Pathological Optimism — How Cloud DX is Making Healthcare Better for Everyone
By: Dan Stein
Tags: Founder Interviews, Startup Life, Entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, Startup

Interview with Robert Kaul, CEO of Cloud DX

Interview with Robert Kaul, CEO of Cloud DX

Tell us about Cloud DX. What do you do?

Cloud DX is a leader in digital healthcare with rapidly growing sales across North America. Our complete remote patient monitoring (RPM) and telehealth platform incorporates proprietary medical devices, mobile apps, clinical dashboards, artificial intelligence and EMR integration. In one recent third-party study, Cloud DX technology reduced hospital admissions due to COPD while achieving 100% patient satisfaction. Cloud DX is the co-winner of the Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE, a Fast Company “World Changing Idea” finalist and the recent winner of the Waterloo MedTech Startup to Scale Up Award of Excellence.

What is your startup’s origin story?

When volunteering in Haiti as a young doctor, Sonny Kohli was struck by the lack of access to basic medical equipment and was moved to create a world where healthcare was better for everyone. Together with childhood friends, serial entrepreneurs Robert Kaul and Anthony Kaul, they founded Cloud DX in 2014 to bring to market the company’s first product, a connected wrist cuff blood pressure monitor they called Pulsewave. The same year, the Cloud DX team entered the prestigious Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE competition to create a “medical tricorder” inspired by the original Star Trek TV show. Cloud DX’s “tricorder” called Vitaliti was names one of the top ten finalists and was awarded the BOLD EPIC INNOVATOR AWARD. Today, Cloud DX’s technology is leveraged in major studies across Canada related to remote patient monitoring of people with chronic disease including COPD and CHF. US sales have also increased with clinical adoption in New York, New Jersey and Tennessee. The Vitaliti continuous wearable was recently selected by the world-respected Population Health Research Institute for a 20,000 VISION-2 study of post-operative cardiac patients. The study will kick off in early 2021.

Had you been involved in the industry before this startup? What is your background?

I have nearly 30 years of experience in sales, marketing, operations and a successful track record leading early-stage technology companies, including Luna Technologies International Inc (where I served as Director of Operations) and ARA Safety Inc. (where I was COO). I was the founder & CEO of Cloud Diagnostics LLC, a digital health distribution company launched in 2009. Within nine months we exited with an asset sale to Biosign Technologies Inc. I served as Executive VP of Biosign from 2010–2011, and CEO from 2012–2014. Under my leadership we turned around the firm, raised nearly $9 million in fresh capital, generated over $6 million in sales & acquired four separate software companies. In 2014 I led an initiative to take BioSign private and as a result acquired all IP rights to Pulsewave. Cloud DX was formed the same year.

What’s unique about your company? What are the key differentiators between you and other players?

Our current product offering, the Connected Health Kit with the pulsewave device provides remote patient monitoring meeting exploding demand for virtual care and precipitated by the global pandemic and aided by loosening restrictions surrounding medical reimbursement in the US and Canada. Remote patient monitoring is shown to be favourably accepted by patients and beneficial to improving patient outcomes. Vitaliti, which is still in final stages of development was initially validated by Hamilton Health Sciences researchers in the VERDICT study against the IEEE global standard for medical device approval and will be further validated in the VISION-2 study kicking off in 2021. Vitaliti enables continuous monitoring of patient vitals — something that is currently not even done in hospital — which will be a game-changer for patients and for the healthcare community at large.

Take us through a day in your life. What does the typical day look like?

Currently my team is spend positioning the company for stratospheric growth and scale. This includes building out my leadership team, recruiting investors and managing key strategic relationships.

What has been the most challenging part of growing your company?

The global pandemic has rapidly accelerated adoption of virtual care technologies five-fold across the world. Scaling to meet demand on this scale presents a significant by exciting challenge for our highly ambitious team.

What has been your best marketing channel? What are some channels you are looking to explore next?

Certainly the decision to pursue the Qualcomm XPRIZE was a pivotal marketing move. It garnered the company global media attention. In addition, clinical validation is key when introducing medical devices to market. To that end, we have put heavy emphasis on building strong academic partnerships for funding and research and development. Those partnerships have helped to establish credibility and confidence in our team and our technology. We just recently hired a new head of marketing and you will expect to see Cloud DX significantly ramp up digital, content and PR efforts in the US and Canada shortly.

What apps do you use that you would recommend to others?

iMessage for founder communication, Teams for organizational communication, Skype and Zoom for outside consultants, customers and partners, Confluence/Jira/BitBucket for our developers, Huddle for regulated documents, Dropbox for non-regulated documents.

Do you have a book, podcast, or Youtube channel you would recommend to other Entrepreneurs?

I read Inc, FastCo and Wired, wish I had more time for podcasts and YouTube!

If you could go back in time to the day you founded your company, what advice would you give yourself?

Listen to your team a little more.

What’s something you’ve learned from building your business that someone else can learn from?

Churchill famously said “Never, never, never give up.” He also said “Sometimes it is not enough to do one’s best; sometimes one must do what is required.” Good axioms to follow every day.