#146 Ezra: Using AI to Bring Fast, Affordable Cancer Screening to the World | Emi Gal, Founder & CEO

“I realized that the main reason why people die of cancer is because they found it too late. And the main reason we still find cancer late for people is because there’s no easy way to screen for cancer in the body that’s fast, accurate, and affordable. And so, I decided to focus on that problem.” — Emi Gal Learn how Ezra has brought down the cost of early cancer detection by 80% and the time required to get screened by 66%—all by harnessing the power of AI and Machine Learning to make MRIs an order of magnitude more efficient. As well as how they’ve built an asset light business in healthcare and what it takes to be a software-centric business within a heavily regulated industry. Episode Guide with Books, Links, and Ways to Dive Deeper https://www.danielscrivner.com/notes/ezra-fast-affordable-cancer-screening-outlier-founders Transcript https://www.danielscrivner.com/notes/ezra-fast-affordable-cancer-screening-outlier-founders-transcript Chapters (00:00:00) - Introduction (00:01:21) - Origin Story of Ezra (00:03:22) - How Ezra Tried 12 Different Ideas Around Cancer Screening (00:08:22) - Screening for Cancer with Ezra vs Best Practices Today (00:11:01) - MRI 101: A Simple Explanation of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (00:14:45) - The Dawn of Proactive Healthcare and The Patient Will See You Now (00:19:58) - The Hippocratic Oath, Doing No Harm, and Early Screening (00:25:09) - How Often Should We All Be Screening for Cancer? (00:28:54) - What It’s Like to Get an MRI Scan (00:33:41) - Ezra’s Approach to AI and FDA Approval of AI Updates (00:41:06) - Breaking Down Ezra’s Asset Light Business Model (00:46:02) - Why the Future of Healthcare is Proactive and Holistic (00:50:36) - The Highs and Lows of Building Ezra (00:54:05) - Lessons Learned Building a Mission Centric Company About Ezra Ezra was founded in 2018 to build the world’s first fast, accurate, and affordable way to screen for cancer everywhere in the body. To do this, they’ve harnessed the power of Magnetic Resonance Imaging, often called an MRI, and dramatically improved the efficiency of imaging and analyses using Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. To date, they’ve decreased the cost of getting a full body MRI scan by 80% and the time required to get scanned by 66%. Every year, more than 20,000,000 Americans are diagnosed with cancer. Without a fast, accurate, and affordable way to proactively screen the entire body for cancer, many of these diagnoses come too late. For some types of cancer, including colon cancer, once it reaches Stage 4 your chances of survival are just 4%. Ezra’s goal is to bring down the cost and time required to get screened for cancer by an order of magnitude—reducing both by 90%+. Ezra is an incredible example of using AI and ML to dramatically improve the effectiveness of an existing technology in order to bring down costs within a critical segment of healthcare. You can save $150 off an Ezra screening by using promo code Outlier150 when checking out on Ezra.com. Ezra | How it Works | Twitter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices