From Startup Founder to Cleveland Clinic Innovations: Jerry Wilmink on Building Health Tech That Reaches Patients

[gentle music] Welcome back to "Startup Health Now," the podcast where we celebrate the entrepreneurs and innovators who are transforming health. All right. My name is Unity Stoakes, co-founder at Startup Health, and it is my great honor to have just bumped into a longtime friend, colleague, Gerry Willmink from Cleveland Clinic, Director of Innovations and Development. But we go way back.

Way back. And we just bumped into each other. We are at the health conference in Las Vegas, and it's quite extraordinary. There's a lot of old friends, a lot of industry colleagues, a lot of energy.

You can probably hear the background noise here because there's a lot of buzz, a lot of excitement. But let's start at the beginning. Yep. Tell us who you are, tell us your role, and what you're doing at Cleveland Clinic.

You got it. Gerald Willmink. So I go by Gerry. My kids call me Gerald, though, because they think that name is a lot funnier than Gerry.

So, like, the whole city that I live in, Cleveland, calls me Gerald. I- And they think it's hysterical. It's an awesome name. Yeah.

A name that I hated as a child, but now they, that's what they call me. And is that with a G versus a J? And- Yep, to make it confusing. Okay.

G, Gerald, and then Gerry's with a J. Okay. Just that. Okay.

Just that. Spear warrior, too, by the way. Okay. Gerald.

Yeah. Uh, born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. And then I went down to... So Cleveland's kind of the home.

I went to school- It's, it's part of the Heartland, and that's one of the- Oh, yeah... I got a lot of family there. So shout-out to Cleveland. To the land.

Went to Nashville. So I was at Vanderbilt for, I studied biomedical engineering, did a PhD in biomedical optics there. So I was there for almost a decade in Nashville. That's when we didn't have a winning football team.

Okay. And now we do. Yeah. So it's a lot better.

Then I went down to Texas, and that's when I think we first met. I was down in San Antonio, and I started a digital health company- Right. That's right... called WiseWear.

Yep. We made a bunch of different biosensing devices. WiseAide, which is a biosensing hearing aid- Mm... to predict when seniors are at risk for a fall and then whisper in their ear.

And then a, a wearable device that I launched with Iris Apfel. That was really early, exciting innovation you were working on then. Super cool. Yeah.

Yeah, it was in 2013. Yep. So 12 years ago. That's when I first met you and your team, who any startup that I meet to this day, I always bring them.

Like- Thank you... you gotta go meet the Startup Health folks. And- No, we, we appreciate that and... Yeah.

It's incredible because you guys helped me a lot and helped bridge me to the merge with CarePredict, and that's when I served as their chief bus- business officer for about four years, AI healthcare for senior care. And then after that, I moved back home to Cleveland, and now I'm currently the Director of Business Development Licensing at the Cleveland Clinic Innovations. And Innovations has been around since about 2000, so almost 25 years. Wow.

And we have, we really serve a variety of functions. One, when inventions are developed by our in-house inventors, so scientists, physicians, we take those inventions and see should we license this to a large company to bring it to the marketplace? Should we co-develop it with maybe a smaller company, and work hand in glove with that smaller company to get that product to the market? Or do we spin out our own business?

And actually, we have a about 50,000 square feet, maybe a little bit more. Three floors. I've, I've been there. Oh.

It's absolutely beautiful. Yeah. It's a fantastic facility, and so a lot of our big companies are there. And they have their headquarters there, right there in Cleveland, and they can go meet with the doctors, you know.

It's kind of an innovation center or... Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, innovation center.

So most of our employees are from, I think close to around 80 of us in Innovations, and we're on the main floor. And then the companies are on the second and third floor. Okay. So people are constantly coming through there, different customers, different innovators.

Correct. Yep. And many times with those companies, we may not lead the investment rounds, but we'll participate. And so it could be early stage or even later stage rounds, so their, their investors may be coming in too to have a board meeting, and we'll participate there in person.

Wow. [clears throat] So what was that transition like from being an innovator, an entrepreneur, builder- Yep... and actually you're also a, a, a scientist. You're an innovator in many respects, and you've been building very early stage things.

And you've gone through that journey, and now you're also at one of the really leading institutions of the world in healthcare- Yep... Cleveland Clinic, and still focusing on innovation. Yep. What's that juxtaposition like?

