WoW Woman in Health Tech I Laura Yecies, CEO and Board Member of Bone Health Technologies
Laura Yecies is the CEO and Board Member of Bone Health Technologies.
She is an experienced CEO, marketer, and strategist with a proven ability to develop and market award-winning products, build teams, scale businesses as well as profitably exit.
Laura previously was CEO of three startups. Most recently she was CEO of SyncThink, a neuro tech company, and led their commercialization and deployment with over 30 health systems and sports teams. She has recently also served as a strategic advisor and consultant to Akili Interactive, Fabric Genomics, and Rapid.AI before joining BHT.
As a leader in the tech world, she joined the Catch team as CEO to grow the business, expand the product footprint, build strategic alliances, and successfully sold the company to Apple in 2013. As CEO of SugarSync she led the company for four years through an aggressive business and product growth phase growing from zero to $25M in revenue and signing several strategic partnerships leading to significant valuation increases and multiple acquisition offers. SugarSync was acquired by J2Global.
Prior to SugarSync, Laura was VP of Marketing at Check Point Software. Previously, at Yahoo, she served as global general manager for Yahoo Mail. Earlier Laura was vice president of the Netscape browser division at AOL where she was responsible for the development of Netscape 7.0 and the launch of the Netscape browser in 23 languages. Prior to Netscape, she led marketing programs and Latin American sales at Informix Software Corp.
Lauras received her MBA from Harvard and an MSFS from Georgetown School of Foreign Service. She received her A.B. Magna Cum Laude in Government from Dartmouth.
Tell us a bit about your background and your projects so far.
I’ve been fortunate to get to work on a wide range of products in my career, ranging from large-scale industrial-scale corporate databases (Informix) and internet security systems (Check Point) to leading the efforts on personal and team productivity tools such as the Netscape browser, Yahoo Mail, SugarSync and Catch. These latter products reflected deep insight into how people manage their work and personal tasks and careful, iterative design to optimize usability for literally hundreds of millions of people (not to mention hosting and processing petabytes of data). It was always thrilling to me to know that through our products, we were touching millions of people with products that could help with the tasks of their daily life.
After we sold Catch to Apple, I had the opportunity to consider what would be next on my journey. In addition to technology, I was always surrounded by and interested in healthcare – I grew up in a family of doctors – both of my parents, two siblings, and many aunts, uncles, and cousins. Now my two oldest sons and one daughter-in-law are physicians, and my other daughter-in-law leads a cancer research program. My summer jobs in college were in a nursing home, and much of my volunteer activity (including translating for surgeons on medical missions in Guatemala) has been healthcare-related. Given this prioritization and value of healthcare in my life, when I saw the opportunities presented by the convergence of healthcare and technology, particularly medical technology, and digital therapeutics, I knew that was where I wanted to dedicate the next phase of my career. For the last seven years, I’ve had the opportunity to lead SyncThink, an FDA-approved VR-based diagnostic for concussion, and bring that solution to major clinics and sports teams worldwide, head up marketing and commercialization activities at Fabric Genomics, the leading AI software for rare-disease genomic analysis and Akili Interactive, makers of one of the most innovative FDA-approved digital therapeutics. When the Bone Health Technology (BHT) CEO opportunity was presented to me, I knew immediately that this was a critical unmet need and, therefore colossal opportunity. My only remaining question was on the science and mechanism of action. After much diligence on the topic and looking at both the body of evidence and the OsteoBoost early data, I was convinced of the opportunity and dove in.
How did you get into this industry? Has it been an easy industry to get into, or have you had many challenges?
Twice in my career, when I wanted to get into a new industry, I found it to be quite challenging. When I first got into software product management at Informix, I didn’t have a typical engineering background and had to overcome a great deal of resistance. When I first wanted to enter the health technology field, it was similarly difficult - while I had the functional experience, I didn’t have the domain experience. This was compounded by the fact that I was looking for a senior-level role. With a lot of persistence, I was, fortunately, able to make the leap. In healthcare, I initially did a lot of consulting work focused on areas where I could contribute – software design, marketing strategy, and business development- to learn the specifics of the domain and move forward. While every industry has its specifics, and healthcare, in particular, has a complex regulatory environment – many things are universal, for instance, fundraising, developing commercial relationships, user design, and more.
How long did it take you to be where you are now? What was the biggest obstacle?
It has taken many years for BHT to get where we are now. The company was incorporated in 2018, but initial research and prototyping work began in 2012 as part of the Theranova medical device incubator. Early on, there were technological obstacles to securing the vibration pack while transmitting energy. Once those were overcome, the more significant business issue was that it takes time to improve bone density and DEXA data has some variability, so the size and length of time for a trial to demonstrate efficacy is expensive - difficult for early-stage companies. The NIH SBIR grants played a big role in helping us overcome that challenge.
What are the challenges of being in the industry you are in?
The medical device industry is undergoing substantial changes – while there still are new traditional medical devices being developed and sold via traditional channels, for instance, implantable devices marketed primarily to surgeons, there is a new generation of devices and applications whose use is driven by patients and doctors working together to treat their condition. This is an exciting opportunity, but reimbursement models and, at times, clinical practices need to evolve to take full advantage of this opportunity leading to challenges during this transition period. In the end, these new models have the potential to efficiently serve many more patients and thus dramatically expand the enterprise value for the companies who are pursuing these innovative models.
