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Speaker 1 (00:06): Welcome to Reinventing the Future by HP Tech Ventures. I'm your host, Bonnie Day. In this podcast, we go behind the scenes with startup founders and entrepreneurs who are defining tomorrow's world and experiences. We are talking innovation, their groundbreaking ideas, their big picture strategies, and how they continually adapt to our ever-changing world. Their stories will inspire you to dream big, tap into your inner innovator and create the future you imagine. In today's podcast, we venture into the future of cancer treatments with Alex Dunphy, co-founder and c e O of Adaptive, an HP tech ventures portfolio company. Adaptive is harnessing the power of three D printing to create a new standard for personalized care in radiation therapy. Let's get started. Hey Alex, it's so nice to see you. Thank you so much for joining us. Speaker 2 (01:06): Thanks for having me. Bonnie, Speaker 1 (01:08): I would like for you to introduce yourself. Tell us about your company. Speaker 2 (01:12): So my name is Alex Dunphy. I am the c e o and co-founder here at Adaptive Medical Technologies in Halifax, Nova Scotia. We provide software solutions that use three D printing to create medical devices for cancer treatment that patients require all over the world. For a long time, the last mile of radiation therapy has been pretty antiquated. You have very sophisticated technology to treat. Cancer requires big iron linear accelerators that create various types of radiation beams to treat tumors and it's very effective. However, the last mile, when a patient comes in and they're getting ready for setup to receive their radiation, really what happens is sometimes it falls apart there you have mold rooms much like you'd experienced as a kid in elementary school making paper mache. So what adaptive does is we've sort of digitized that entire thing, the last mile really, and are now democratizing that to kind of bring it to the mass market. And we've done that with our awesome partner, Hewlett Packard, who does a lot of all of our three D printing for this new program we launched called Adaptive on Demand. Speaker 1 (02:35): Yeah, it seems like a pretty intuitive match. Speaker 2 (02:39): Yeah, they're a great company to work with. They much like us, they're a nimble Fortune 50 I guess, company Speaker 1 (02:49): And a lot of printing. Speaker 2 (02:51): Yes. Speaker 1 (02:53): Well, that's fantastic. So tell me how it works. If let's say, I am at a cancer center and I want to create a product that's going to help a patient, Speaker 2 (03:04): So the patient wouldn't really know much in the end. Generally our customers would be the cancer center itself, so the people who are delivering the treatment for the patient. So they take our software, they install it in their cancer center, they know the product and the parts that they need, these devices, they know what they are. We've sort of automated that whole process for them in our software. They simply open up our software. They take existing scan data, so generally CT scan data, they would go into our software, they'd make this part, the digital part that they would try to create in the mold room that's very challenging and they send it to us seamlessly. We send it back to them in three days. Much like you would get something from Amazon on the patient side, the difference experience for them would be they're used to then somebody who's called a radiation therapist would come in and try to make this device out of wax or towels or various types of materials, gauze and tape to put it on the patient. And what they experience now is they show up for treatment and the therapist will come in and place the device on 'em and say, Hey, this is going to fit in your nose or around your ear or across your face. And they're going to say, what do you mean? And they're going to say that, yeah, we use your CT data. This is a personalized medical device. So we really believe that this is a game-changing technology for cancer care and for personalization in healthcare. Speaker 1 (04:37): And to that point, when you have a custom fit, I would assume that the results are superior. Speaker 2 (04:44): So fit means a lot. You have radiation is very, very precise. Fit really means that you're delivering the most dose you can to the tumor and not the surrounding healthy tissue. And that's really the name of the game here. So from a radiation oncologist or a medical physicist perspective that are creating these treatment plans, what they're trying to do is make sure that they can deliver the maximum amount of dose that they possibly can to that tumor to ensure that they kill the tumor itself. What happens when you don't have good fit is that sometimes you're underdosing that tumor and you're overdosing, maybe some surrounding healthy tissue. Sadly, that healthy tissue can be brains, can be heart tissues, and you obviously want to spare that because it can leave long-term impacts for the patient who's receiving the treatment. So yeah, better fit equals better outcomes in the end from our perspective. Speaker 3 (05:46): So Speaker 1 (05:46): Tell me how you got to the place where you were co-founding this company. Was it a straight line from school or did you take a lot of turns? Speaker 2 (05:56): Probably a of turns. A lot of turns. I was running my own sort of boutique firm just doing some big data work and around the same time, sadly, my sister was going through chemotherapy and this opportunity came my way through Dr. Robbar. He's the chief of medical physics, sorry, at Nova Scotia Health in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and the opportunity came up to go build a technology and grow the company. I was sitting probably with my sister and during her treatment and just sort of