EMR integration. Innocent outlines their accessibility, costs, and long-term benefits while delving into personalized interventions for chronic conditions and patient empowerment in health management.
Tune in to learn how Ciba Health empowers patients with access, awareness, and personalized care!
FULL EPISODE
BTO_Innocent Clement: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix
BTO_Innocent Clement: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Emmanuel Fombu:
Welcome to Bite the Orange. Through our conversations, we create a roadmap for the future of health with the most impactful leaders in the space. This is your host, Dr. Manny Fombu. Let's make the future of healthcare a reality together.
Emmanuel Fombu:
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to another episode of Bite the Orange. And today, we have a very special guest who has captured all the Ivy League schools, after all the degrees that are possible out there and is still passionate and still has a smile on his face when he talks about what we can do to improve healthcare. Today, the special guest is Dr. Innocent Clement, founder and CEO of Ciba Health, and he was also a co-founder and CEO of Kaia Health previously. Welcome to the show, Dr. Innocent Clement.
Innocent Clement:
Hi again, Dr. Manny, this is great, really. I'm excited to be here. I've been a big fan of yours. I've been following your journey. I've seen all your posts on LinkedIn, really super excited and really proud to really know that you're doing a great work out there within the healthcare space, so I'm super excited to be here and look forward to this conversation.
Emmanuel Fombu:
Thank you for saying that. I've actually followed you quite a bit also. Interestingly, we both come from that same region, part of Africa, from Cameroon, right, as background, you've being from Nigeria, it was a similar coast. And then the space and what drove me to digital health was the fact that I worked in drug development, and I realized that there were many drugs that we were developing that would never make it into sub-Saharan Africa and benefit the people that definitely use this right because of cost, that's one. And so, and I looked at, growing up to see that my grandmother, for example, you know, living and dying from heart failure and saying, are there things that we could do to prevent this from happening? And I noticed that, I mean, before we get into this piece, I know some people might know you, some people might know you, let's start off with this basic element of it, as you have a very interesting background. So let's start off with, for those that don't know you and those that know you maybe they learn something new, who is Dr. Innocent Clement? Who are you? What's your background? Where are you from? Are you in Boston? Are you in New York? Tell me about you.
Innocent Clement:
This is great. This is exciting, right? I mean, again, thank you again, Dr. Fombu, for connecting to really speak with me this morning. So Innocent here, I always say I'm not guilty. So like you said, I'm Nigerian, obviously, and then moved to the US here for college and then study here, physician, and then shortly after that, I took a non-traditional route, went to grad school, where I did my ... MBA. And then shortly after that, I decided to take another non-traditional route, went to the consulting route, and then from there, I became what I call a physician entrepreneur, right? Because again, what drove me into the space is suddenly, one of the exposure that I got early from grad school, as well as also working as a consultant, really, I see the gaps in healthcare today. I see some of the challenges, the pain point, right, firsthand as a physician, also managing patients with chronic condition today, suddenly, that's what drove me into the space. And also, I have a brief stint with the biotech space as well, right? I mean, looking at developing chronic disease products as well. And so there's a whole lot, right, that really actually made me to really be where I am today, and really begin to see how we can continue to drive the change that we want to see in the space today. And I believe we, as providers are physicians, doctors, nurses, dietitians, health coaches, certainly should be in the forefront of driving the care today. And so I'm always excited to really talk about this topic and also to talk about, you know, my humble background from where I started to where I am today. So thank you so much, Dr. Fombu, for the opportunity.
Emmanuel Fombu:
Which is quite interesting, and I think we have some listeners right now that could be medical students, or they could be people from different backgrounds, right? Listen to the story. And a lot of times when people find out I'm a clinician, and they go, oh, so you work from home, or you go to a clinic, right? And so the point is that the multiple backgrounds of different things that clinicians do, and it's just the opportunity, and we could take, and you could practice things in a much bigger kind of way. And I think, and I'm sure, you believe this as well, you know, so that what we do today impacts multiple millions of lives, right, and billions of lives, and it takes more than just being a clinician to take care of healthcare today. But with that being said, I want to anchor this conversation about this idea of prevention, which is something that I think you have like a solid track record of working on. So what is your philosophy and idea behind the idea of prevention?
Innocent Clement:
I mean, this is great, right? Because you know, the healthcare, every day we talk about prevention. So when you prevent it, obviously, you're preventing what's going to happen maybe, let's say, from a cost perspective, right? Looking at it. And if you prevent it, that means you're going to prevent the cost that would be associated with a chronic disease condition, that would, because there are signs that you see.
Emmanuel Fombu:
You know, better yet, maybe ask a question and anchored it on prevention. Maybe I make it better. Innocent, what is your vision of what healthcare should be from birth, like in an ideal world? When someone is born on this earth, what should that life look like? Because I don't want to anchor it on disease, right? When I say prevention, let's kind of mix it, like we have ... or something, but I know you have a vision. So what does the ideal world look like for you?
