0:00:00 - David Williams
Today's guest holds 21 patents and has quickly built a global cloud-first, mobile-first technology company to address hospitals' most demanding IT challenges and enhance patient satisfaction. How has he done it? Hi everyone, I'm David Williams, president of Strategy Consulting Firm Health Business Group and host of the Health Biz Podcast, a weekly show where I interview top healthcare leaders about their lives and careers. My guest today is BK Nayak, founder and CEO of Spikewell, which provides innovative software solutions to hospitals. If you like this show, and I'm sure you do, please subscribe and leave a review. Bk, welcome to the Health of this Podcast.
0:00:49 - BK Nayak
Thank you, David, for having me. Thank you.
0:00:53 - David Williams
I want to hear all about what you're doing for hospitals now, but I want to start with your childhood and how you got here. What was your childhood like? Are there any childhood influences that have stuck with you throughout your career?
0:01:06 - BK Nayak
What was your childhood like? Are there any childhood influences that have stuck with you throughout your career? Yeah, very much. You know, I grew up in India and I grew up in a small town and which is very conservative, and one of the biggest challenge just like any other kid, I used to have a lot of curiosity and one of the biggest challenge in a conservative society where I grew up is you can't ask the question to your teachers.
That's like forbidden. You know you don't question the authority because teachers are not like authority and which was the biggest problem for me because it is. So one of the great influence for me has been my parents. So one of the great influence for me has been my parents, especially my father, who always advocated a simple thing. He said never let your curiosity die, keep it alive.
0:01:53 - David Williams
Yeah.
0:01:54 - BK Nayak
You may not have your answers, you may not get your answers, all these things, but keep it alive, keep your curiosity alive and if you do that somehow, if you keep it alive, it will magically unravel and you will find your answer. And the key to your success is maintaining that curiosity throughout your life and that's what I have done. So my father has been my big influence as I was growing up. Of course, some teachers down the road I found who have been saving me.
0:02:27 - David Williams
You know, it's very interesting to hear about that. So I have a couple of follow-up questions. First of all, how small is a small village in India?
0:02:36 - BK Nayak
It's actually a small town. It's not a village, but a small town. Population would be around half a million.
0:02:45 - David Williams
Yeah, okay, that's what I thought. So here a village could be like 25 people. But okay, that was just checking. And then you know it's very interesting this point about curiosity, because what I'm also reading behind you know, your parents' advice is that curiosity can be stifled in an environment like that, and many people with a lot of intelligence and start with the childish curiosity. They have the intelligence, but they may lose the curiosity.
0:03:11 - BK Nayak
After some point. Yeah, yep, that was one of the hardest thing. And finding the right teacher. I think I first found a good teacher at class seventh. Until then I was a really poor student, I was not doing well and that sparked. And in college I had one physics professor. That was pretty transformative for me and growing up, a few people I looked at as an influencer, as a scientist like Richard Feynman was always my hero, physicist and a neuroscientist, dr Wilder Penfield, who was a neuroscientist. He is kind of one of the persons I always looked at like a hero. So there are people who I read later on and stuff like that.
0:04:08 - David Williams
Good. So you were at an IIT in India and then I saw you were at University of Virginia and then the Sloan School at MIT. So what was that educational path like for you?
0:04:21 - BK Nayak
So in the beginning, actually in India, I wanted to be a theoretical physicist. I studied physics, yeah, but then, after some India, I wanted to be a theoretical physicist.
0:04:26 - David Williams
I studied physics.
0:04:27 - BK Nayak
Yeah, but then after some time I realized I'm not good for theoretical physics. I more want to do applications.
0:04:33 - David Williams
Yeah.
0:04:35 - BK Nayak
So that's where I went to IIT and initially the goal was to do a higher study and become a professor. And the career path is, you know, take to a PhD program and get into a good school in the US and get a PhD and become a professor. But while I was at the University of Virginia doing my PhD I had two or three patents actually that time while I was a student doing some work so that sparked a different thing. That sparked, like you know, I can bring innovation and it can create business. So that time I worked with some of my one of my innovation sort of promising and the university filed for those patents and they connected me with the Darden Business School there and they connected me with a dad in business school there and I started a company with a National Institute of Health grant for bioimplant. So I was in electrical engineering doing something but that created something in the bio area. So that is where I got the first spark of innovation and business and those kind of things.
And then I decided, you know, maybe that is the route to go, and that was pretty exciting. Later on, what happened? That business did not take that further because I was still a student, I didn't have my green card at that time, right, and a lot of difficulty. And the professor also, with whom I was working in the medical school. He moved to another school and things started not going well. So eventually I got my green card, but by that time that business didn't go. I took a job with Corning Incorporated and came there as a scientist and did quite a bit of innovation. So the thing I wanted to do as independently. But the Corning Pro group handed me that opportunity. There was an R&D facility and I brought quite a bit of innovation there. So that's where a lot of patents also came.
