Thanks for joining Her House, where we celebrate innovations related to female biology and health. In this episode, we dig into building upon corporate career to effectively lead a startup company, new software for improving radiology screenings in dense breast tissue, and the imperative opportunity for investing in women's health.
Marissa:These are all businesses that are solving a problem because nobody's ever worked on them. And so you're hearing about women's health finally is like, thing. It's always been a thing. Just nobody's studied it and researched it and taken the time to do it.
Melissa:I'm Melissa D'Elia, and today we have an incredible guest. She's the CEO of Deep Look Medical, which is advancing imaging for breast cancer detection. Plus, she founded Her HealthEQ to get critical medical tools to women worldwide. Basically, she's a powerhouse. Welcome to the show, Marissa Fayer.
Melissa:I'm super excited to speak with you again.
Marissa:Thanks for having me. Really excited to be here.
Melissa:You're a leader for advancing women's health, but also medical technology in general. What sparked this career path and and passion for you?
Marissa:So I was lucky to kind of fall into it, honestly. I never knew what medical devices were twenty five years ago. I didn't know what the it was even a category. I plan to be in aerospace, but, there was a downturn in the industry in in aerospace, and I got recruited into the health care space, straight out of school. And then I fell into women's health.
Marissa:Like, I was always very involved with women's stem and, you know, advancing women and and, you know, that was very important to me, especially as an engineer. Years ago, twenty nine years ago when I started, women were not a majority in, in engineering. So that was always very, really important to me. And I joined a women's health company, probably about twenty one years ago, and, kind of the light bulb went off and said, oh, this is what I want. Yeah.
Marissa:This is how I combine all of the, you know, advocacy and stem work that I was doing and, you know, really into something that was important to me, and kind of understanding that, like, women's health was a category because now we talk about it a lot. But, certainly twenty or twenty one years ago, nobody was talking about it. I was grateful to start working for the largest women's health company in the world. And so that opened my eyes to everything. And, twenty plus years later, here we are.
Melissa:Well, you've clearly been purposeful in those twenty years. Women's health, that is my passion.
Marissa:That is my life. That's everything I speak about. And so the through line for really everything I do is women's health.
Melissa:Huge reason why we have you on today, obviously. You're at a startup now, and we're gonna get into that, but you also have worked at large corporations. Can you talk about those roles, shipping products, really what you learned about the medical system in those types of jobs?
Marissa:I think it's really important for everybody to kinda work at a corporate environment, you know, just once in their career at least. You understand how large companies work. I mean, literally everything. Receiving goods, shipping, order logistics, and product development, even, you know, support and service and marketing and how all of that plays together, especially when you're doing like a new product launch. So it's not just, you know, oh, hey.
Marissa:Get us get us the raw materials. Let's build it and ship it out. You know? Like, there's so much to do and so much involved. So I think it's really important to understand how all those pieces come together.
Marissa:I also think it's really important to understand how corporations work because in reality, whatever size corporation it is, if you're a small company or you wanna sell your product to a large company or you wanna, you know, sell your company to them or you wanna work with them or you wanna ask them for money or you anything. You know? You have to understand how it works, and you have to also be able to speak the language, because it's a lot different. I mean, you know, being in the startup world, like, there's a different language with startups. There's also different language with corporates.
Marissa:There's also different priorities and things that they're wanting to do and to hear, especially in health care. I mean, we understand their health care systems, you know, semi broken, but there's ways that we can work to fix it and make it better. Being in a company and seeing all the different dimensions and, like, really just keeping your eyes open and seeing what's there because you also don't know where that's gonna take you. And, I mean, again, this this was not my pathway ever, not what I thought, but my eyes were open. And, I was seeing different sides of it, and I was understanding more what worked for me, and what kinda lit me up inside.
Marissa:And so I was able to do that within a company and also see gaps. Like, you know, as a as a small company, as a startup, you know, what you're always trying to do is fix a need or fill a gap or something like that. But a lot of times, if you don't work in corporate, you don't know if that is a problem or it's not. Because in reality, I mean, a lot of people in the health care industry and a lot of, you know, a lot of our great products, most of them are coming from larger companies. And, you know, we have to understand how they work to, to work with them.