Innocent Clement:
I mean, this is also a very good question, Dr. Fombu. So when you look at the healthcare space today, really for me, in an ideal world, people should be able to access healthcare no matter where they are, their background, their race, their gender. Access is the key here, and then also awareness, empowerment. That's what drives the desired clinical outcome; that's also helped to really prevent some of those chronic conditions that we see today. If you look at the current healthcare space today, mostly in the US today, you would agree that there's a lot of challenges in this space, there's gaps. And being in that space, specifically myself, I've learned a lot, I've seen it. And I said, you know what? We have to begin to look at healthcare from a prevention perspective. We have to begin to look at healthcare that is certainly patient-centric, healthcare that it's suddenly not a symptom-based approach, healthcare that it's not a one size fit all, healthcare that is accessible, healthcare that would drive the desired clinical outcome, healthcare that will empower a patient to be in the forefront of their own healthcare journey so that they can take that into their own hands and be the architect. So that's why I see healthcare should be. That's my own, really, vision of what healthcare should be, right? Obviously, there are a lot of challenges with that, but again, we have to start from somewhere. And then I think, you know, what Ciba is doing today, and what other people are also doing in this space today, I think, you know, we begin to see that sort of the change within what we want to see, what healthcare should truly be.
Emmanuel Fombu:
Which is quite amazing. And I spent some time on your website, on Ciba Health website, which I encourage anyone listening to actually check it out. C I B A Health.com. We'll also have the link in the show notes. But you have an anchor point about artificial intelligence or predictive medicine. I actually wrote a book called Predictive Medicine as my second book, which is quite interesting. And the foundation of this is driven by genomics, and I think that's what you're actually working on quite a bit, right? And I think that the Human Genome Project, for example, gave us this great potential for us to have a genetic screen, to have that baseline kind of information. So if I did a genetic screen on myself today, what are some of the possibilities of things I can do to prevent that you think is possible?
Innocent Clement:
Yeah, I mean, this is also a great question, right? The genome is just one aspect of it, right? There are other components that will also need to also look at. So for us at Ciba, we look at it from 360-degree approach, like a whole human, because there could be a genetic aspect, there could be environmental exposure to environmental toxins, there could be nutritional component, there could be inflammation, right? So you want to look at everything because, and that's why we really focus on what we call root cause. The root cause is identifying what the root causes are, what's driving this condition, what's unique about this individual today? Because we're looking at it from a unique biochemistry of every individual, unlike what you see today, where people look at the symptoms, and then begin to provide intervention. But for us, we want to understand why do you even have this condition in the first place, right? So the genome plays a big role in that as well because you're able to predict based on what you're seeing from the data, right, from either the labs. When you do the advanced lab testing, it gives you insight, and you're able to see some of those signs already, clearly, early on, and then be able to put together an intervention that can prevent it. This intervention could be lifestyle changes, behavioral modification, could also be improving the, I would call, the biochemical element of it. Because if you look at the current healthcare today, we'll look at lifestyle and behavior, and you understand that behavior and lifestyle also triggers the biochemical component, which could lead to inflammation. We could also be exposure to environmental toxins. We could be micronutrient deficiency. So the way we build, we build the algorithm that allows us to look at all those key data points, right? And then based on these key data points, we're able to now identify, we're able to predict and see, okay, based on the data point, what we're seeing in the data trend, this patient might be at some point develop either type two diabetes or can develop digestive health issues and all of that. So what we do is to prevent it from becoming a problem, because once you cross the line from developing ... this condition already, you know the cost now suddenly 3x or 10x of that. But when you prevent it, you identify what are those drivers and what are the root causes that you see earlier on. Now that means you're better off as a patient, and this patient also, you provide them with the tools that will empower them to be able to be part of managing their own health, because now they know they have the tools that will help them to be able to develop the skill set, to be able to really identify when they see they're educated, they are aware, and they're able to now even go back to a doctor and say, hey, I've been noticing these symptoms, I think maybe we want to evaluate that, right? And then you come back and say, hey, okay, let's take a look at this and then see what's going on here? What are we missing here? But the key here is when you empower them, that drives engagement. And, you know, once you have an engagement, that will also help you to achieve the desired clinical outcome that you want to see today, because, when you also build trust, you build relationship. If you look at the current healthcare today, you know, really trust, and patient-doctor relationship is no longer there. It's so very, very transactional now, right? But when a patient feels empowered, and the patients feel that there's a trust, and you give the patient the opportunity to say, you know what, I can look at all the providers here today and self-select the providers that I think look like me or provider that understand where I'm coming from to be able to really help me in my healthcare journey, that on itself is so powerful because a patient that feels empowered feels that they have the power. They are in the center of this. They know that, okay, they are now the architect of their own healthcare journey. So that would help them to continue to drive that engagement, to continue to achieve the desired outcome.
Emmanuel Fombu:
You know, Innocent, I think you said all the words that were in my mouth, but like coming out, I think the transactional aspect of it, something I described as the core relationship between the patient and the clinician or pharmacist, that is very transactional, as like a cashier kind of relationship, you show up, and you give money. This people-service kind of model, I think, is horrible, but I really like that holistic approach. I think it makes basic common sense on how you go about doing this. So talking specifically about Ciba, because you've basically taken this idea of what all I could do is write about, and you actually put this into action, so you actually just did it. Like Nike said, just do it, you're actually doing it. I want to give you kudos for that, you know, to make this happen. But I think it's a philosophy, it's more than just the idea of like, let me explain to people to do this. You have to be passionate about something like this to make it happen and to believe in that whole concept. And so right now, for Ciba, is it like a membership-based approach, or, so let's say I want to join Ciba, what is that experience like? So I joined, I know you have on-demand doctor visits, you have at-home test kits, you have artificial intelligence, predictive medicine. What does that user experience feel like?