0:06:35 - David Williams
Got it Now I saw. You know we've been arranging this podcast for maybe a few weeks getting it ready and you know, as we're looking at your bio, everything looked good as I was double-checking it, except we needed to increase the count of patents because a couple more had been granted, so you've got over 20. Say a little bit about your patent portfolio. Is it all in one given area or what's the nature of your inventions?
0:06:59 - BK Nayak
So a lot of I have been in the telecommunication area optical fiber, cables, connectors, Some of my patents. That has become a big business, actually over billion dollars per year type revenue. It has transformed some of the industries like optical connectivity solutions and stuff like that. I have also filed some patents in the software field which are in the process. Actually they have not been granted after moving into the software area.
0:07:39 - David Williams
So yeah, and so on, the ones that you know. You mentioned generating, you know, tons of money there. Did you have someone helpful to be able to help you with your licensing so that you're getting some slice of that, or how does that work?
0:07:53 - BK Nayak
Well, when you're at the corporations you know that's not your company, so company holds. You get bonuses and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah.
0:08:02 - David Williams
You get at least the bragging rights, at least you get to talk about it on the Health Biz podcast. So that's enough of a reward, okay, good. So let's talk about Spikewell and I actually I have a question that's unrelated to what it does, really, which is what I like the name, what is the meaning of that name? I'll tell you what it calls to mind for me Spike ball, which is a game that I see my kids play, and then, of course, like the spike protein you know on the COVID virus. So what is Spikewell?
0:08:32 - BK Nayak
You know this is very interesting. So initially this name was created for doing the stock trading. That was the initial idea. So you know my brother, who is also from IIT back in India. He was creating, writing some AI models and to trade the stock trading. So when the stock price goes up, automatically the system will sell when it is spiking.
0:09:02 - David Williams
Got it.
0:09:03 - BK Nayak
So the name I reserved for doing that, actually long back, quite some time back, yeah, that didn't take off. That didn't take off and the domain was still there. And when David and I came to Sloan and when I decided to start this thing, so that name was there and I spoke to some of my friends I said, what did the name? This name sounds very cool, it's a very good name and, and, but you are going into healthcare, but it still has a wellness WN at the end. And you know, interestingly, the symbol. If you look at this thing, it's like a dollar sign with a W, yes, w. So what it represents right now, the dollar sign is kind of a representation of wealth.
0:09:52 - David Williams
Right.
0:09:53 - BK Nayak
And W is a representation of wellness, and that wellness is spiking, as you can see. It is the wellness over wealth. That's the symbol, it's the trump of wellness over wealth. Okay, so that's the symbol it represents.
0:10:08 - David Williams
That's good Well it's a very I guess in software they call it it's very extensible, right? Yeah, there's something completely different. You're able to use it so that's good. All right, so with the company. Now, obviously you know you're working in a lot of different fields from. You know academia, and then at Corning and so on. What was the unmet need that brought you into working with hospitals?
0:10:30 - BK Nayak
Yeah, that's a thank you, David. This is a really good question. So when I came to Sloan, this company actually spike well started. Really spike well started when I was in the first semester in my MBA program at Sloan. So initially, when I came to MIT, that is where I really I knew the power of AI and ML and all these things. But I never got a firsthand exposure that how big things are At MIT. I got that glimpse of it and I said you know, this is what I need to be doing.
Actually, and one of my, one of my classmates, who became my mentor, he became my advisor and supporter, dr Steve Garsky. He was in my class and he said you know, there is a huge opportunity, this new technology like artificial intelligence and machine learning in healthcare and especially in hospital space, and initial opportunity came from him and I jumped in and that is where. That is where it got into, got into the hospital space. And more we explore the hospital space, we saw there is a huge, huge opportunity. In united states alone there are thousands of hospitals I think around six thousand or hospitals and more and more it is going to be part of the healthcare. It is going to be part of this thing and we saw a massive opportunity, and that's where things started.
0:12:06 - David Williams
Got it. You know I've been working with healthcare and hospitals for a long time and before you had the High Tech Act and the Affordable Care Act. They're always pointing to hospitals that they didn't really spend very much on IT. They were very far behind, and now they've had 15 now years or so where they've been provided incentives to do IT, and yet I don't think of hospitals as being really leading edge on IT. So I understand there's a big opportunity, but where do you fit into the picture and how do they know to hire you and how do you help them?