reflecting on what I was doing and what I was putting my skills towards, and I guess I decided in my early thirties to throw it all away and take the leap. Really haven't looked back since. From my perspective, it's been an amazing journey. Getting to a point, not a lot of companies are successful to get to series A and beyond from the bench top or the r and d lab. So it's been an incredible feat. We've had good people around us along the way to do that. We made some good decisions. We probably made some bad ones too. I don't come from healthcares. We didn't know any better, really happy. I made the decision to do this and I've met incredible people along the way and I would say being in cancer treatment is incredibly rewarding. When you put solutions and software out that are helping people, Speaker 1 (07:33): I would imagine, I would imagine that even if it had been a straight line and you had been shooting towards this goal, it's still remarkable feeling to put your work out there and find that it really truly helps people that it really truly changes lives. Speaker 2 (07:50): We see some really incredible things. We see how folks in practice are really struggling with this last mile of treatment and creating these accessory devices for their patients and everything we do in every case and every day, the cases we see come across our desks. It gets instant reward when you see things like that on a daily, weekly, monthly basis where you're making a difference. Speaker 1 (08:17): And I would imagine in terms of the problem solving, I mean our bodies have a lot of parts that are hard to get to, and so I would imagine that having this ability to customize really changes particular treatments. Speaker 2 (08:31): Yeah, you could say that. I'd say there's no one patient that has the same anatomy, I would say. There's no one tumor that looks the same either and from fraction to fraction for every patient. The anatomy's changing and the tumor's changing. So it really is a sweet spot for digitization software and three D printing or additive manufacturing. It's a blend of some amazing technologies that HP's brought to the table with Multi Jet Fusion and with our software that we can actually and may be able to do these kinds of things to deliver that kind of care to the patients. Speaker 1 (09:21): Has there been a moment in your company's evolution where you guys just had to stop and say, whoop, we got to go this way? Speaker 2 (09:29): Yeah, the business model went from, Hey, I'm a cancer center. I want to buy your software and buy a printer. The time it was taking to sort of deliver that, right? So the aha or the pivot in that case was to really scale to reach that inflection point. We needed a platform as a service, Colin, and you try to triangulate that with other things in the market that are happening side by side. As we were watching HP and what they were doing in the market around getting further into digital manufacturing and all that great work, that along with our view of what was happening in our market, really opened the door for us to say, Hey, we need to pivot. You had to pivot. And I think just not being afraid to pivot is a sign of a good startup and good leadership and people in the company to get behind that, say, Hey, we've been doing it this way for a while, but for us to do what we really need to do to get to that next stage, we need to swing the ship around and move. So we had good people around us, we had good advisory from our partnerships like at hp, and that was, we believe is a pivot we had to make and we believe it'll really lead us into the next chapter for adaptive. Speaker 1 (10:54): Well, it's obvious to me that you've come really far with it already, but I wonder is there a big bold vision for you? Is there something on your wall? Is there something in your head that is the big goal? Speaker 2 (11:08): Yeah, I think it's being patient-centric and just doing what's right. We want to be out there treating with as many patients as we possibly can globally with these devices. We feel it is the way forward. It's about getting as many of these medical devices out to those clinicians to make their lives easier, ultimately to make the patient's outcomes better. So from our perspective, it's all about patient first, being patient-centric and when you think that way as a business, good things generally will happen to you, we believe. So Speaker 1 (11:49): Question about trends. When you're an entrepreneur, it's incredibly important to keep your eye on what is going on out in the world. What do you really, really watch? What really affects the actions you take? Speaker 2 (12:07): Yeah, so we probably categorize our business a little bit by obviously on the front end it's about cancer treatment. So just what's happening in the market, what are the players like Varian doing? Where's the technology going, where are the patient populations at? What do they need? So I think those are trends we look at to make sure that we're ahead of and aware of what our solution and our product roadmap needs to look like. How do we best support and make sure we position our products to get to the market so that people can actually use them. On the manufacturing side, I'd say we look at technology trends and material science trends. Where are the latest and greatest technologies coming? Who's leading that? What new materials are coming out? I think from our perspective, you've got two flywheels spinning on either side of you. You have cancer treatment and everything that's happening there. Speaker 2 (13:03): Then you have three D printing or out of the manufacturing and what's happening there. And from our perspective, we're right in the middle. We have a clear clinical application that requires software and additive manufacturing. I'd say sometimes over here, these guys necessarily