Innocent Clement:
This is great. So when we actually started Ciba today, when we started, we started with a B2B model where we go directly to consumers. The reason for that was to collect early data that allows us to validate and show the effectiveness of our intervention or our solution today, and then be able to go back to the big players today who are paying for healthcare. It has self-funded employer or the health plan that are paying for healthcare today because the two of them have something in common which is cost. Because if you look at chronic disease today, is one of the top cost driver for either employer or self-funded plan today, right? So they are always looking for a solution, a solution that can help to improve the clinical outcomes, and then they can also help to prevent a solution that can also help to really improve patient access. So as a patient, what we did was to build a solution that empowers patients, a solution that is truly patient-centric, that allows patients to come in and say, okay, I have Type Two diabetes today, and then they can go on our platform and say, okay, you know, you can register. So what we do with such patients that come in as a B2B, B2C, we provide them with what I call a super bill. They can take the super bill back to their insurance company and get reimbursed for it, right? So we can actually function as what I call in-network or out-of-network, it depends on how we structure the relationship. But, you know, when you look at, and the bigger picture, right, if you want to reach a bigger audience, obviously from a B2C, yes, you have patients coming in, but where you have the larger audience is suddenly when you begin to target these large health plans that are really struggling with the high cost of managing patients with chronic condition today. So we target them, we go have conversation with them, we talk about our model, what our approach is, and then what is the value proposition and then what's the return on investment, right? You know, when you look at it, we'll look at it and say, okay, how much does it cost you to manage a patient with type two diabetes today, and how much would it cost you to work with Ciba to help to identify those who are high risk and then help also really get to the root causes? And doing that, you're able to also maybe reverse the condition, right, when you look at the sort of intervention that you put in place. But the key here is access, and the second aspect of it is the awareness. So we make it so, it's a simple process. As a patient, first thing you come in, you register, you go through called a very comprehensive questionnaire, and this comprehensive questionnaire collects a lot of information, your medical record, your family history, your nutritional history, and all that information. And then, the next step is you connect with the health coach that will review all that comprehensive questionnaire that you've completed that will allow us to really get to know you better. And now after that visit, the next step is you now connect with the health coach that will help you to set up the devices because we have a tool kit that we provide to our patients. The reason why we do that is because we're virtual, you know, the patient is not in front of you every day. We want to stay in touch with this patient real time. We want to see what's going on with this patient, how we can be very proactive so that we can support this patient. So we have a tool kit that we'll put in a box that goes to the patient. This tool kit includes the ... scale that measures their BMI, their weight. We send them over call, blood pressure monitoring cuff that also measures their blood pressure. We send them Aura ring, the Aura ring tracks heart rate variability, resting heart rate, the sleep quality. In the case of patients with type two diabetes, we send them the Freestyle ... or the Dexcom. This allows us to be able to also track the continuous blood glucose real-time and see how we can proactively connect with this patient and be able to track the data trend real time using our remote patient monitoring capability and then the predictive analytic model. So the predictive analytic model takes into account three data points: the data coming from the medical records, data coming from the wearables, data coming from the advanced lab testing. And put that together into what we call the clinical decision support software that analyze that data and able to really provide treatment recommendation and also able to identify those at high risk. So after those processes, this data point is provided to the doctor in a structured way, which means it allows to improve efficiency, it allows for scalability, and it allows for proactiveness, right? So let's say, for instance, you have a patient today, and then there's a data trend coming in from all the three data bucket that I mentioned today and is trending in the direction that should be trending, right? The providers will see that because they get a notification that will alert them, and it's going to flag that specific data and say, you need to zero in on that patient data and see what's going on with that patient, and so that you can proactively connect with the patient and then see how you can better help them. I'll give you a very good story with one patient that we had. I always share this, this was an incredible story. We had a patient from one of the employers that's actually part of our program. The patient has the Aura ring. And then, from the data we're seeing from our remote patient monitoring capability, we saw that there was an issue with the heart rate variability on the data over a period of time. So we're kind of concerned as, okay, what's going on with this patient? And then we follow that for a few days, and it's been consistent. And so our health coach reached out to this patient and say, hey, we noticed that your heart rate variability data has been trending in the direction it should be trending, what's going on? What have you done differently? And the patient said, oh, I saw it too, myself, but I thought the device is malfunctioning because physically the patient was okay. There was nothing. He doesn't have any pain or anything at all, right? And then what we did there, we said, you know what, you need to go into the ER because we have a concern here, looking at where the data trend is showing here. And the patient, the good thing is the patient's wife was a nurse, and she said, hey, let's go to the ER. They went to the ER, immediately this patient was taken into the emergency room OR for procedure, right? Because there was something that we were able to see. But because we have the ability to identify this quickly before it becomes a problem, we're able to send this patient to where the patient will get the care to help the patient; to prevent, maybe it could have been a cardiovascular issue, right, that we wouldn't see. And because we saw that, we're able to really quickly, proactively identify that patient and send that patient in, and the patient had a surgery. So this is something that for me is so powerful every time