Melissa:Now you're at this startup deep look. Can you give our listeners an overview of the problem that you guys are trying to solve and really what the technology is?
Marissa:Yeah. Absolutely. So in The US, there's forty two million women who have mammograms. Unfortunately, because forty five percent of those women have dense breasts, they have to come back for additional imaging. And that's simply because our existing technology of which I developed, let me be very clear, cannot see through dense breast tissue.
Marissa:And so there has to be alternative, screening methods. So we're a software that works with these large corporations and large companies that make the mammography and ultrasound machines, MRI, all of these things to visualize and see inside that dense tissue. So that means dense breasts, liver, lung, thyroid, neuro, all different areas. We're FDA cleared. We're in The US, Canada, UK, going into several other, countries, especially in The Middle East.
Marissa:We're in augment to what's already out there because we don't displace anybody. We actually need everybody else to keep doing their jobs. And I think that's also really important to understand is that, like, where is your product market fit? If there's 20 companies doing something, you probably don't need to be number 21. And that's kind of where we differentiated ourselves to be able to visualize as an as an addition to what everybody else is is doing in the market.
Marissa:I was actually surprised looking into this that breast imaging has been around for over a hundred years. X rays, first mammograms in the sixties, developing digitally, and then as you mentioned, you are a part of the three d mammogram system at Hologic. Yeah. What is DeepLook's technology doing that's specifically different from a technical perspective?
Marissa:We actually read the math and the pixels. It's just a it is a software that augments visualization. So we're not taking images. We're not working in X-ray. All of that still needs to happen.
Marissa:I'm sorry, women. You know, you're still gonna have to get your mammograms, and you should. Like, it is the best screening method that's out there right now. But tools like ours can augment it for dense breast women. We visualize on top of it.
Marissa:You know, when you look at the monitor, you can, you know, activate our technology and say, okay. Actually, there is something in that region of interest or there's not. And it really just gives, the radiologists some visual cue to see what's there. Listen. Nobody wants to be it's called a recall to come back for additional imaging.
Marissa:Nobody nobody wants to do that, and the radiologists don't wanna call you back either for that, but they have to. And, if they are unsure, they're actually, you know, working to try to save your life. And so, if they had to have less women come back, that's great. Like, it it streamlines the health care system. It saves overtime.
Marissa:It saves reporting requirements and things like that. So, you know, we're not gonna solve all 45%, but, you know, there's still always gonna be women that need to come back because, god forbid, there might be something there. But even if we reduce it, you know, five, ten, twelve percent, that's great.
Melissa:How like, basics, how often is it recommended even early for women to start getting mammograms and then dense breasts? What's the prevalence? What are the outcomes?
Marissa:I mean, the regulations keep changing. Let's just be very clear. But in general, any woman 40 and over should get her mammogram annually. It is most covered by insurances, Medicare as well. There are certain circumstances where you have family history or you have the genetics, so get your genetic test as well.
Marissa:You might be starting at 30 or 35 or 20. I mean, let's be clear. Also, everybody from the age of 18 should be doing a manual self exam every single month. You know? You do in the shower.
Marissa:You do it a few days after your period. And, you know, you should be taking control of your own health. If you feel something, it doesn't matter at what age you are. You call your doctor immediately, and you get it tested, and you you get an image. It might be a cyst, and most of the time, eighty, eighty five percent of the time, it is, but you never know.
Marissa:And so get the test. So, in general, for the average person, it's, 40 and older, to get a mammogram. Of all those women, forty five percent trending up to 50 have dense breasts. There is nothing you can do about it. There's there is there is no diet to go on to change your breast composition.
