This episode features an interview with Evan Kirstel, a B2B thought leader, top technology influencer, and enterprise industry insider. Evan’s business, eViRa Health, acts as a social media partner to clients in the healthcare industry to grow massive global audiences and deepen user engagement. We talk with Evan about how he paired his expertise in social media with the healthcare industry, and helped revolutionize the future of healthcare tech.
This episode features an interview with Evan Kirstel, a B2B thought leader, top technology influencer, and enterprise industry insider. Evan’s business, eViRa Health, acts as a social media partner to clients in the healthcare industry to grow massive global audiences and deepen user engagement. We talk with Evan about how he paired his expertise in social media with the healthcare industry, and helped revolutionize the future of healthcare tech.
3 Takeaways:
Key Quotes:
Bio:
Evan is a tech influencer and social media mastermind. He has racked up more than 500,000 followers across Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn, and has helped companies like Samsung, IBM and HealthTap increase their brand visibility to reach massive audiences across social media platforms.
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TBK016 – Evan Kirstel Transcript
Lauren Vaccarello: Data, for most, is a business. But for Evan Kirstel, it’s an obsession. Evan describes himself as a tech influencer-slash-evangelist. He has more than 500,000 followers across Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram. He’s helped companies like Intel, 3M and AT&T Business grow a massive online audience through an organic reach in the tens of millions. Now his company, eViRA Health, is leveraging that social media prowess to help clients in the healthcare industry gain visibility, share thought leadership and deepen user engagement. They act as social media partners to clients in the health tech landscape to create a network of influencers spanning the globe. eViRa has worked with the American Heart Association, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts and MedTech Boston, among others. Today we’re talking with Evan about trends he sees in healthcare data, how the pandemic has affected the industry and the future of health tech. So without further ado, let’s get into it. Welcome to Truth Be Known.
Hi, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Truth Be Known. We have a super exciting guest today. We have Evan Kirstel from eViRa Health. Evan, welcome to the show. Tell everybody a little bit about yourself.
Evan Kirstel: I'm the resident Twitter fanatic on this call. So we've been following each other on Twitter, on social media for some time. So it's really nice to finally make that face-to-face connection. I've spent 30 years in enterprise tech, actually primarily in sales and biz dev and alliances from some big companies like Intel and Oracle and Acme packet and audio codes, company in the telecom and communication space. Really the last seven years almost. I've been an independent sort of solo practitioner out there working with clients on social media, content creation and social media marketing, and thought leadership and engagement. And frankly after 30 years, it's nice to be out of the corporate rat race and doing my own thing. Onwards and upwards. I have a company called eViRa Health and we're super excited about the rise of emerging digital health and health technology companies, leveraging technology to empower patients, doctors, and , society to really address. Unique challenges in healthcare and create amazing content that reaches audiences across the social landscape. eViRa Health is a company started by myself and business partner and we combined our super powers to help. Enterprise with the mission of empowering digital health tech, and emerging companies in the healthcare space, leverage social media for thought leadership and engagement, education, and outreach. And we're now working with some amazing brands, companies that you've heard of like Microsoft and 3m, but also our emerging tech companies and startups who are really lost. On the world of social media and have challenges, getting their voice, sharing their voice and creating compelling content. So we're partnering with these companies as a sort of boutique consultancy to really empower them, to be seen, heard, and understood across a variety of social media networks.
Lauren Vaccarello: Awesome. It is really fun to have you here. And it's nice to get another long-term Twitter user.
Evan Kirstel: Yeah, it's been fascinating through the pandemic. It's been frankly, a lifesaver for keeping those connections going for news and insight into the pandemic to keeping your personal and professional reputation and street cred alive, while we're not meeting people. Personally, my Twitter account has exploded and engagement has increased and even brands I've have upped their game. been fascinating to watch that evolve.
Lauren Vaccarello: It is. And in the last 14 months, has it been 14, 15 months.
Evan Kirstel: I've lost count. It feels like a decade, that's sort of dog years now.
Lauren Vaccarello: Really is the 500th day of March because it's still March, 2020. But just how like human behavior has changed. And for what we thought was this brief moment in time to a completely new way of operating and a new way of interacting with people.
Evan Kirstel: Yeah, and we're craving connection. And so we're seeking new ways to connect. Even though people are zoomed out in many ways, I think video has been a lifeline. Audio has been a lifeline for me. I'm on clubhouse every day, which is the hot, new social media network and doing podcasts like this, where we're talking to each other, we're also seeing each other. So that conversational connection has been just such a godsend.
Lauren Vaccarello: I totally agree. I can only imagine what this would have been like if we didn't have Zoom and video conversations, and we didn't have this, some sort of human connection. If it was you really can't go anywhere and see anyone. At least we have, at least we've had this for the last thousand days.