I hear that, testimonials from patients, and then the benefits of what we're doing today and the impact, like you said. The impact, it's not just within our community, the impact it's going to be felt globally, right? Which is something for me. That's why I'm excited about this. And really, what Ciba also did very quickly was to really build what I call the multidisciplinary team, which means we have the doctors, we have the dietitians, we have the health coaches, we have the nurses, we have all the pharmacists, all working collaboratively. So what we did was to build a full spectrum of integrated care model that's actually addressing the fragmentation in the space that you have today, because there's a huge, huge issue of fragmentation, because if you look at the space today, a lot of the solutions today are point solution. The employer today are tired of aggregating multiple solutions to address just one patient. And what Ciba is doing there is really, really gives us an advantage, and why employers look at what is offering today is the ability to address multiple conditions, not just addressing the multiple conditions of interest, but our ability to identify it and prevent it from happening. So that gives us that really leverage to be able to really be a key player in the space today and the ability for us to communicate with the PCP. That's when talk about the full spectrum integrated care model that allow that patient doctor collaboration with doctors outside of Ciba. And for us within Ciba, everything is in-house, but we should be able to also communicate with those patients' PCP that are not part of Ciba. They ... to share real-time, decisions we're making while we're making the decision to carry them along, because that's one of the problems with the healthcare space today, that communication, right? I mean, people work in silos, right, and all of that. But what we try to build here is to encourage that communication gap, to bridge that, and communicate and share data information in real-time with a PCP or with a specialist. And our ability to be able to send this patient to if they need a special care, right, I mean, to see a specialist in the cardiologist or whatever, right, that we enable to manage internally, but we're able to provide them with the data so that they can see the trend, they can see their data. It allows them to make decisions quickly, it allows them to be efficient, and allow them to be able to manage a patient quickly because the data they see is in a structured way, and it gives them that ability to really zero in and see what they can do quickly.
Emmanuel Fombu:
Which is quite fascinating, what you're able to do here, right? Because I think what you are describing falls into your four pillars of advanced primary care program, which I see it nicely analyzed in your website about personalized care, or having this holistic approach, the remote patient monitoring, and the predictive analytics part. But what fascinates me, and please correct me if I'm wrong here, is if I have like the aura ring and a ... scale, right? Whatever you give to me as a member of Ciba Health, all the results that, all the data captured from my aura ring, from my ... scale, that automatically gets fed to my clinician, correct? So my clinician gets to see that. Is that correct?
Innocent Clement:
Absolutely, real-time; from the dashboard, real-time.
Emmanuel Fombu:
Which is like rocket science today, because right now, I have an Apple Watch, and I have like, you have all these different devices that people have. But guess what? People have the challenge that they go to your doctors, and they say, hey, I have an Apple Watch, or I have a ... scale, and your doctor doesn't ask you about what you measured, right? So there's a lot of data sets that are not connected to the whole holistic piece of care which you actually do here. So as a member of Ciba Health, you literally have all that information being connected to your clinician, and it's being monitored, and it's being made useful as opposed to you just collecting data on your own. Because I bet you right now there are many people even listening that have all these devices that they're using to collect data that is not tied into their primary care clinician.
Innocent Clement:
Absolutely. Because, again, as a physician myself, I saw some of the challenges, the gaps. That's the reason when we started Ciba, for us was like, we want to address that pain point of really sharing that data, right? I mean, because it's important because if you share that data, you know, real-time, they're able to use that data and make decisions quickly and be very efficient. So we build everything from ground zero. We didn't even like decided say, you know what, we want to integrate with third-party solution because sometimes when you do that, it prevents you from making certain changes that you want to make. For us, we built everything open API that can integrate into any EMR today, because if you do that, it allows you to be able to really proactively share that data, and then there's nothing that's going to prevent you from doing that. But if you decide to use a third-party solution, sometimes, yes, some of the third-party solution would allow you to be able to do the integration, but you're not in control. But once you build that in-house, it gives you the ability to manage it, right? You're in control. You decide what you want to do with integration, what sort of information you want to share. But the key here is if you share that data, the patient sees that data in a structured way, and it makes meaning to them. They understand and see the trends. What that does to the patient is it empowers them to make a decision, it allows them to be part of the process. And then, once you're able to do that, it drives engagement. And once you drive engagement, you get a desired clinical outcome you want to see. And then it comes back to the trust, it comes back to the relationship because patient that feels that they're in the driver's seat. You build a solution that is truly patient-centric, a solution that provider or doctors, the nurses can see that data real-time and be able to really use that data and really make a decision based on what they see today. And again, most importantly, that data will be in a structured way. It's not that data is all over the place. It aggregates the data, it provides them, and recommend, and highlight, and flag areas where they think is a concern so that they can zero in and look at that. And that will also make them very efficient. So it is important, you know, people think it's very simple. It's not that simple to do, but the point is it's not rocket science either, right? The key is, what's the mission? What are you looking to do? What the pain point you're looking to solve today, it's very important. Because if you look at the issue of fragmentation, if you're able to do that, suddenly you're solving big problem because now you're building, you know, a platform that is all-inclusive, that allow people to see information in real-time and so that they can make meaning out of it.