aren't connected, so things are happening over here. It requires us in the middle to watch for trends. It could say, wait a second, this could be revolutionary technology from the additive manufacturing side or this additive new material that we really see huge value in. And then it's up to us to get out there and make sure that we become the evangelists to talk to those manufacturers in the material companies or the folks at Varian and make sure that everybody knows, Hey, we're in the middle of this and we can really help both of you out. Speaker 1 (13:47): It's hard to imagine how you would succeed in this type of industry if you didn't have an incredible team. What do you do to maintain that, cultivate that, nurture that. How do you make teamwork for you? Speaker 2 (14:06): You need a diverse people around you. You need to find people that are maybe not thinking like you are. To give you different perspective. You need to become a good listener. I'd say that's one of the biggest things that sometimes as an entrepreneur, when you start a company, you're wearing all these hats and as the business grows, you need to start handing some hats out to some other people. And I'd say if you ask the folks around here, maybe sometimes it wasn't always easy to get the hat off my head that they wanted, but eventually you listen and you work with each other just being genuine and just willingness to help people and bring them in and building that teamwork, that team spirit, I think is really valuable. Speaker 1 (14:50): And you bring up the point that if you have people who think differently from you, then you have more opportunity for innovation. Speaker 2 (14:59): So I'd say healthy debates amazing. It's really how you move forward and propel, right? You need different vantage points. You need different people's experiences and expertise, different personality types and attitudes. But what it really comes down to, just working with each other, listening to each other, walking arm in arm, I think that's critical. And when you make the right decision, whether it's me or somebody else, that you're together as a team and you get behind that and you walk together Speaker 1 (15:37): In terms of play, do you think that's important to innovation? Speaker 2 (15:46): Yeah, it certainly is. I think people have to have some fun and get out and have different experiences. We try to create that here on a monthly or bimonthly basis. We run hackathons here where our product team's going to get together and does some things. I think Covid was hard. I think if it taught us anything, it was hard to sort get that play. I think people were locked down and had a hard time bonding and we as humans probably really need that. Speaker 1 (16:16): How do you approach failure? Because failure is one of those things that it's a touchy subject. Oh gosh, we don't want to fail. But the reality is, especially with a startup, it's going to happen. It kind of has to happen, Speaker 2 (16:31): Has to happen. Speaker 1 (16:33): So how do you deal with it? Speaker 2 (16:35): I'd say with a very open mind, especially in startup, I think we're building something right? So I constantly tell the teams here across the business, it's okay to fail and actually you're going to fail and you should have the expectation in a startup mentality that failure is how you learn, it's how you improve. Starts with me at the top as a C E O in this business and I have an open mind to it. You have to have an open mind to it. You have to learn from it, and it's a matter of having good people around you, having a good attitude, being open-minded and learning from it. I hate making the same mistake twice. I think that's one of the big things I talk about around here is just let's not run into that wall again. We ran into it once. What can we learn from it? Let's run into the next wall. Speaker 1 (17:26): So let's talk a little bit about your partnership with hp. Speaker 2 (17:30): So it really started off just two companies having conversation on an aligned topic that healthcare and opportunity ahead and what that turned into was I alignment at a real cultural level with a company. I think I certainly did not expect a company the size of HP to feel like you're working with a startup. And I think that's really what's propelled us with HP and their commercial team is just the amazing people that work there. And we see it firsthand. We have people from across their business interacting with my people every day and the passion they have for our application, they don't work at Adaptive, but it feels like they do sometimes incredibly passionate about the cause and the mission. Speaker 1 (18:36): So you feel like that's really been a game changer. Speaker 2 (18:39): HP's going to have the best technology. Their technology's credible, they're pioneers and innovators, so we know that that's there. That was an easy choice. The hard choice was finding the cultural alignment with the people in the organization and I think that really starts at the top for them. We have exposure to them at a high level from the C-suite down to the day-to-day tactical or operational level. And I'd say just observing that alignment starts at the top and works its way all the way down to the people every day. So I think that's a sign of a good corporation. I think it was really what helped us make our decision to choose HP to work with as our partner. Speaker 1 (19:35): Do you get feedback about success stories? Speaker 2 (19:40): Yeah, yeah. Some are tear jerking good stuff. It's amazing to see a 3D printed medical device that came out of our software that HP manufactured and that treated a breast post-mastectomy case and you see the outcomes. So I think that's super rewarding. Part of the job is what we do it for in the end. We had a real rare case a couple of years