Evan Kirstel: What about your customers? I don't know much about exactly who you work with, but how have they navigated the pandemic and survived, thrived in some cases maybe what did they say?
Lauren Vaccarello: Been so interesting. I've seen customers and just have to accelerate digital transformation. The, this is good enough, no longer made any sense. It is. We have to absolutely have the correct data. We have to have it in real time. I have to know what's happening in my business. Went from a nice to have to complete and total table stakes. I see the type of innovation that they've had to think about and that forced change of now, how do you interact with people now? What kind of products do you sell now? How do you create these personal connections online? Is completely incredible. One of our customers is by air and they do a lot of really great work, but one of the things that they work on is ventilator production. I think they have to 600 ventilators a day or a week now. And they had to massively scale up production. The only way you can do that ways with accurate data. And I hear them talking about this and seeing so many businesses see this as an opportunity to move faster, to reinvent, to really thrive. And it is a necessity is the mother of invention. And none of us wanted this. None of us wanted to have to deal with it. You circumstances, but still many businesses have just.found new ways to operate that is really inspiring shows his perseverance and grit.
Evan Kirstel: Yeah, grit is the key word. I think you said earlier resilience as well, like the two themes of this past year and supply chain disrupted, getting worse, even with the semiconductor shortage, with things like that. Pipeline shut down and all kinds of disruptions globally and borders and transportation. It seems like it's getting worse, not better, which is very disturbing.
Lauren Vaccarello: And again, if the pandemic taught us anything, we. You can't rely on instinct. We can't take anything for granted and past experience doesn't work anymore. And the only way to get to the other side, the only way to be successful is I have to know what's going on and I have to pull data in as quickly as possible to know what's happening and seeing these levels of innovation popping out of industries that just had to the hotel industry. E-commerce CPG healthcare. Healthcare has gone through this massive transformation in the last 14 months.
Evan Kirstel: Yeah, this epidemic was an epidemic of bad or missing data as well. I track all the statistics here in new England and Massachusetts just had its first zero death day. For COVID. And it was a long time getting to the point where we understood the data behind the pandemic and infections and vaccinations and tracking. And hopefully we've learned something in this process and we can apply those practices to other businesses and experiences.
Lauren Vaccarello: Again, no one would have ever wanted this, but I am hoping there is a degree of good that comes out of this, that to your point in the healthcare space. Maybe we didn't have to get there this quickly, but now the infrastructure you've put in place, the new way of thinking across the health care space, I want to believe we can apply to not just dealing with a massive pandemic, but we can apply to hopefully going back to normal life.
Evan Kirstel: Yeah, no. And healthcare is such a fascinating space. We’re generating all of this sort of exhaust around ourselves from wearables to. Virtual care to remote patient monitoring and getting all that data into systems in a clean way that doctors, practitioners can, researchers can use to gather insights is so important.
Lauren Vaccarello: Do you believe healthcare in some ways has lagged behind other industries with digital transformation? Why do you think that's happened?
Evan Kirstel: It's a tremendously bureaucratic quasi-public private partnership. If you've ever seen a org chart of health and human services, it looks like spaghetti wiring under your desk. It's just so complex, overly complex and we keep making it more complicated versus simplifying and and making the patient, the center of the universe instead of, this bureaucracy or hospitals or insurance companies, or what have you. So we need to make patients the center of care and strengthen the doctor or patient nurse, patient relationships, and empower patients with data and insights and advice and guidance and education. And that's been very slow, it's just slow to change and very, there's a lot of very antiquated legacy IT systems as well. How many times you go to a doctor's office and you've got to sign in on the clipboard. This kind of stuff is just endemic and in healthcare. And I see I've seen massive change, like even over the pandemic. We've seen virtual care and telehealth go from 1% utilization to 35, 40%. And it's, it's gonna fall back some, but even the adoption of digital services, like tele-health or some of the monitoring tools or remote patient care have really taken off out of necessity, like you said they've had to react and respond and adopt. If there's a light at the end of the tunnel, maybe it's been some of the adoption of these new technologies. And hopefully it won't fall back into our very bureaucratic old school way of thinking in healthcare.
Lauren Vaccarello: Do you remember this time, last year where it was, two weeks and you're going no, it'll be three months. And we only thought it was a few months. And it was only a few months. I don't think behavior would really change because it was, we'll do this for a little while. It's fun and silly to work from home. I'll stop and I'll feed my kids. It's a novelty where after 14 or 15 months and counting, it's no longer a novelty. It is deep behavioral changes. I. As much as I want to go back to the office and see people, the idea of commuting five days a week just seems overwhelming.