Marissa:There's, you know, there's this has nothing to do with it. It is simply genetics. Unfortunately, it also disproportionately affects, black women, Asian women, and Jewish women, which means you have a three times higher rate of getting cancer, of breast cancer. So in reality, seventy percent of all breast cancers are in dense breast women. Oftentimes, it's because imaging can find it.
Marissa:It's found at a later stage, and there's nothing to do to prevent yourself from having breast cancer. I mean, eating healthy and and doing all those things. You know, if you get breast cancer, at least find it early. Because when you find it at stage zero and early in stage one, there is ninety nine percent survivability. When you find it later, those proportions start to drop quite significantly.
Marissa:That's one of the reasons why breast cancer is the only cancer that has annual imaging. I know it hurts for a lot of people, but it's five, ten seconds out of your life, out of your year. And if that can help save your life, then great. Then that's exactly what needs to happen.
Marissa:Everyone wants to feel safe and healthy, and they can take that into their own hands as a first step. Absolutely. So, DeepLook, you're providing this technology to radiologists. You talked about the tools and information so that they could do their jobs better. Can you dive into the patient experience and and really why it's important for them?
Marissa:We're talking right now about free, some sort of diagnosis, but during that test, what happens after and what are they, you know, experiencing.
Marissa:In reality, our, our technology right now won't be used by patients. This is really radiologist is using it. Technicians are eventually gonna start to use it. This just often means sometimes you might not have to come back for that additional, mammogram. So another thing is, women with very dense breasts, you often have to come back every six months, as as opposed to a year, you know, because you have to be more closely monitored if you have genetics that you have to be more closely monitored.
Marissa:So if, you know, maybe there's nothing that's found or seen over a certain amount of, you know, months or years or screens, maybe maybe you go to an annual screening as opposed to every six months. Or maybe you get your mammogram and instantly get your ultrasound and instantly get a diagnostic mammogram as opposed to having to come back to the center multiple times because not all practices see you at the same time. And so, you know, I know for me that I get my screening mammogram. They always call me back for either a diagnostic mammogram and or an ultrasound. There's other people that I know that, that that go and get it, you know, mammogram and ultrasound immediately.
Marissa:This really could be used, to touch patients, which is where I get kind of excited about it is to give them information and to show them if there's something there, especially if you're in treatment, that it's really great to see something has changed shape or or shrunk, especially, like, you know, just imagine, god forbid you're on radiation or chemo, and then all of a sudden, you know, you're like, ugh. I feel horrible. I feel sick. Why do I have to keep doing this? Wouldn't it be great if the doctor was able to show you a before and after picture and to say, actually, I know it's horrible, but, like, keep going.
Marissa:It's working. And that's where it puts it back into the patient's hands for learning and for education too. People wanna be informed. People wanna understand, especially when it comes to something along the lines of a cancer diagnosis that
Melissa:I think that probably is the highest. So you're selling software to the radiologist. What are the hurdles to get into the system? You know, why is DeepGlobe not widely used yet? And, you know, what are you guys doing as a company to make it more common?
Marissa:So we've just gone commercial. First revenue is coming in this quarter.
Marissa:Yay.
Marissa:That's a big deal for a for a small company. So in the health care system in The US, it's really difficult to get into to hospitals and clinics. What we've done is we partnered with the largest medical monitor, manufacturer who owns 80 to 85% of the entire market share. And so we're embedded into their technology, which means we don't have to become an approved supplier at every single hospital. We do not have to go through their cybersecurity validations.
Marissa:We do not have to go through, like, all of the tests and and everything that's required. Oftentimes for each hospital, that could take two years. We have a partner that's been in business for ninety years, has all of those relationships, has all of that sales, has all of those approved suppliers, have you know, they're covered under their cybersecurity because they have tested us. So, simply, it's just a it was a matter of time for for product launch. So we've just done that very late end of last year.
Marissa:And so first quarter, is kind of where we're ramping up. It should be much more widely available in q two, q two and and beyond. We've already been installed into about a hundred different, workstations and monitors, which means I think it's something like 47 different hospitals so far, and that's still growing. And, we're gonna expand that obviously, you know, a lot further and a lot deeper as well. So all radiology reading in mammography will have this technology on their workstations, you know, on their reading.