Emmanuel Fombu:
Which is quite interesting because I know you have the RPM ... piece. So basically, if I have, I'm a member of Ciba, and I'm traveling to Cameroon, Nigeria, Senegal, or Guinea-Bissau or ..., I just name it, so other places in Africa, are you going to visit a place, and I'm a member and have an Aura ring and something happens, and my heart rate jumps up or whatever it is, okay? Someone from reach out to me and contact me directly. Is that possible?
Innocent Clement:
Absolutely, real-time.
Emmanuel Fombu:
Isn't that incredible today? We could say that right now, the doctor, whatever practice you enter today, your doctor were actually following you and check you anywhere you are in the world because someone is watching out for you. Go ahead. Go ahead, Innocent.
Innocent Clement:
That's the beauty of technology, right? Because technology allows you to really, that's why I tell people technology will play a big role in healthcare today. But again, no matter what, you're not going to remove the human component from the healthcare. It's always going to be there. So the data, you're not just looking at one data point, right? You're looking at multiple data points, you're looking at trends over a few days. Because when you look at trends over a few days, it allows you to now see specifically what's going on, if it's, there's a consistency, and then you can be able to connect with the patient, right? You can either send the patient a chat, and the patient sees that on his mobile devices. And the patient themselves, they can actually see it because the patient have access to a dashboard where they can see their own progress, and it's going to send a notification. It's going to send like an alarm and say, hey, I think you need to check your blood glucose, or you need to look at your heart rate variability. Maybe you need to send that information to your primary care provider or to share that information with the primary care provider in the case that you're not in the US, right? But we will reach out to you and tell you that there's something here that we're seeing here that suddenly a little bit off, and we think you should pay attention to this. And if it's consistent over time, then you now need to go and see a specialist that will look at that data and be able to make a sense out of it and say, okay, let's evaluate further to ensure that we're not missing something here. But the key here is the access, the key is here is wherever you are, you should go to access healthcare. It shouldn't be that, Oh, you have to be in the US, you could be in Guinea-Bissau, you could be in Cameroon, you can be in Nigeria. You should see your data, you should see your information, and be able to really use that information to make a decision. And your provider should be able to communicate with you, right? It doesn't matter where you are, you should be able to send you information via email, by chat, and say, hey, take a look at that. But the algorithm itself will be able to send you a notification and notify you, an alarm and flag it, for you, so that once you look at this, it's not for us to freak you out. But again, for us to say, you know what, pay attention to what's going on here. And that's the key, that's the beauty of technology in healthcare today.
Emmanuel Fombu:
You know, there's nothing wrong with being freaked out. I mean, I think people should be freaked out because I'll tell you something, just three days ago, there's a friend I went to high school with in Cameroon, it was all-boys boarding school we went to, and I must say he spent a long time, but we do have a chat group at WhatsApp that we keep in touch with each other, and I saw a message come up that he had died. This is my classmate, I'm 43 years old now. He should be my same age, and he died from a stroke, and he actually died in Nigeria randomly for visiting. He has a young family in Cameroon. I've had many friends that I grew up with in high school, my classmates, age mates that have died from strokes, and is a very common thing within the community that we're talking about. And people just die like chicken and people just forget about it, and people like you and I lived and anyone else listening. And so I think every day there's something that could be prevented or basic technology things that could say, hey, there's an alert. Well, no one knew he has a brother in Germany. The brother did not know what was happening to him until he died from a stroke, right? There's no reason why a 43-year-old should be dying from stroke in the year 2023 just like that, without any kind of warning kind of sign, right? To pick these things up, so these things what I'm saying is real. It affects real people, and it's something that is happening everywhere. We all have different stresses, different comorbidities that affect us. Just because you look healthy doesn't mean you're healthy. And so having that opportunity for someone to check in on you, this is like have that third eye or something, observing ... create alert. I think it's something that should scare people to actually go do it. They should bite the orange and take that dare next step. I'll have to do this. With that being said, I really like the fact that the way you look at chronic disease is very different kind of approach where you have programs, for example, reversing diabetes as a thing. And if anyone that understands medicine or basic biology or physiology, you understand that these things are reversible. There are things that, right, if you catch it early on and you prevent like the organ damage kind of things, you can modify these things. But we have a system today, a major work in the drug industry, so it's not picking one side or the other, that I think, yes, if you are realistic, yes, you need your drug therapies to help manage your conditions. But there's certain things that you need to do to actually improve. So tell us about these programs, because the way you look at chronic is like you have to kind of approach, right? You're saying you can identify something, but there is hope to actually reverse this. You can do things to actually get back to being where you were before. So talk about that reversible kind of program because you're a scientist, you're not some guy coming from space talking about, you know, drinking different juices, right? You're actually.