Evan Kirstel: Well, especially with San Francisco traffic and Boston's the same. We went from the number one, most congested city to like the number 50 so overnight. But yeah it's, I hope you don't go back to exactly what we had before. Cause that would be disappointing. And I think there are things we can learn and also out of necessity, In the U S where we're maybe at the beginning of the end here, but globally, we have these variants and it's not over till it's over, in terms of borders and variants and booster shots. And we're just not there yet, despite every everyone's anticipatory celebrating, the reduction in deaths and illness. I don't think this is just going to disappear. Even the Spanish flu from the 1918 pandemic never really disappeared. It morphed into what we have today, which is the common flu. So these things have a tendency to have very long tails sadly.
Lauren Vaccarello: I know, and it's so easy to forget that in the U S things feel like there's a light at the end of the tunnel, we're going in a good direction. But then the rest of the world isn't there yet. And we are in a very, obviously global, but if something is happening in India or in another country, we can assume that is not going to have a global impact. And it, I hope and aspire for us to be in a place where everyone is having that same positive direction that we're having, that, you had zero deaths in Massachusetts. What can we do so that's happening on a more global scale. Otherwise this is going to be whack-a-mole of it just keeps coming.
Evan Kirstel: Yeah, I don't know. Half of my clients, friends, colleagues in tech are from other parts of the world, India and Europe and Brazil. And it's definitely there, they're in the midst of this fight and it's so tragic to see. And most Americans, they don't really watch the news. So we think, just about are, short term prospects, but yeah, very challenging. Cross fingers, I think it's going to be a long slog.
Lauren Vaccarello: I think it'll be a long slog and I want to believe we are getting it is painful in parts of the world, but it will start to have a rolling turn across everywhere. And I go back to, this has caused a long-term behavioral shift and how all of us work and operate and live and interact that this is not a, next week. There's, no more cases globally. Fantastic. We won't go back to the way things were. It just we're wired differently. Now it's 15 months of wiring. And I even on the healthcare side, I don't see telemedicine. All of a sudden going back to one or 2%, because now we all know I can get on my phone and I could talk to a doctor on my phone and I don't have to get up and wait in line and go in. When I'm sick, I can have a conversation to decide if I need to come in.
Evan Kirstel: And it's amazing. Even the doctors are seeing the value in terms of them collaborating with other doctors and using other tools to do research and so the whole system has gone virtual and not just on the patient side. So that's been really eye-opening and yeah, we'll look, we'll take the silver lining of that dark cloud anytime.
Lauren Vaccarello: Yeah, it's there, there has to be. I'm the eternal optimist. There has to be the silver lining. What do you think about the future? What do you think are going to be even in the healthcare space? Some of the biggest changes that are still to come and still to roll out.
Evan Kirstel: That there are so many changes. There's a move to the empowered patient, the educated patient. So patients who can take care of and manage their conditions. On their own, so whether it's like an Apple watch with diabetes, glucose monitoring built in, or remote patient monitoring into the home for aging in place, or, a lot of that technology is going to be in the home and make us safer and more secure and allow us to not have to visit the hospital or even the doctor's office. So that takes a big challenge off the plate. So I think technology has a big role. And I think, doctors are beginning to think differently, whether it's working independently and concierge medicine, or whether it's, offering their services via telehealth of direct to patient. Kind of care house visits are back. So all kinds of ways that. The relationship with the patient and doctors is evolving, but I think I'm, yeah, most excited about as a techie, the use of technology to take ownership of my health data, to manage it with not just a Fitbit, measuring my steps, but all kinds of interesting technologies, wearables potentially glasses and other things that will keep me healthy and, be able to detect disease early. Earlier than we ever could before in terms of screening and genomics and other things. So I'm really excited about that empowerment as a patient. And that's only gonna accelerate.
Lauren Vaccarello: I love that. And honestly, I hadn't even thought about that. And being able to detect issues, disease conditions early. That is what is truly going to save lives.
Evan Kirstel: There’s almost no cancer that isn't treatable. If it's detected early and the, the single drop of blood tests now for cancer screening, the testing for Alzheimer's a decade or two before it, it sets in, diabetes before it's a chronic all these things will allow us to live better lives.
Lauren Vaccarello: It is. And there's, I can't remember the name of the movie, but there is. This movie where basically the rich people live on spaceships and the poor people are mine.
Evan Kirstel: Is that a movie that must be something.
Lauren Vaccarello: I think he was, I think he made the spaceships and he's up there. And then you find…
Evan Kirstel: There is, it's a good point because there is a huge divide between again the people that have, so who can leverage all this technology and afford great care and have good broadband. And the have-not in this gap who are being left behind and with all of this. Like everything there's a big challenge as well as an opportunity.