Marissa:And honestly, as as as women or even as men listening, you know, you should be asking your radiologists if they're using the DeepLook technology, especially if they have dense breasts, because that's where you really need the tools. The reason this is so important and why I keep bringing up dense breasts for people to understand is when you have dense breasts and you get a mammogram, it shows up white. When you have cancer, it shows up white. So that's like looking for the, like, the cotton ball in the cloud. You can't see it.
Marissa:It's there. You just can't see it. And radiologists are humans. Like, their eyes, they're the most specially trained eyes in the world. Their eyes are their eyes. And humans can only see 70% of grayscale of, you know, of what's on your monitor. A computer can see a %. All we do is unlock that extra 70%. We visualize it for them. We put it in color to make it interesting so they can see what's happening.
Marissa:That's it. And that's why it's so important. You know? When you have regular, nondense breasts, your mammogram is dark, is black, is black and gray. So you can obviously see something that's white. But in dense breasts, it's white on white, or it's really light gray and white. Which goes back to the uncertainty. Right? Yeah. And visualization communication. Yeah. Super important.
Melissa:And you mentioned the technology could be applied beyond breast imaging.
Marissa:We've already just launched in breast ultrasound, so that's exciting. We're just obviously going down the treatment pathway as it's also one of the most readily used, modalities. We're also getting into, thyroid, which is a women's health, condition as well, high thyroid cancer and thyroid diseases. Lung affects everybody, but actually nonsmoker lung, cancer disproportionately affects women and liver cancer because liver is very, very dense. It's very hard to see. And so we're going into those areas, and it will continue to expand. We also are going in ultrasound, low dose CT, potential MRI, and we're cleared for all of those things. So it's just really an expansion of product.
Melissa:So many congratulations. Another big one. The company raised some capital last year. Yep. You guys are an investor backed company, so I assume one of your goals would be to exit and return capital to investors.
Melissa:As medical executive and, you know, again, with your experience throughout the system, what do other startups need to be thinking about when building a product, building a business in terms of that type of strategy?
Marissa:I mean, we're still raising money as every startup does. So, we're about to finish our series a, hopefully sooner than later because, honestly, as a CEO, I'd rather just run the company instead of always raising money. So, you know, any any executive in a startup needs to think about that, you know, whether they like it or they hate it. They still have to do it. But listen. This company was built to exit. And I think there's a lot of companies that are built to exit. Some of them shorter term, some of them longer term. You have to as an executive kind of in this position, this is what I did. I I used to do it on the other side, the acquiring side, but I'm on, the selling side this time.
Marissa:You have to really understand the market, understand who could be your potential acquirers, start speaking to them early, understand where your value is. We could wait seven years to sell a company. Probably not the best value. We're gonna probably make the most impact in less than a year. You know, we've been working at this for for several years, and, you know, the time is right.
Marissa:You also being in this industry, there are cycles. There are m and a cycles. Some of them have been kinda drawn out lately, but we are in an acquisition cycle right now in the med tech industry. So there are a lot of companies looking for tuck in acquisitions, new tech. When a lot of the downsizing happened many years ago, it was the r and d teams that were cut, which is why you have so many startups.
Marissa:Because all the r & d teams started creating new product. Now it's it's actually cheaper for these larger companies to purchase the technology than it would have been for them to develop all of it internally. And so that's the cycle we're in right now. It's probably gonna go on for the next year and a half, two years because all of this is a high value for them. This is what they're looking for.
Marissa:None of these large companies started as large as they were. They're all through acquisition, and you just have to understand when the time is right for your company to do that in your own life cycle.
Melissa:And then it goes back to your point about size and being able to get this technology more broadly adopted.
Marissa:Yeah. Yeah. And for us, that's really important. Like, my mission is always women's health. I know as a small company, we are not gonna get this out to every single woman as a small company.