0:12:45 - BK Nayak
So, yeah, this is a really, really good question. So, the way Spikewell comes, if you look at a hospital any big hospital, large hospitals they have so many IT vendors. They have their IT team. It's typically a small IT team but they will have a lot of vendors providing different kinds of software solutions. Of course they all are with large EHR systems they run on and on top of that there are a lot of these things. That becomes a burden to them because of cost goes up, integration becomes difficult later on and it becomes a lot of overhead. You know, one of the things is, with this EHR system and all the software they develop for hospitals, thinking what the hospital might need by a developer who may or may not have the direct experience of how hospitals work. And also, david, another thing every hospital is somehow different, even though they may be using the same EHR system to hospitals, but the way they configure them and operate them are very different. The workflows and all are different. That's where the problem comes. You cannot create a one-size-fit-all for the hospital domain. Now the question is you cannot also keep on customizing every hospital differently. That is also a lot of software development. That is where this advanced technology like artificial intelligence and machine learning, becomes most important. Intelligence and machine learning becomes most important. Instead of creating a software, you have to adapt to it.
Why can't we develop this system in such a way? Software will adapt to our workflow. That is the question we wanted to ask. So you have your existing system. Can we make it such that it will adapt up to my workflow? That is where artificial intelligence comes actually.
So I can give an example. So when, uh, so when? When? When kovid happened, one of the largest children's hospital in the country, they had this problem. So people, they were asked to stay home. Right, most of the non-essential employees have to stay home, so almost 5,000, that hospital is around 10,000 employees, so 5,000, almost 5,000 employees stay home. Imagine that would create the burden on the IT support. I have problem. I cannot log in because I'm now out of internet, all kinds of thing I cannot password, and so the hospital hired like tens of temporary employees to answer the calls and all these things still, day in and day out. It will go, people will write email, call nobody will answer, and stuff like that.
So we came up with a solution called spike supportai. It's artificial intelligence solution. Basically, you don't have to call um. There is a chatbot. You put it and it will tell what needs to be done. You don't have to, even if you write an email. It, with the system, will read the email, create the ticket, assign to the right vertical, reply to the person. That when somebody is responding to you, and not only that, it will erase the label. Understanding the, the tone of your voice, you are writing the email, whether it should be priority five or priority four, you know, understanding the sentiment and all done within seconds. So, instead of somebody will reply to my email after two days, I at least know my ticket is created, somebody is calling me on this time and all is set on the fly.
0:16:27 - David Williams
Sounds good. So are these. You know you mentioned there's no one size fits all and that there's different workflows and so on. What you're describing is it a solution for a given hospital or is it something that's adaptable and uses machine learning to understand its own environment and therefore to be able to connect?
0:16:45 - BK Nayak
Yeah, it can be. Go to hospital to hospital, different hospital, as long as they're you know, this hospital particularly, I'm talking they have an eye track system. Different hospitals have different way of collecting those data. As long as those data are available, this thing can be. And when we first implemented this, david, it was only 80% accurate. It was not 100% accurate, 80% accurate. But that itself was a huge help, because 80% of the work is automated. Yeah, and within like three, four months it went to like 94% accurate. Now it is running like 98% accurate. Once in a while, something happens, we tweak it and then that's it. The whole entire team of effort can be done in no time. So this is just one of the examples I'm giving how AI can play the role.
0:17:34 - David Williams
Okay, now one of the things I see about your company. It says you're cloud first and mobile first. And what does that mean? I guess, first of all, which of the firsts is first, but I guess it's cloud as opposed to on-prem and mobile as opposed to desktop. But cloud first, mobile first. What does that mean and why is that an advantage? I think.
0:17:55 - BK Nayak
David, I should have said it is mobile first, cloud first and AI first. Okay, so mobile first, cloud first. So one of the things that has happened with this iOS and Android revolution people have more moved to the mobile, there is no question about it. So mobile is the platform, with Apple Store and Play Store and all these apps and everything it has innovated. So nowadays, today, you have to be mobile-based software company. That's the second thing, is a cloud. So the whole if the biggest innovation in computer field has ever happened, that is the cloud biggest thing. All this AI we are talking today is only enabled because of the cloud. Look at Microsoft 365. They came up all these Azure platform or Google Cloud or Amazon AWS everything moving to the cloud. So you have to have cloud, not only just for your security, not only just for your infrastructure, but also to enable the future technology like AI, ml and all these things. So that's the reason we are mobile first, cloud first and AI first. That's what I'm adding now.
0:19:13 - David Williams
Sounds good. Well, you're getting a little bit of an improvement, not just a chance to brag about the patents, but also we got another third thing put on, that you're also first in Now BK. One of the things that I saw on your LinkedIn profile when it lists under specialties and sometimes people put their technical specialties and so on and you have some of those, but one specialty that I noticed was customer obsession, and you can explain that to me. To me it sounds like I hope you're not stalking your customers. So what does the customer obsession mean?
