Interview with John Mastrototaro

Movano, CEO

June 2024

I caught up with John Mastrototaro, CEO of Movano Health. Movano is innovating in the wearable space having just launched a wearable ring – Elvie Ring. The ring is designed primarily for women and the company is taking a relatively unique approach for working towards FDA approval as a medical device. I’ve known John for a long time — I even pitched him to hire me 15 years ago. I'm always grateful for the chance to catch up!

Adam: Is digital health a requirement for precision medicine?

John: It has to be! Especially as we think of the long term. When we have a lot of data on a lot of people those patterns that come from digital health tools (along with other data sources) will enable us to deliver the appropriate precision medicine interventions. 

Adam:  Compelling point can you say more?

John: Think of a relatively healthy person. We’ll need (maybe better said as "want") to monitor them. And if they’re relatively healthy, we’re likely monitoring through digital health tools. As we track them over time, we can see patterns, we can detect things. We won’t necessarily need to wait until a diagnosis of diabetes or heart disease, etc. is made. Instead, we can identify the earlier stages and offer these tailored, precise, interventions earlier. We’ll have the data to determine which intervention is appropriate for which person. 

Adam: I see what you’re saying. With something like cancer, maybe we’ll have all the biomarkers needed for precision medicine through tests of the person and/or the tumor. But if we want to deliver interventions earlier we’ll need digital health tools to provide this individual insight.

John: Exactly! So, people can keep doing what they love in their later years and still have a quality of life. We’ve been thinking about this a lot and the need to monitor and track this info digitally, so we can use a person's own data as a baseline. Then with this baseline — established early — we can see changes over time.

Adam: Let me take this a step further. Do you think digital health solutions could themselves be precision medicine interventions?

John: I think they are. Digital medicine interventions are already precision medicine. Take for example the closed-loop systems we have in diabetes. The system monitors data – blood glucose and potentially other measures someday – then it has a very complex and ultimately personalized algorithm that delivers an individually tailored insulin regimen. That strikes me as already precision medicine and digital health.

Thank you for sharing your insights, John!