Marissa:But the large companies, that's their value. That's what they can do. They can distribute it across the world so more women have access to this type of technology. And to me, that's actually the most important thing. Well, investors share, you know, value, of course. But, you know, to get this technology out into the hands of everybody, that's the most important. And I think that's how everyone needs to think about when you know, again, this is not charity. This is a for profit business. But if you wanna grow and scale, you have to get this to more people. And large companies have the ability to do that. It is very hard as a small company to do that independently.
Melissa:You've also done really important work through Her HealthEQ, providing critical health equipment to women in developing nations. What was the genesis for that organization? Obviously, your passion, but any particular stories or things like bulbs that went off to get it going?
Marissa:Funny story. So I was working on a merger in Costa Rica with Hologic, and so I moved down there. And, you know, I'm through the expat community or, you know, just people in general. I met a friend, and we're having drinks at a bar. And, she's like, women are dying of breast cancer in this, like, remote region in, you know, in Costa Rica.
Marissa:I knew at that point we just launched the three d mammography systems, which meant the two d systems, which were perfectly usable, were being traded in for new. And so we had mammogram machines, like, lined up against the wall in the warehouse, like, didn't know what to do with them, Being very naive, and at that point, I was 30, so I was very naive. I said, great. Let's get you one. And so, like, it facilitate you know, through the company, it took me it took, you know, about a year, year and a half actually to get it done.
Marissa:But we launched and we got a mammography machine down into Costa Rica, installed into the hospital. Like, we had to dig power lines because it wasn't suited for it and make sure the room was equipped appropriately. But we got that mammogram machine, down there in Limon, Costa Rica. It is still working. It is still in operation.
Marissa:It's, think it's over ten years later, and it's still saving women's lives. And it's really important what we do is to make sure that women have access to health care where they are. Because it was not feasible for women in that region and in Limon, especially at that time, to be coming to the capital to get health care services. And so you would have to for screening mammogram. If you feel something or you're sick or you need to go to the best hospital, okay, then then make the travel.
Marissa:But for something that's an annualized screening to take a day off of work every single time and spend the money to transit yourself to the capital, which at that time took, you know, three, four, five hours each way to do, people weren't doing that. And women were barriers. Yeah. There's so many barriers. So, you know, that that's kind of the genesis story.
Marissa:And then, I left, you know, many years I left the company after. Just started thinking about it. Like, there must be other technologies to do for this, and there must be other, you know, areas that need health care. And, that's where I started her HealthEQ after I left corporate.
Melissa:As you advocate for that type of work and getting health care access broadly, even here in The United States, how do you think about balancing immediate need, like, getting people to their appointments with long term ideal solutions, technologies, but also just systems and integrations?
Marissa:Yeah. I mean, listen. You have to have, you know, first line of care taken care of. That's the most critical. You know, emergency care, obviously, in a lot of developing countries, you know, road accidents are are actually the worst cause of death.
Marissa:You know? But, like, there's there's there's many levels. Low income countries really need to focus on, you know, sanitation and, just basic health care and initial vaccinations and just generalized health, and nutrition and all of those things. But, like, the middle income countries, they're at a point where they can start worrying about a lot of these noncommunicable diseases. So cancer and heart disease and maternal health, like, they're still really big issues.
Marissa:The problem is they don't typically have the capital right now to send on on medical equipment. And so that's very much what we do. We kind of bridge that gap. And it's important in order to strengthen a country and their infrastructure. First at first, you know, they often need, you know, nonprofits and donations and things like that.
Marissa:They need to see that it works, that it's actually making change, and then it's time for them to invest in it. And so that's where they start to step in. And that's strengthening the health care system because when you make sure women are healthy, you really reinforce the entire industry of, you know, the economy because women are all work you know, they're all working in in some sense. Sometimes it's informal work. Sometimes it's very formal work.
