EPISODE 78
Macro-Eyes Digging into Healthcare’s Data
Benjamin Thelonious Fels always had an eye for pattern recognition.
The skillset served him well when he secured a degree in art history from Wesleyan University. He carried that degree and perspective into investing as he served as senior trader at WH Trading, a hedge fund where he managed quantitative technology and profitable market teams in Chicago and London.
Now Fels is taking a long, hard look at healthcare. He founded Macro-Eyes in 2013 to create artificial intelligence devices that can manage patient schedules, assist in clinical evaluation, and even measure value-based care.
“It’s really about assisting decision-making,” Fels says of pattern recognition. “Humans are very good at many things. And I think in many cases they can be even better with the aid of powerful technology.” After securing success on the financial markets, Fels says the Macro-Eyes team looked for other industries where pattern recognition could make a difference. “Healthcare quickly became a focus for us.”
Today, Macro-Eyes counts Stanford and St. Joseph’s among its customers. Fels tells Breaking Health host Steve Krupa physicians’ offices and hospitals are treasure troves of useful patient info that can be used to improve care.
“I disagree almost violently when people bring out this adage that Google or Facebook know you better than your doctor does,” Fels says. “Inside the walls of a hospital, there is incredibly rich and granular data about each one of us as a patient that is so much more meaningful than either Google or Facebook can learn.”
Podcast Guest
Benjamin Fels
Founder & CEO
macro-eyes
As CEO of macro-eyes, Benjamin has structured and negotiated successful license and product deals with some of the largest healthcare organizations in the United States. He has more than a decade of experience leading teams that innovate at scale and in building systems that recognize and act on predictive patterns in data. He has worked with physicians and administrators to deploy macro-eyes technology for clinical decision support at leading academic medical centers in New York City and in California. With macro-eyes co-founder Suvrit Sra, PhD, he built similarity search technology for the world’s largest energy services company to classify energy assets.
Prior to founding macro-eyes, Benjamin was a Senior Trader at WH Trading. He managed quantitative, technology and profitable market teams in Chicago and London. Benjamin holds a B.A. in Art History from Wesleyan University with High Honors in General Scholarship.
Meet Our Host
STEPHEN KRUPA
Healthegy Contributing Host Stephen Krupa is CEO of Healthedge, a software company focused on providing next-generation, business-transforming technology products to the healthcare payor market.