What are your biggest achievements to date?
The last couple of years at BHT have been incredibly rewarding. After I joined as CEO, one of the first accomplishments was submitting for and achieving “Breakthrough Device Status” from the FDA who recognized that we are working on an important unmet need and have the capability to solve that need. Our next major accomplishment was raising the capital to fund our work – conducting clinical trials and building the next-generation version of our device and application takes resources. We raised a total of $4.75 million ($2.75 in equity and a follow-on $2m convertible note) from multiple micro-VCs, angel groups, and individual angels. Of note, numerous groups who focus on women’s health or women-led companies committed early, including Portfolia, Astia Angels, and Golden Seeds, and helped to catalyze the fundraising process, which was accelerated by VCs such as Good Growth Capital, Ambit, and Esplanade Ventures. Another significant achievement is the award of multiple NIH grants to fund some of our clinical trial work and product development efforts. The National Institutes of Aging awarded our most recent grant of $2.7 million last September, and this is on top of two other earlier grants totaling about $2m. Medicare is paying for the lion’s share of the cost of osteoporotic fractures, and we are pleased that the federal government has the foresight to invest in this potential solution. BHT is also the recipient of numerous awards and prizes, including the Harvard Global New Venture Competition, Dartmouth Entrepreneurial competition grand prizes, and Keiretsu FemAging people’s choice award.
What are the projects you are currently working on?
This is an exhilarating stage for the company. We just finished the pivotal trial for our device and are deep in the data analysis and pre-publication process. We have just kicked off another trial in partnership with UCSF, the San Francisco VA, and UNMC led by Drs. Dolores Shoback, Anne Schafer, and Laura Bilek to further study the efficacy of our device, emphasizing the recruitment of diverse patients along with an in-depth analysis of bone turnover markers. I’m incredibly excited to be working with these investigators, who are truly among the leading researchers in this important field. Simultaneously, we have been working on a major redesign of the OsteoBoost device – keeping the mechanism of action precisely the same – but improving the form, fit, and design. The new device will look much more athletic and modern - less medical. We aim for it to be a product people will wear confidently when they are out and about. We were fortunate to be the beneficiary of a National Institutes of Health SBIR grant, which is partially funding the trials and device redesign. Finally, we have a significant project underway to build a comprehensive connected health application to optimize bone health.
Is the #WomenInTech movement important to you and if yes, why?
Absolutely! It is critical for the future of women’s health to have more women founding and leading companies, designing, and building products, and bringing them to the market. The research is quite clear – people work and are most inventive about the problems that are meaningful to them. As this important article in the journal Science demonstrated, “Patents by women focus more on women’s health, but few women get to invent.” We need to remove barriers and encourage more women to enter the field.
What will be the key trends in your industry in the next five years, and where do you see them heading?
The last few years have seen a dramatic acceleration of the use of technology to effectively deliver health care as well as towards increased use of devices and technologies such as digital therapeutics and remote care to allow patients to monitor and treat their health conditions in their homes. I believe that doctors, health systems, and payers will continue to encourage and support this trend which holds the potential to achieve the triple aim - improving the individual experience of care, improving the health of populations, and reducing the per capita costs of care for people.
What is the most important piece of advice you could give to anyone who wants to start a career in this industry?
I believe three fundamental functions are needed to have an impact—figuring out what problem to solve, using technology and processes to solve that problem, and then overcoming any awareness and adoption hurdles. Along those lines, one must develop a unique combination of empathy and analytical skills for the first step, technology skills for the second, and sales, marketing, and strategy skills for the third. No single person needs to be an expert at all this, but the team as a whole must be. My advice is to figure out where your role is in this process initially and develop that expertise but also to learn enough generally to be able to lead and or simply contribute to the team overall. Finally, no matter how good the solution or marketing, the problem must be genuinely pressing to get people to change (and most new product adoption requires change). The most common reason for failure is a misdiagnosis of the problem.
Who are three inspirational women in your respective industry you admire?
Dr. Dolores Shoback – is one of the most accomplished researchers in metabolic bone diseases and osteoporosis. She was one of the earliest clinicians to focus on osteoporosis and has made significant contributions to the understanding of parathyroid disease. Through her research, she is impacting millions of patients
Antonia Novello - a dedicated public health advocate, made history as the first female and first Hispanic U.S. Surgeon General in 1990. Novello has led several major public health campaigns in her efforts to improve health conditions and access to medical care, especially for women, children, and minority populations.
Karen Drexler – an accomplished entrepreneur, board director, and investor, has built and led multiple medical device startups and is actively supporting the success of many others, particularly those focused on women’s health or led by women. Ms. Drexler founded and ran Amira Medical until its sale to Roche Diabetes Care, managed various functions as a pioneer in home blood glucose monitoring, and executed the sale of the Company to Johnson and Johnson. An inventor on 11 issued patents, she is a founding member of Astia Angels (www.astia.com) and Springboard (www.sb.co), nonprofit organizations that support female entrepreneurs.
Read Laura’s blog here.
Connect with Laura on LinkedIn and Twitter.
This interview was conducted by Marija Butkovic, Digital Marketing and PR strategist, founder, and CEO of Women of Wearables. She regularly writes and speaks on topics of wearable tech, fashion tech, IoT, entrepreneurship, and diversity. Follow Marija on Twitter @MarijaButkovic and read her stories for Forbes here.