Innocent Clement:
No, not at all. Not at all. Very, I mean, that you just like hit the nail and really, why Ciba is able to do, you know, when we talk about reverse and people think it's like how is that even possible? It is possible, right? Because when you look at chronic condition today, there are certainly drivers, there are certainly factors that actually led to that condition in the first place. So what we did is to build a protocol that allows us to really zero in on the root causes of this condition today, you know, and identify what are the drivers. So we have a custom lab panel that we test. So those custom lab panel allows us to look at it deeper, understand when we talk about also personalization, and allow us to be able to personalize intervention. Because if you look at our current standard of care today, it's a one-size sort of approach, right? Everybody gets the same treatment. But, you know, we mean, you know, that we all have unique biochemistry even from the same parent today. So what Ciba does really, that is helping us to do that, is with advanced lab we test for we look at inflammation markers, we look at stress factors, we look at sleep issues, we look at micronutrient deficiency, we look at exposure to environmental toxins, we look at lifestyle, and all of that, we look at nutrition. Because the current space today, what people do today is look at the lifestyle and then the behavioral component, ignoring that the lifestyle, the behavior actually triggers the biochemical component that could lead to inflammation. You know, when there's inflammation, the human body today, what that will do to you, right? I mean, obviously, the huge impact. If there's a micronutrient deficiency, most importantly, vitamin D today, we know the importance of vitamin D in your insulin functioning and then as well as your mitochondria. So we want to be able to optimize this. So when we see we evaluate that, we look at this, we look at where the gaps are. In the case of type two diabetes, today, we do what we call insulin receptor desensitization. So we want to clear out all the inflammation, we want to be able to see that, okay, there are no any issues with micronutrient like vitamin D deficiency there. If there is, we want to be able to optimize it. We want to look and see, okay, is there any exposure to environmental toxins that are actually affecting the way your insulin levels should function and all of that? And then we'll look at nutrition, right? So what is it that you're eating today that's actually causing more problems? We don't want to put patients in what I call keto diet or put patient on what I call say, you know, one side of it say, you know what, do not eat this, do not eat that. It's not going to work. Yes, in the short term, put the patient in ketosis or keto diet suddenly will work in the short term. In the long term, it could lead to insulin resistance. It could also lead to inflammation as well, right? So what we did is to really look at it from what I call metabolic flexibility. So metabolic flexibility is the ability of the human body to break down carbs and use it as fuel efficiently. For you to do that, you have to clear out all those inflammation issues that you have in the human body today that you're not seeing. You have to look at the gut microbiome, and the issue is, with the gut microbiome, you want to look at it and then be able to really fix all those. Once you fix it, you would see that other comorbidity that is associated with the condition ... treatment, they would be improving. So you're not just saying, oh, this patient has type two diabetes, okay, let's put a patient on insulin or metformin or whatever it is, right? Yes, it doesn't work, but sometimes it's necessary. But if you go to the root causes and figure out what are those drivers, what's causing the problem, and fix it, then you realize that you don't even have to put this patient on some of those medication. Yes, sometimes the patient needs to be on medication for sure. But is it necessary for them to be on 10, 20 medication? Sometimes.
Emmanuel Fombu:
That's the argument that I want to make. In a sense, we're going to medical school, doctors are not taught to look at these things. We are taught that as a disease, and so the first thing you go after medications, right? And so we even get terrified ourselves to have this conversation, and we say, oh, yeah, but that's the medication. That's the medication, right? Because then it becomes, oh, I'm crazy. Are you talking crazy science, right? But what is wrong with the idea of like, the new doctors of the future? And I believe this, wholeheartedly, that doctors, nurses, or clinicians in the future should be thought about these things. It's a lifestyle modification pieces, right? Things that you could go to address the root cause of what actually led to that issue. It could be like stress, for example. We all know stress. You have a metabolic syndrome. You have cortisol levels that go in, right, that break sugar levels. That is the same as like the idea of sugar in our bodies and how these things would impact is being deposited, right? Like have high cortisol levels, like Cushing's disease and all these things that, how it works. These are basic things that your body functions in those ways on stress conditions, we know what happens; getting like fat deposited in your abdomen or like humpback, all these kind of things, so we know what happens. And so, is there a way to reverse that element with the long run? And I think we actually cut down on costs in the long run, right? And so if you need medicine, you do. But it's not the only solution, no, it's not. And we know that because if we know basic science, the way those drugs work with hypertension, it's the same way as doing yoga or meditating or doing all the things that you do, like calm your body down. And so this is more holistic, which is why I think when we discuss digital health, people take it into technology where, technology is not about technology, it's about having so much, it's making it scalable. That's basically ..., right? I they understand it.