What are some of the things that stand out and that you've learned between the two comparing? Yeah. I think the big, the big kind of take home for me is when I, before I started my first business, I started a research lab for the Department of Defense, and it was a terahertz biosensing research lab. And when I showed up there in San Antonio, it was an empty, it was a closet.

And the general manager of the DRD Air Force Research Lab said, "Build the terahertz lab." Is this part of DARPA or a separate group? Separate, but so it would be AFOSR. Okay.

So it's kind of like a separate organization, but they do a lot of work together. I see. Yep. But building that lab from scratch was like building a startup.

And so I had to build the lab, get the tools, recruit the people, s- publish the work, present. So it was like a baby startup. Yeah. So that was before I, I started my first business.

So now having some of that experience of the lab, like, and I k- understand where the scientists are coming from too. Yeah. Where you're, they're making new in- inventions, and they're not sure how to, how do I get this from the lab to the patient eventually. That translational kind of stage.

Translation. And so the huge gaps there. And so I think that my experience with taking ideas and concepts, products, technologies to the market has been helpful, where I can find a startup or a mid-stage or later stage company that's already in that market, and we can co-develop it and get it into the marketplace faster. So I think one of the learnings is partnering with the Cleveland Clinic and other organizations like this can help a lot, where-Many times a startup wants to try to build all the tools by themself and not go to these large organizations that they know what the problems are.

So if you go in there and you get some really quick learnings with that organization, you can get that product and really build the right solution and really get the tools to the patient faster. So how early are you starting to work with either internal team or external- Yeah... team? Is it two people coming out of the lab, or how early does it get, or do you like them a little more developed?

We go the entire gamut. I've done some deals lately in the last year or so that a company that's, like, in a seed stage. We developed some technology for augmented reality that allows for basically to help individuals suffering from Parkinson's disease, and it allows them to actually see, like, a virtual environment and go through that environment and do rehab in a virtual kind of augmented reality en- environment. Like a spatial AI kinda?

Yeah. So it has set up little hurdles and things that they step over and walk around that are holographic from the augmented reality. So they're wearing the headset, and they're going through these movements, and they can actually measure change in gait, balance, and step over boundaries, and it's all digitized. So now the clinician that's providing the rehab can actually have all this data and see improvements and things that are going on that way.

So we took that in-house invention by one of our leading researchers at the Cleveland Clinic, Dr. Jay Alberts, and licensed it to a company who's also building products in that space called Stroll, and they're out of the UK. And now they've incorporated that new kinda solution and brought that to the marketplace as well. So it's accelerating our ability to get products into the patient's hands faster.

Instead of trying to build it all ourselves, which is, I think, that was the model, I think, maybe 25 years ago, is, "Okay, we have this cool invention. Let's just s- start a new business, hire a team, fund it." A lot of that takes, if you don't have founders and things that are going 100 hours a week at it, it's tough to fill those spots. You bring a consultant in, and it may work at times, but it's...

We're finding that finding these early stage startups that are strategically aligned with assets that we have and researchers that we have, we can bring our strengths to the table, they bring their strengths to the table, and we can actually get a solution there fast. Man, that's incredible. Cleveland Clinic is, really was a big supporter of StartUp Health very early on. We- Oh, wow.

I didn't even know that. Yeah, we would bring a whole family of our early stage startups there to the innovation center to, at one time, you guys were doing these innovation summits- Oh, yeah... that were really cool. In fact, Dr.

Toby Cosgrove, former CEO of Cleveland Clinic, still serves on our board today. Oh, wow. That's fantastic. That's right.

So i- it's just been really extraordinary. W- you're in the Midwest, but Cleveland Clinic is, as a brand, I know it's a global brand. From the innovation perspective, are you bringing all of that innovation to Cleveland itself, or is it throughout your institution in different ways? Yeah.

So we have hospitals in Canada and Dubai and the UK, and then down in South Florida and West Coast here in the US. So there are almost 80,000 employees, I think, we have now. Wow. Yeah.

Which is, it's vast. So we have inventions that come in from all those different locations. They come into our office then, and then we work on them with those inventors that may be across the globe, but- Yeah... all within innovations, which is pretty much housed in Cleveland at our headquarters.

Amazing. We're in the new age of AI. There seems to be a lot of innovation going on in different ways. We talked about sensors briefly.

