In this episode of CHATTINN CYBER, Marc Schein interviews Kilian Koepsell, CTO and Co-Founder of Caption Health. As Caption Health CTO and Co-Founder Kilian Koepsell leads the company’s efforts to use the latest in artificial intelligence and deep learning to bring the diagnostic power of ultrasound to more healthcare providers, democratizing access to healthcare and improving patient outcomes.

Prior to co-founding Caption Health, he worked on developing computer vision algorithms matched to the human visual processing system at the Redwood Neuroscience Institute and UC Berkeley — research he brought to Caption Health’s ultrasound guidance software. He also co-founded White Matter Technologies and was a founding team member at IQ Engines, which was acquired by Yahoo! for its Flickr group. He holds a PhD in physics from the University of Hamburg, as well as two master's degrees in mathematics and physics from the same university.

Kilian was born and grew up in a family of physicians, in Germany, where he developed a keen interest in health care. Along with health care, he was also fascinated with computers and Artificial Intelligence (AI) since his childhood. Although Kilian was passionate about AI and health care, he studied mathematics and physics. Soon he realized that these two courses were based on theoretical knowledge, however he wanted to study something that he could apply to create an impact on the lives of other people. Then he decided to switch his field and pursue his childhood passion. He came to the United States and studied Neuroscience and Artificial Intelligence at UC Berkeley.  After completing his research at UC Berkeley he started his career in the field of medical imaging.

Access to quality diagnostic imaging leads to more timely and accurate diagnoses and treatment for patients, but the skills needed to perform an ultrasound exam take years of specialized training to master. Caption Health is bridging this gap through a simple but powerful concept: what if we could use technology to emulate the expertise of highly trained medical experts and put that ability into the hands of every care provider?

Caption Health’s breakthrough technology, Caption AI, empowers healthcare providers with new capabilities to acquire and interpret ultrasound exams by emulating the expertise of a sonographer. The AI software provides real-time probe guidance, automatically captures diagnostic-quality images, and automatically calculates ejection fraction (the most widely used measurement to assess cardiac function). It is the world’s first and only FDA cleared AI-guided ultrasound system.

Kilian talks about the significance of Caption AI for treating Covid-19 patients. He says that many Covid-19 patients are dying due to cardiac complications because the Covid-19 virus is attacking their hearts along with the lungs. As the Covid-19 virus is attacking the heart, it is very important to keep a regular check on the performance of the patient’s heart. But due to the isolation protocol, it becomes very difficult for the experts to do an ultrasound examination of the patient’s heart by personally visiting him/her. In this scenario, Caption AI provides an easy and quick solution by enabling any health care provider to easily get echo images and evaluate heart performance.

The company hopes to democratize healthcare by expanding clinicians’ ability to perform ultrasound at the point of care in order to improve patient outcomes and reduce costs. In 2020, they received three major FDA clearances, including an expedited clearance to support frontline healthcare workers in the fight against COVID-19; closed $53 million in Series B funding; announced their first commercial partnership with Northwestern Medicine; and received a $4.95M grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support the development of innovative AI technology for lung ultraso...