Marissa:But they're the ones that are actually providing for their families, and their money goes back into the family. So the statistic is 90% over 90% of a woman's income goes back to her family. Unfortunately, only 45% of a man's income in developing countries goes back to their family. So you need to make sure that the women, which is not just the mother, but it's the mother and the grandmother and the aunts and the cousins and the sisters, they're all working to help their family, and they're giving into their family. And you know what they wanna do?
Marissa:They wanna send their kids to school, and they most especially wanna send their girls to school. Because there is no really no mother in this world or no, you know, community in this world that doesn't want better for the next generation. And that's everywhere that we live, including in The United States. And to make sure that girls go to school, their family has to be healthy. Because, unfortunately, when they're not, the girls are the first ones that are removed from school.
Marissa:And, that's really why we're reinforcing women in developing countries because they're the backbone of the entire country, the entire industry, the entire ecosystem. And, to us, they're the ones that are actually lifting, you know, their families and their countries and their communities out of, you know, out of the next step and into, hopefully, prosperity and health. And so, you know, that's that's very much why we're doing what we're doing, but it also plays into the entire ecosystem of health. Because, like, yeah, there there there's a lot of basics that need to be made, you know, and there's, you know, next steps. But, you know, not far behind is noncommunicable diseases that really affect women.
Marissa:We just we're different bodies. It's actually more complex. There's a lot more going on, and, it's not just childbearing. But in reality, even if it was just childbearing, there's not enough resources for, proper maternal health care and, informatics and and information and and quality technology as well.
Melissa:Yeah. It all boils down to a larger economic opportunity. Yeah. So wonderful chatting with you.
Melissa:Our closing ask is for you to give a shout out to another innovator or leader in the women's health space. Who would you like to recognize and why?
Marissa:Oh, yeah. Absolutely. You know, there's so many women, so it's really hard to pick one. But one of my favorite, you know, in the in the innovation space is, Orianna Poppin. She's the CEO of AOA.
Marissa:It's for ovarian cancer. It's an incredible company. They're doing incredible work. There's so many women that are innovating right now, but I love Orianna and I I I love AOA and I love the company. But I also, you know, certainly wanna express that there's women who are innovating, especially in women's health, because sometimes it's personal, and, of course, it is personal.
Marissa:But there's a business imperative to all of this. Like, again, yes, I do charity work and and nonprofit work, but, like, these are all businesses that are solving a problem because nobody's ever worked on them. And so you're hearing about women's health finally is, like, a thing. It's always been a thing. Just nobody's studied it and researched it and, you know, taken the time to do it.
Marissa:And most of the innovators in women's health, especially newer companies, are women, which is incredible that it is. But it's because it affects us, and it affects people in our lives. And, you know, thankfully, we have a lot of, you know, men who are joining us and and advocates and and working with us and also forming these companies. But, like, you know, it's women solving these problems because for us, it's personal, but it's still business. And there's still business imperative behind it.
Marissa:So I can't choose one. I can't. That that's it. But I did. I chose one. I chose one, but I'll give you a very long list of others.
Melissa:It's super exciting. I completely agree that it's a huge opportunity because it's underserved from a capitalist perspective. There's a gap, and there's a lot to run at. And, you know, naturally, women have those ideas because they're personally experienced, but at the end of the day, there are really exciting and good businesses that can be built.
Melissa:If people wanna follow your work and follow Deep Look, what is the best way to do so?
Marissa:Yeah. So, for me personally, MarissaFayer.com or on LinkedIn, Marissa Fayer. The deep look is DeepLookMedical.com, the nonprofit, HerHealthEQ . So it's HerHealthEQ.org. There's also a ton of women's health organizations and companies, again, to follow.
Marissa:So, I mean, literally, you can go into LinkedIn and put in women's health. You get, like, a whole list of companies that come, and they should be followed.
Melissa:Well, hopefully, a lot of them will be on the show coming up. Yeah. So thank you again for making the time. It's always great to chat with you.
Marissa:So great.
Marissa:Thanks for having me.
Melissa:Join us next time to learn about another innovation in women's health. And if you have ideas for the show or an experience you care to share, we'd love to hear from you.