Yeah. Just all the, lots of different layers of innovation going on, including AI, a lot of it powered by AI. What's your take on where we're at today- Yeah... versus when you started?

Yeah. And what's getting you excited about where we're going? I think when I got started, it was the beginning of using AI for predictive capabilities. So predict when a senior was at risk for a fall.

Change in motion, change in balance, and predicting that based on those cues, and we were making some of the original, like neural networks for that. Then went at CarePredict, they expanded on that. Did deep learning and creating predictive tools for when a senior is at risk for depression, when a senior is at risk for urinary tract infection, all based on activity behavior of changes. It's, and now we're seeing, at the clinic, we're seeing even at an operations standpoint is, how do we improve the experience of care t- for the caregiver as well?

Right. So the physician. So how do we reduce that burden so there's not as much- The scribing is happening invisibly in the background. You got it.

And that has been- It's automatically tied right into the medical record. You got it. Yeah. That, that, I think that's an area, initially people were like, "Oh, that's the low-hanging fruit."

It's a real problem. Physicians are burned out. And then the, the physician can really be with the patient- You got it... not on their computer.

Exactly. Yeah. And we're finding that physicians using our tools, these ambient listening tools and scribing tools, have really benefit from it tremendously. We've done a lot of work in that area, I think incorporating those new tools, even for scheduling and other purposes too, incorporating that.

And then on the predictive side, it's just expanding. We're, I'm working on so many different deals with new algorithms, new predictive tools, new machine learning based tools that can predict this condition in advance. We need to find the right partner to validate it and ensure that it goes through the FDA properly and then gets to the marketplace, and we use partners. Partners have to do that kind of work.

Sure. But we're seeing just, we have inventors come in all the time with, "I can predict this or that or this." And it's, oh, wow, how do we get these... This is greatResearch, but how do we get this in use?

How do we get this to the patient- Right... and actually use these tools? So- Yeah, so much of the great innovation over the years, it's been stuck on the shelf. Yes, exactly.

And it hasn't made its way out into the real world. That's a tough journey, as we all know. Do you... Is your sense that flow, let's call it the commercialization pathway, and then actually making it out, is...

Without trying to lead the witness here, like, how would you compare the next 10 years versus, say, the last five, five to 10 years? Is it gonna speed up? This- Is it- Yeah... will just keep along the journey?

Yeah. It's a good question. I, honestly, the past few years, the, just the awareness around AI and everyone's... I think it's 'cause it's in our vernacular now.

It's part of our world- Right... where we see it on our, on our personal life, even, and it's popping up, whether it's in Facebook or Google. So everyone's aware of these tools, and so I think that awareness, though, has made it where even in our work life, physicians are, like, more open to let's use these tools, right? And there's still limitations, but I think we're probably in an acceleration phase.

Like, the next 10 years is probably gonna be... I just remember when AI, the original AI 10, 15 years ago, it was just an area that was like a buzzword. People were like, "What is it?" or, "Is it real?"

or, "It's just analytics." Or- Right... "It's just, it's black box." Right.

But now it's... You can see the tools in y- the value of the tools, even in our personal life. You can use them, and it's in- incredible. Yeah.

There's still hallucinations and things that need to be improved. But that's, week by week, you see it improving. I mean- Yeah, exactly. I remember when I first started just playing with the tools, it was...

It'd constantly make errors where I was like, "Oh, wow." Right, right, right. Like, I'd have it, like, just give me my quick bio and just see if it would make errors. And it would make, "He did his graduate work at the University of Arizona over here," and it's, "That's not right."

And so I'd notice. But now, if you, when I do it, it's almost perfect. There's very few errors. Yeah.

So I can tell even at, at, at that level. It's incredible. I- over, let's call it three years ago, two and a half years ago, I was seeing a real kind of two paths. One was in healthcare specifically with how I was seeing AI play out.

There's the administrative path- Yeah... of a lot of tools and solutions leveraging AI to fix the administrative issues. Yeah. We talked about tie in data right into the EMR or...

But then this other path, the more clinical path of, in some cases, new discoveries or really changing care delivery. And- Yeah... what's so exciting to me today versus even two, three years ago is a c- just a couple years ago, like, 98% was all on the administrative path- Yeah... fixing some of the table stakes of the system, which we all know needs a lot of work, and that's a huge help.