ago that came our way that I think really symbolizes why we do it as a rare form of cervical cancer in an infant. They couldn't get a device generic the right size to treat. They gave it to us. We manufactured the, used the software, manufactured the parts and shipped it down to them in Puerto Rico over the holidays. They treated the infant successfully, which was great. That was success at the time. And then three years later we ran the physician and the medical physicist came to see us at Astro. Speaker 2 (20:45): It's our big conference every year and they shared some pictures of the infant and the family and basically said that the parents wanted to thank us for what we did. So it's sort of things like that that sort of motivate you every day, motivate the team every day. Really's really, just going back to the comment about just people care, I think whether it's Barry in Siemens, it's hp, it's adaptive, it's the clinicians treating it. It's just like everybody caress. Everybody wants to do their best to sort of create that outcome for that infant who's three years in and in good health has a long life ahead. Hopefully all made by just people's compassion and wanting to help and bring new technology to sort of change the game. Speaker 1 (21:31): So you're bringing me to tears. That's, Speaker 2 (21:33): Sorry, I'm sorry. Speaker 1 (21:35): No, it's wonderful. I can't imagine how that must feel on your end. I mean the passion Speaker 2 (21:39): Brings me to tears still too. I still am a little bit too, so I love telling the story. We have a lot of those that come our way and hopefully a lot more in the future. So I think we really look forward to that. It drives us here. Speaker 1 (21:51): Yeah, that's a powerful driver. That is where passion and purpose really come together to create something beyond belief. Speaker 2 (22:02): Yeah, I agree. Speaker 1 (22:06): Yeah. Let's talk about that a little. I mean, you are doing this for future generations. You are doing this for the future. So how do you think about that around your own family and your own children? Speaker 2 (22:16): Yeah, it's all for them really, right? I got two young boys and a great spouse, great wife, just try to do everything for them as much as I can with them when you're not here doing this. So just trying your best to, you're doing it for everybody else too, but you're really focal point is the family and your kids and trying to make a better place for them to grow up and inspire them. If I can do something today to inspire my sons to take up the fight in their own way, then I think I've done my job as a dad. Speaker 1 (22:58): So if you could go back to yourself at your son's age right now, your 16 year old self or your younger son's self, if you could go back to yourself and whisper in your ear one deep advice, what would it be? Speaker 2 (23:12): Oh geez, that's a tough one. What would I tell my younger self? Probably would say, don't change what you did. Just be you find your path. Don't be afraid to take a leap of faith. I think I would probably try to reiterate that to myself to make sure that I got back here. Don't be afraid of the challenges. Don't be afraid of hard work. I think it'd be something similar to that I'd probably want to tell myself. Speaker 1 (23:49): Sound advice. Alright, let's close here with a few rapid questions. I don't know, Speaker 2 (23:56): Geez. Speaker 1 (23:58): What is a habit that you're working on? Cultivating? Speaker 2 (24:01): I think consistency. I think that's one thing I'm trying to cultivate. Just being really consistent. Speaker 1 (24:07): If you had to describe yourself in one word, what would it be? Speaker 2 (24:11): I'd say tough or resilient, maybe tough or resilient. I think, yeah, one of those two things I'd say. Yeah, I'd say two, sorry. They're probably the same. Speaker 1 (24:20): I'd buy that. And if other people had to describe you in one word, Speaker 2 (24:25): Oh geez, they'd probably say the same. Tough for resilience. Nuance. Yeah, maybe a little nuance. But yeah, Speaker 1 (24:34): If you could sit down at Starbucks with anyone living or dead. Speaker 2 (24:40): Oh geez, Speaker 1 (24:42): Who would it be? Speaker 2 (24:43): Nelson Mandela seems like an interesting fellow. I think he would've been somebody I would've really liked to just listen to and yeah, he had a really interesting experience in life. Speaker 1 (24:55): What do you consider yourself really great at? I'd Speaker 2 (24:58): Say self-starting say very good at, just despite the conditions and what's going on, I can get up there and do what has to be done. Alright. Speaker 1 (25:08): First concert you ever went to? Speaker 2 (25:12): First concert I ever went to was the Bare Naked ladies. Speaker 1 (25:16): And last question, if your life was a bumper sticker, what would it say? Speaker 2 (25:23): Chaos Speaker 1 (25:27): Caps, Speaker 2 (25:28): All caps. Speaker 1 (25:30): That's fantastic. Well, listen, I have had such a good time talking to you. Speaker 2 (25:35): Thank you, Bonnie. Speaker 1 (25:35): We have been speaking with Alex Dpe. He is the co-founder and c e O of Adaptive. And Alex, you are just a wonderful guest and I've really enjoyed our time. Thank Speaker 2 (25:45): You so much. Thank you, Bonnie. You're wonderful hosts. I really enjoyed our time too. Speaker 1 (25:54): Thank you so much for joining us for this episode of Reinventing the Future by HP Tech Ventures. I'd like to thank Alex Dunphy, co-founder and c e o of Adaptive for the truly inspiring conversation. Join us next time for more inspiration from startup founders and entrepreneurs whose companies are making life better for everyone everywhere. In the meantime, remember, we all have the power to shape the future. What future will you create? 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