Innocent Clement:
Yeah, that's 100%, you are right on, spot-on on this, right? Because like you said, a lot of times that's why when we bring doctors on board, we train them, right? You know, we have built a protocol that we want to train them on why we're doing what we're doing today and how we're looking at it. It's 100% science, there's no magic behind it, because like you said, you're able to look at your cortisol level, you're able to look at your inflammation, you're able to look at sleep. We know the importance of sleep. If the patient is not sleeping well at night, you know, what are you going to do if you don't fix the sleep issue? That problem is still going to be there. So that's why we want to identify some of the drivers, what's causing the problems, and then begin to fix it. And as you're fixing it, you can see remarkable improvement already in that patient, right? Most of our patients that go through our program today, a lot of them, 98% of them, have able to reverse their condition, and 85% of them have able to get off the medication that they are on today, right? So because this medication itself causes problems. But again, it also help, but it's a quick fix. But why don't we begin to look at and say, okay, what's the long term and how to fix this condition? And a lot of times, some of the patients themselves don't really help because they want a solution to fix it quickly, but the challenge is for you to educate the patient and create awareness. But if you look at the current healthcare model today, because it's very transactional, it does not allow for that sort of conversation. Patients sometimes want to hear someone listening to them and then when they talk. But today, patients walk into see a primary care provider today, within ten minutes, this patient is out, and the patient feels like, okay, it's just about, oh, go take this medication, go do this. But when you actually listen to this patient, you begin to see you hear certain things, and then you be able to see how you can better support this patient. That's why I always talk about empowering. You have to empower patient, provide them with the tools that they need to be aware, and be able to see how they can better support themselves. They have to be part of whatever you're doing today. That's why I call it patient centricity, because whatever you build is not just about a doctor making decisions, but as you make a decision, you carry the patient along, and you want to ensure that the patient understand why you're making the decisions and then give the patient the tools that the patient will need to be able to really be able to empower him or herself to be part of whatever model you're building for the healthcare. If you don't do that, no matter what you do, you might not achieve the desired outcome, so that's why it's important to carry them along. It's important to provide them with tools that they can see information, they can see data themselves. When they see it, let's say a patient sees, oh, if I eat this food today, I see a spike in my ... blood glucose. That, on itself, is something that modifies, that changes your mindset, how you look at things like, oh, okay, let me do this in a minimal way, right? Let me probably minimize the quantity of this food that I put in today. In our case, the patient have the continuous blood glucose, right, to check and see what's going on. And we're also asking the patient to take a picture of what they eat, to upload that into the portal so that it's a timestamp, it correlates with when we see a spike. So now we're going to say, okay, the patient ate a bowl of rice or ate some other food, and they will begin to see a spike at this time. So we're now beginning to zero in and say, okay, is it this food that is causing the problems, or is there something that we're missing here? Is it the stress or is it the sleep issue? And then we begin to look at all this information together and say, okay, maybe we need to evaluate further. And then that's why we do this advanced lab testing so that we can really zero in specifically and see what are the indicators of stress markers that we can see in the body there. Is there any deficiency from the macronutrient level? Is there any exposure to environmental toxins? That's all the chemicals that we are exposed to today. It does a lot of damage to our human body today. So we're going to look at everything. It's called a whole-body 360-degree approach, right? Not just looking at it, for just a headache, patient comes in with a headache, you give the patient Tylenol, the patient goes home, the headache is still there. But for us, we want to know why the headache is there, what actually causes the headache in the first place. Let's fix it. As you're fixing it, you're fixing all the problems.
Emmanuel Fombu:
I'm happy you brought that up because that's one of the things about rare disease in general, where you have people having different symptoms and different body parts, and it takes about 3 to 5 years before everyone kind of gets together. And I always tell people, even, especially any specialist doctor went to regular medical school, so they have the basic idea to understand primary care medicine. And so the idea that specialists somehow forget primary care medicine to ask about other symptoms or other organs in the body just to understand the patient in a holistic manner, that's something that's not existing today. And I'll give you a specific example that actually becomes personal to me, and that's why this podcast will be the longest version of any podcast I've done. I want this to flow as a conversation that people learn from. My grandmother had diabetes, she had hypertension, she had heart failure, and when she died, I went behind her couch, and I moved it, and I found all her medicines underneath her couch because she knew that when she took a diuretic, she went out, for example, she had, she would pee, but she didn't know which one did what, right? She didn't know what the medicines did, so she decided, well, if I need to feel better, I'm not going to take this medicine. So she just threw them away and not take them because she was not educated. I believe she was educated, and she could see that when she eats this, and you could actually incorporate, bring the patient into your own data, make it actionable to understand why you're collecting data. It's not the mysterious thing somewhere, but this is something actionable, and they could see in real-time what happens when they drink Diet Coke or they eat the chicken, or whatever it is they do, like in real-time, which I think is what you provide to them. So right now, how does someone join Ciba, ...?
Innocent Clement:
So there are two ways: you can go directly to the website, you can sign up and the other aspect of it, you can either sign up through your employer or through a health plan that you're a part of, that you have we have relationship with. And then, once you go through that, it's easy; you're provided with a code, and you can sign up, but if you're coming as an individual, you know, you can sign up directly on the website, and then you get connected with the health coach to ensure that, you know, the information you provided is actually correct. And then the care advisor will connect with you, walk you through our processes and tell you what we're doing and how we're doing, how we're different and all of that, and how we're going to support you. And then the other aspect of it is if you come to an employer, the employer suddenly will sign a contract a year or two years of contract with this employer to provide seamless approach to managing patients with chronic condition or preventing it; they provide you with a code that you can use to sign up. And then there's also going to be a webinar where our chief medical officer will come and talk about our approach and then answer questions from either the employer or members of a ... today. So there are three ways, either you come directly, or you go through your employer, or through a health plan.
Emmanuel Fombu:
And what are the fees, like if I want to join today, if I'm listening and I go, I believe in this philosophy, I want to join, because I know you can have a lot of cost. Please, you have an FSA piece, I'm sure you could use that for payments, right? So what does that cost look like out of pocket?
