JA: Our next speaker that I had the pleasure of speaking with, I briefly met at the summit last month. Jennifer Celio Li, who’s the Manager of Digital Health Partnerships at Samsung, is with us today and she’ll be discussing how Samsung is using tech to enable more equitable outcomes as well. So Jen, thanks so much for your time and coming on to join us today.

JCL: Thank you so much, Jerry, and thank you, HITLAB, for having me. I’ve been a HITLAB fan for many years, so honored to be here.

JA: No, it’s wonderful to have you on, Jen. For those of the audience that don’t know you, we’d love to hear about your background and what led you into public health and of course, more importantly, digital health.

JCL: Sure. So my career actually began as an occupational therapist. I worked with special needs kids throughout the city of New York. And I started my career working in East Harlem, which at the time was a food desert. And I noticed what children were eating on their way to school, namely candy, chips, and most notably, pixie sticks. And then I wondered what if their eating contributed to their learning and behavior challenges that I was responsible for managing. So I looked around the neighborhood and I thought, what other choices do people have here? And then I was looking for a way to make a broader impact beyond the one-to-one of providing therapy. And it led me to public health. I was interested in creating an environment in which the default is a healthy choice. And I wanted to create access to these choices and foster prevention of chronic diseases, especially. So I actually discovered digital health by accident. Someone had contacted me on LinkedIn, who was beginning a company for monitoring at home. And I found that technology in this case was the enabler in making frequent monitoring and early prevention accessible and convenient. And I thought, I want more of that. So I joined two other digital health companies after that. And now I found my way to Samsung. And I’m very excited about the opportunities we have at Samsung to promote health.

JA: No, that’s really wonderful, Jen. And we’re glad to have you with us, sharing your background, of course, doing the important work that you’re doing with Samsung right now. Synonymous, of course, with communications, Samsung, not so much with healthcare. So we’d love to hear about the impact that Samsung is making on healthcare at the moment, as well as of course, most importantly, because of the topic today, health equity as well.

JCL: Absolutely. Yeah, I was actually just having a conversation this morning. Somebody had met me and said, “hey, Samsung and health, I only know Samsung for TVs.” And we’re definitely trying to change the narrative of that at Samsung. So let me just share my screen here.

JA: Yeah, please.

JCL: And share a slide. So, Samsung actually is very active when it comes to health and healthcare. And I only learned this after joining the company. So healthcare delivery, we actually have a medical center in Seoul, Korea. In fact, this is where Joe Biden, our president, would go if he needed to be hospitalized while in Korea. We also have a diagnostic equipment branch as well as pharmaceutical manufacturing. And then digital health is where we’re playing today. We are part of Samsung Electronics. So the Samsung vision really is to build a healthier future for everyone. Share the next slide here. So we are also in the home. As you can see here, we have smart appliances, washer, dryers, refrigerators, as well as our mobile phones and smartwatches, which are kind of better known to the public. So through these consumer touchpoints, Samsung is actually in 70% of US households. So we have access not only to consumers, but we can also provide access to health and wellness tools in a variety of ways. So we have the Galaxy smartwatch shown here and just announced yesterday at Samsung Unpacked in Seoul, Korea. We have a new Galaxy watch coming out, the 6, and that will include a three-in- one bioactive sensor that measures ECG, blood pressure, body composition, along with heart rate. So our goal is to help you develop healthy habits by providing you insights on what you’re doing well on and what needs improvement. And this is all data-based.

JA: Wonderful, thanks so much. It’s great to see all this different technology coming out that is going to be used, of course, within the healthcare sphere, and some of which the audience, I’m sure, is very familiar with already. But we’d love to hear you talk about more around those devices and how they are impacting the different health outcomes, of course, and also the different ways that Samsung is currently working to be more inclusive and equitable in the different practices, of course, which is, of course, I think a challenge for all of these different organizations that are working around med devices and interoperability and stuff.

JCL: Absolutely. So I’m just going to share another slide here. So this is an example of how the Galaxy smartwatch is used in a clinical application. So Samsung partnered with Kaiser-Permanente in California to develop a virtual cardiac rehab program called HeartWise. And traditional center-based programs have very low completion rates, despite the evidence that cardiac rehab improves health outcomes and quality of life. So by providing a virtual program, it allowed the enrollment of patients who are unable to travel, which is also a barrier compounded by widespread center closures during COVID. And we were able to achieve 87% completion rates versus the average of 27% for clinic- based rehab. And through this program, we were also able to reach a demographically diverse population, which was previously understudied, which included women, Asians, Pacific Islanders, Blacks, and Hispanics.

JA: Yeah, no, I mean, that’s absolutely wonderful to hear about the different collaborations that you’ve got going on, especially with Kaiser-Permanente, who we are very familiar with at HITLAB and stuff. Just to sort of wrap up, because I know we are at the very, very end of our segment, is there anything else that you sort of wanted to mention or touch upon in terms of what Samsung is sort of doing right now around the, you know, inclusion and equity sphere, and sort of what’s – maybe what’s sort of on the table for the next, maybe 6 to 12 months or so?

JCL: Sure. I think I want to right now call out some of our team members who are very busy in doing clinical studies, user research studies, and product testing. So in terms of having an inclusive lens, the human factors team, for example, included participants throughout the country with various levels of literacy and tech experience, inclusive of various skin tones, because the smartwatches actually use optical sensors, which can vary their readings based on skin tone, and also inclusive of genders and different age groups, and even risk sizes. So of course we’re talking about the smartwatch here, and so they are doing user testing, product testing. Across all of these different factors.

JA: So it’s a really important work that you guys are doing, Jen, at Samsung. And thanks so much for bringing to the audience today, the work that you are doing to really work with other organizations within the healthcare industry to make sure that you are hitting all of those inclusivity and equity points within the ecosystem and stuff. And if you in the audience do want to connect with Jen and find out a little bit more about what they are doing at Samsung around the devices that they’re bringing out in the next couple of months to a year, and more work around the inclusive and equitable practices that they are putting into place, her LinkedIn is in the chat, and also the website to the Samsung organization, where you can find out more information about how they’re getting more involved in healthcare and sort of changing the worldview from just phones and TVs and so forth. But thank you so much, Jen, for taking the time to come on and speak with the HITLAB audience today.

JCL: Thank you, Jerry. Thanks for having me.

JA: No, thanks so much.