3 min reading timeIdea for you: You carry your smartphone everywhere and your smartphone has video, yes?
The next time you’re having lunch with someone as smart as Kathleen Malaspina, take out your video camera and ask her a question or two about what she’s doing. Don’t get overly concerned about audio/video quality. It’s good marketing and networking for the both of you.
I caught up with Kathleen last week and asked her about mobile health (mhealth) and her current projects. Enjoy the video. The transcript follows.
Joe Hage: Hey, it’s Joe. I’m here with Kathleen Malaspina from Malaspina Healthcare. We worked together a bit when I was at Cardiac Science. She’s smart! (Kathleen chuckles) And we just enjoyed lunch together. Kathleen is doing some work in mobile health. Tell us a bit about a pressing issue for you these days.
Kathleen Malaspina: So I think mobile health has a lot of confusing definitions and it confuses people because it’s so new. They don’t understand what it is or how it fits into their business and, for a lot of companies, they haven’t even brought it back in the forefront – but I think that it’s going to become an important part of the mix in the future. And if nothing else, companies need to understand what it could mean for them even if it’s just defining what is mobile health is and what it isn’t in their environment.
If you’re a medical device company, does that mean that you have to create apps for your sales people or for your physicians so that they can use those tools in a clinical environment? I don’t know but it’s …
Joe Hage: It’s kind of a catch phrase, “mobile health.” I mean, to me, mobile health means I can wirelessly do something either on my smartphone or on my computer that has something to do with health. I mean, is that right?
Kathleen Malaspina: It is, and I mean one example is there is a company in the UK that put together an application, a mobile health app, called i-stethoscope and so the docs used it instead of a stethoscope.
So it could be something where it’s remote diagnostics of information from a patient out doing their daily activities … to a processing center where they can read the EKG … or whatever it happens to be they are transmitting wirelessly.
It’s all of that. So defining it now is hard because it is all that. But what is important for a company? Each company has think about it in their own world, specialty, or silo.
Joe Hage: You were telling me you recently did some consulting work for a midcap? A neurology company?
Kathleen Malaspina: A neurology midcap neurology company, publicly traded on NASDAQ, and I put together for them a five-year roadmap on their product for the US as well as for several international markets in Europe and Asia.
I looked at what they had in-house in their R&D pipeline, technology, and intellectual property as well as some licensing agreements they were working on and helped them to put together a plan for the next five years about how to grow its business, which products should have which cadence, which should be launched in which markets, and what was the right sequence to be put out.
Joe Hage: Well, I know that you’ve been very successful. Almost all your work comes as word of mouth. I’m happy to lend my word to your word of mouth but just so I have the right words, tell me what specifically is your sweet spot and who among my viewers and readers should contact you.
Kathleen Malaspina: Right, so I work with CEOs and senior executives of medical device marketing, medical technology, and biotech companies typically looking to grow bottom line and top line over a certain period of time … whether that’s short-term in the next couple of quarters all the way out to, you know, 5-year growth plans.
Joe Hage: And quickly, where were you before you went out on your own?
Kathleen Malaspina: I worked for Philips and I was based in Seattle. Before that I was back in the mother ship in Amsterdam so I’ve lived and worked in Europe, in Singapore, in Australia so around the globe.
Joe Hage: And what was your last role at Philips?
Kathleen Malaspina: I was the Global Director of Marketing, Sonicare.
Joe Hage: Very interesting!
Kathleen Malaspina: Yeah, thank you.
Joe Hage: Thanks again for lunch today.
Kathleen Malaspina: You’re welcome.
Joe Hage: I really enjoyed seeing you.
Kathleen Malaspina: Okay.
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