But now I'm also seeing just extraordinary leaps in terms of how this is going to change the care, discovery, cures, all sorts of amazing- Yeah... innovations going on. And w- what I think is so interesting about your background and even where you started your career and some of the stuff you were saying at the beginning is I'm seeing this exciting marriage of the innovation layers, so the types of sensors that are now available, the types of materials, material science available, the types of, let's call them consumer grade wearables in many cases, or some cases, are becoming more advanced than clinic- former clinical grade- Yeah...

tools and sensors. And now everyday people have access to really just extraordinary clinical grade, medical grade technologies at a fraction of the price, and this is just all happening very quickly. Very quickly. Yeah.

It's an exciting time. Honestly, when working at the clinic too, we see the physicians and physician burnout, and we want them operating at their, at, at top of license, right? So having the tools and the systems to allow them to perform at their best is really, I see it as one of our major aims. So using these types of materials, these new sensors, bringing in this new input data to make the best, to basically reduce that burden for them so they can perform and really provide the best care across the globe.

How about robotics? Are you doing anything in robotics and- Yeah, we have, we have some really cool projects in that space as well. One is a, actually it's an organization internally, we call it SimVitro, but they actually do a lot of robotic measurements of, for prostheses and things to look at different s- different types of motion, and they have really advanced tools. His name is Dr.

Rob Colburn. Definitely some really advanced tools that they, him and his team have developed that leading researchers across the globe that they actually provide and equip them and get them ready to do those types of experiments. In- incredible. I'm so glad I saw you today here at Health, and I always bump into you in the coolest places.

I remember one time, this was a couple years ago, we had the most amazing time at, what, the Kentucky Derby. Oh my gosh. That was so much fun. That was- But it's just really great.

Any last w- w- words of wisdom to share with innovators out there, builders, people... You've been through the journey a few times. Yeah. And what would you tell them?

What would your advice be for how they get into an opportunity like with- Yeah... the Cleveland Clinic or just more broadly even? Like, what wisdom would you share with them, these people building? There's an extraordinary ecosystem that's emerged over the last10 plus years.

Yep. That's just really extraordinary. What's your advice? My advice would be, one, reach out to me at the Cleveland Clinic.

I can help guide you in the right direction to individuals that may take particular leads on whether it's digital health, that'd be my space, or therapeutics, or even devices. We have different leads, but happy to guide them. Come in early and get feedback, right? Right, from the, from us, from the physicians.

Actually get that kind of direct feedback. Two, go to StartUp Health. Thank you. Honestly, 'cause it's, it...

Connecting with the right people, you can give them some assessment. There's companies probably that are similar to what they're doing that you can say, "This is what they did and this worked," or, "We recommend maybe meeting with this group." But you've been through it. Your organization is, has the chops and the expertise to help guide them.

I know it helped our organizations greatly, so it's- Yeah. Could you just share just for a minute, we get this question all the time: What's it like to be in StartUp Health and what's it like to... You're on this journey alone as a founder, and then you become part of a community and collaborative environment with other founders. What's, what was your experience like?

Experience, like with CarePredict, it was phenomenal. We were an early stage company, and you had guided us to some of our initial customers and some of the initial tests, some of our initial investors. And being with like-minded early stage founder entrepreneurs, other executives that are early stage, I remember going to some of their early conferences and meetings and sharing notes and saying, "Oh, you should talk to this group. They're interested in senior health tech, and you should talk to them," or, "Let me introduce you to them."

That's really helpful when you're on your own out there getting started. That's, it's critical to be around others that are in the same kind of... maybe a couple years ahead of you. Yeah.

Or you can even mentor the ones that are coming in and help them get started and guide them. But so it's like a- Yeah, there's so much to learn from each other and help, also help your other peers so they don't make maybe the same mistakes you made. Exactly. Yeah.

Thank you for everything- Thank you... that you've done and everything you're continuing to do to push innovation forward, and I'm so glad we're here today. I'm glad to see you. Thanks, Joe.

This has been a, a fun, fun little ride. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you.

Thank you. [outro jingle] And finally, an invitation to all of the extraordinary health transformers. Whether you are a startup, someone building the future of health, or whether you are an investor, funder, or buyer of the solutions out there in the marketplace, this is an invitation to you to join the StartUp Health member community. Learn more at startuphealth.

com. Look forward to hopefully seeing you soon.