In this eighth episode, Ben Hwang, Chairman & CEO of Profusa, provides an overview of injectable biosensors. He explains that the technology enables a model akin to getting a blood test every few seconds of our life (rather than only every few years when sick).

Read the transcript

He predicts that this “unlocked stream of biochemistry data” will become married to other data (e.g. our voice patterns) to provide a panoramic view of our health and wellbeing.
Topics we discussed in this episode

Continuous, realtime measurement of an individual’s biochemistry
Injectable biosensors
Biosensor components
Solving the 'foreign-body response'
Blood chemistries that can and can't be measured in the interstitial fluid
Three stages of the sensor
Achieving calibration with heterogeneity of tissue
Putting multiple chemistries on one single sensor (multiplexing)
Episodic measurements taken by a clinician every few years vs realtime direct measurements
Changing towards a proactive (forward looking) rather than rear-view looking measurement of blood chemistry
Achieving a product cost similar to the price of a Netflix subscription
Empowering individuals to be able to make healthcare decisions and decisions about their wellbeing
Impacting how insurance companies, healthcare providers etc. think about keeping a population or individual healthy
The extent to which today's medical practitioner will remain as intermediaries
The economic need to move to prevention
Ambition to touch a billion people
Marrying biochemical data to other data such as voice (tones, word pattern), pollen count, activity level etc.
Being able to predict and monitor many more biomarkers than the ones we actually have to measure
Forthcoming CE and FDA approval
Multiyear measurement of glucose in realtime
The majority of the population will one day have implantable biosensors for continuous long-term monitoring of blood chemistries

Show links

Profusa Website
'Fluid compartments' Wikipedia Entry
'Foreign body granuloma' Wikipedia Entry
Bloodcalculator.com Website