0:19:49 - BK Nayak
Customer obsession means putting ourselves exactly in their shoes and making sure what they want to achieve. We make sure we achieve that. So the Spikewell comes. A lot of people might think that, oh, maybe it is a consulting software company. We are not. We come as a partner, technology partner, with a hospital and we provide end-to-end software solution with innovation. We look at the, we understand how hospitals work, their workflow and how it works and we see that what technology innovation can bring. There are consulting company. You can go and, oh, I have certain things to be developed to develop it. It is not. Spike well comes and innovates along with the, the, the hospital. So we are, we become like their technology partner and that's how. So our obsession is ensuring that their success is our success. We, because it is like we, it is our like. That's the obsession part. So it's not that I do this development and I run away. I want to make sure they succeed because it is like my hospital now.
0:20:56 - David Williams
Got it. Yeah, let's talk a little bit about AI and AI in healthcare. So people had heard generally about AI for a while. Then, about a little over a year ago, chat GPT became generally available. Everyone was looking at that. What can it do in healthcare? Give me a sense of where AI stands in healthcare right now and kind of what the potential is compared with what we're actually seeing.
0:21:23 - BK Nayak
So, david, it's a great question AI definitely at its very early stage, but I can see in the next five years it's going to be the main thing in healthcare. There are a few things in healthcare going on. One is it is not just the cost which is rising for the hospitals everywhere. They are actually one of the most cost affected organizations right now. Hospitals everywhere, the IT and the technology cost is also going up, along with everything else. That is just one part of thing. But second thing is actually customer satisfaction, better care outcome and all these things can be leveraged through technology.
So if you look at like a finance industry, it's now banks are like software companies. Hospitals is very hard. It is a different, because care giving, the care delivery process, is extremely complicated. The reason technology has not disrupted that industry like it has done to the finance industry, for instance, is because, as I said before, when you create a technology thinking what a doctor might be thinking, what a nurse might be thinking, what the way they are doing and you create a structural system that becomes massive and you have to learn to adopt. Today, if you go to hospitals and talk to doctors, one of the things they say is that we don't like these technologies. They literally hate it.
There is a term called clinician burnout and it is because of the software they have to deal with. So the main transformation will happen when software will adapt to the workflow I am, I am a clinician, I'm a doctor, I am a nurse or I'm a patient. I am not going to learn the software. Learn to this, software will adapt to me. So where the key things is how the data is created. So today, data is created in a very static way, doesn't matter what. The ehr system, david, we have the. How many columns? You know thousands of columns now on this ehr system because they are thinking through all possibilities but that's not how it is going to imagine. A workflow can be adopted, system can adopt to it. So how that will happen if we create a one intelligence layer, that ai layer, that, because that sandwiches between your, let's say, your database system or wherever, and then where that data is collected, it can collect data in a way which is understandable, intelligent, intelligent.
And that is where the transformation will happen, so that you are not forcing to learn the software. Software is adapting to you. So, just like the example I gave, you don't have to now call. The software will understand what is your context, what is your context? What is it not only your context, david? What is your context? What is your context? What is it Not only your context, david. What is your even intent? Yeah, this is what I'm wanting to do. The software will readjust to it. So that is the kind of thing is going to happen, and it will not only affect the operation of the hospital, it will also affect the decision support in the clinical decision support. It will also automate the financial and billing part. You know, david, I'm sure you are in the healthcare space, hospitals and the insurance companies, the consolidation process. They say why you did this? And the insurance will say and the hospital will say this is why we did this. That height itself costs the taxpayer hundreds of billions of dollars.
0:25:16 - David Williams
Got it All right Well, so there's a plenty of a big market there to be able to go after, and it sounds like you're making a very good start. I want to ask you a final question, which is if you've had a chance to read any good books lately, anything that you might recommend. I see several hundred books on your bookshelf behind you, so I'm guessing you've read some, or at least you collect them.
0:25:36 - BK Nayak
So, david, you know I used to read a lot. After becoming a full-time entrepreneur it's extremely hard to find time, but lately I'm reading Good to Great by Jim Collins, and that book is. I found it pretty interesting why certain companies survive and a lot of companies over the period go away. Good is not enough, you have to be great. And it has certain systematic approach to it like focusing on right leadership, people being consistent, start slow and consistently deliver and move. So it's a pretty good book I found.
0:26:21 - David Williams
Good. That's a good recommendation. That's a classic. Well, bk Nayak, founder and CEO of Spikewell. Thank you so much for joining me today on the Health Biz Podcast.
0:26:31 - BK Nayak
Thank you, david, for having me, and it is a great pleasure talking to you.
0:26:36 - David Williams
You've been listening to the Health Biz Podcast with me, David Williams, president of Health Business Group. I conduct in-depth interviews with leaders in healthcare, business and policy. If you like what you hear, go ahead and subscribe on your favorite service. While you're at it, go ahead and subscribe on your second and third favorite services as well. There's more good stuff to come and you won't want to miss an episode. If your organization is seeking strategy consulting services in healthcare, check out our website, healthbusinessgroup.com.