Innocent Clement:
So it's $154 for someone as an individual who's coming in directly, you pay $150 every month. That can be covered using your FSA card or your HSA card. And then the other fees, you know, the doctor's visit, the labs are also covered by your insurance. And sometimes, if you have a very good insurance, then there's no any out-of-pocket, right? But when you come to the employer, it's zero out-of-pocket because the employer covers everything for you. So the patient does not pay anything at all. If you consider health plan today, too, as well, if you work with them as an in-network. So that means you as a patient, you don't pay nothing. But if it's an adult network, obviously, we provide you with the, what I call the super bill that you can take back to your employer or to either your insurance company that can reimburse you. But most importantly, we're able to function as an in-network provider or out-of-network provider. And then, if you have a very good insurance, then you're not required to pay any out of pocket. But there's $150, which is an administrative fee that you pay, right? That also include some of the devices, because some of those devices are not covered by insurance. So we want to ensure that that's covered because the reason why we provide those devices is not just we want to provide devices, because it integrates into our portal that we're able to help you proactively track and see how we can proactively connect with our patients and all of that. So it's really with the employers, no fee, zero out-of-pocket. If you come in as an individual, yes, it's $150 that you pay a month, and that goes towards either the cost that is not covered by your insurance like the lab testing that we do, and then also the devices that we provide, and then, as well as the engagement there. Well, some of the cost is covered by your insurance company, yeah, that's about it.
Emmanuel Fombu:
Ladies and gentlemen, if you are listening, I think $150, even if you pay out of pocket, it's way cheaper than going to the hospital or getting sick, right? I think what you get here is this holistic kind of care. I don't want the price to be something that scares people away. As a matter of fact, you could pay $150, probably have less money left to spend on junk food, so it's probably a good thing. You can pay, right, to get rid of that piece, commit to your health. You have to invest in yourself, right Innocent?
Innocent Clement:
Absolutely. Health is wealth. So, I mean, if you're able to proactively prevent it, then you're also on track to, which means the future cost avoidance is no longer going to be there, which is something that is very important people take for granted. But you can imagine once you have a chronic condition of interest that you have to go to the hospital, you end up paying way more. So the key here is, do you want to continue to pay more, or you want to prevent it from happening, or you want to identify what's the cost of the problems and be able to reverse it, and then get the tools that can help you to continue to be your own architect of your own healthcare journey, to be part of the process? I mean, if there's something that you think is what you want, I mean what you feel healthcare should be today, suddenly Ciba is where you want to be. And then we're excited, and we're looking forward to working with health plans employer that are self-funded and individuals who are really interested in really the whole body 360-degree approach in terms of healthcare today. So thank you so much, Dr. Fombu, for this exciting conversation, and I look forward to more conversation.
Emmanuel Fombu:
And as we wrap up, the final piece here on my side, I am going to join Ciba. I like the idea of piece of this. I would like to share my progress with the listening community. I think it's brilliant. I think everyone should have something like this, and I'm very happy and proud that you're working on this, and I would love to have you back on the show again. And once again, keep pushing, and we are behind and support you. And so we will have your contact information and the website for Ciba Health, like I said, Ciba Health, C I B A Health.com; go up there, sign up. I would love to have you again on the show to discuss how things are going. Thank you.
Innocent Clement:
Excellent, excellent. Thank you so much. I'm excited and really thank you for all you do. I'm really, really, like you said, I've been following your journey, and all you do with the healthcare space today is really, really exciting. So keep doing what you're doing, and then really, we're rooting for you. So thanks again for building the community, providing us a platform to share what we're doing. You know, we're excited about what we're doing here today, and we'll continue to engage.
Emmanuel Fombu:
Let's do it. Thank you.
Innocent Clement:
Thanks, Manny.
Emmanuel Fombu:
Thank you for listening to Bite the Orange. If you want to change healthcare with us, please contact us at info@EmmanuelFombu.com or you can visit us at EmmanuelFombu.com or BiteTheOrange.com. If you liked this episode and want more information about us, you can also visit us at EmmanuelFombu.com.
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Innocent Clement:
Innocent is a trained physician, innovator, and entrepreneur, the CEO and Founder of Ciba Health, a digital therapeutic, chronic disease reversal, and virtual care company. Innocent Clement was the former CEO and Co-Founder of Kaia Health Inc., a digital therapeutic company. He led the Kaia Health initiatives here in the US, including partnerships, clinical trials, regulatory submissions, and expansion across North America.
He is responsible for developing the business strategy for Ciba Health Inc., including establishing policies, goals, and mission statements. Innocent also closely monitors the company's products, and services and makes recommendations to help increase sales and reduce expenses. He is involved with the daily routines of Ciba Health Inc., including meetings with potential investors, vendors, and product development.
Things You’ll Learn:
Patient engagement, trust, and stronger patient-doctor relationships are fostered by empowering patients with knowledge and involving them in their healthcare journey.
Open APIs and integration with EMRs transform raw health data into actionable insights, creating a harmonious blend of technology and human oversight for more effective patient monitoring.
Ciba Health prioritizes patient education, equipping individuals with tools to monitor their health progress and involve them in decision-making, promoting a sense of control.
There are various pathways for individuals to engage with Ciba Health, including direct sign-up, partnerships with employers, and affiliations with health plans.
Ciba Health's approach reflects a transformative shift in healthcare philosophy, embracing technology and human interaction to redefine chronic condition management and prevention, acknowledging the multifaceted nature of health.