Lauren Vaccarello: There is. And it's funny you say that I hadn't even thought about some of that as. And in this movie, the people on the spaceship every day, they get a scan. And at one point it's you have one cell that could be irregular that might lead to cancer. So we're just going to eradicate that cell right now. So you're not going to get sick, but the people that are the minors living on earth are dying in their twenties of preventable diseases. And that.
Evan Kirstel: Very scary. Yeah. I have a client who's looking at rolling out a number of starting in Beverly Hills, all places, but walk in scan clinics where you walk in and you get basically a full scan, a full magnetic residence scan of your body, and then you have a consultation. With a specialist who then can refer you onto your doctor. If he sees, blood vessels that have issues or lumps or other things. And it's like a thousand bucks. So this kind of medicine is happening. We're being rolled out as we speak.
Lauren Vaccarello: And which is going to be great. If you have the thousand dollars to just pop in and a full body scan and you grow, and maybe you go, every couple of months,
Evan Kirstel: Yeah. The reason it's in Beverly Hills, that was the targeted demographic for that service, but let's hope like other things it scales up and the cost goes downs and it becomes ubiquitous. And it's in Walmart maybe one day, but we'll see how that good.
Lauren Vaccarello: And people could go there and access this type of preventative care, because if you really want to decrease healthcare costs, preventative care. So we're not getting, we're not getting sick and I there's.
Evan Kirstel: The dirty little secret 10% of them, the population generate 90% of the cost of care. Now that's also elderly and older people but they're still within that spectrum. There's just so much health and wellness improvements that could be made.
Lauren Vaccarello: Exactly. And even thinking about the vaccine rollout with COVID right now. The thing that I am afraid of is we create two worlds in two societies, and we already have a divide between the wealthy and the not wealthy, but the first of all, the vaccine technology that we've, that have has rolled out is completely incredible. And the mRNA vaccines, I'm just, when you learn more and more about that, Are absolutely incredible about the future of healthcare. And there's part of me that is so optimistic for the future of how you can apply this to disease and overall health and wellness. But the downside of this is part of the world has this and is finally starting to thrive. And then part of the world feels left behind and.
Evan Kirstel: Yeah. Now, if you really want to go dystopian sci-fi on that, let's say you, have your child, a child's genes edited for, intelligence and wealth and height and color. And then that child then competes with my child who hasn't had his genome. Edited with CRISPR. And all of a sudden you have actual have the have-nots in terms of someone who's had their genes edited and someone who hasn't, someone who can afford that procedure and someone who hasn't, or maybe, a population here in the U S has had it as all of a sudden nomadically, genetically superior to someone outside the U S so we get into some really hairy areas. So I like your movie reference, cause that's where we going to be in five to 10 years.
Lauren Vaccarello: And it's the Gattica of everything.
Evan Kirstel: I'm hearing a sci-fi buff. So yes. Good real watchable movie. Yes.
Lauren Vaccarello: Yeah, it is. And it's, it is, and it's fascinating. And I think of things like the annual checkup because this is the future. And if you go to today that. The way that we all used to interact with the doctors, maybe you had that annual checkup, but to the point you had earlier, there's wearables. Now there's all of these different things that could, that collect all of these indicators from your heart rate to blood sugars. And it's setting that foundation for this future where I know Larry Ellison is putting a ton of money behind it as well, but it's.
Evan Kirstel: I wonder why he's doing that. Probably this is a good reason.
Lauren Vaccarello: Cause we all are live forever. I just want
Evan Kirstel: Yeah, exactly.
Lauren Vaccarello: To be what lives forever and not my health in 50 years to be well lives forever. And it's the, and it's this massive data world and data problem and sort of data opportunity that we're creating within all of this. And it's, if we can detect, if we can detect issues sooner, you can get better treatment. We can have this better life and death and. I just, I think it is fascinating that this idea of pulling in all these different data sources and data availability can save lives and improve lives. But we also have to make sure that this is equitable and accessible and not just, Larry Ellison and 18 other, not even billionaires, like multi-multi billionaires have access to them.
Evan Kirstel: Yeah. My, my favorite new product is this aura ring. I don't know if you know the aura ring. It's basically a wearable device. It's a ring obviously that you charge once a week and it collects all of, not just your movement, but temperature and all kinds of things. And it will tell you very subtle changes in body temperature. So I have an app. If my body temperature were to fluctuate, not just higher, a little bit above the norm. It would send me a note saying you potentially could have had COVID because you have a slightly elevated body temperature that, that wouldn't even be recognized on taking your temperature through with thermometers. So it was a fascinating experiment, attract sleep and deep sleep and REM sleep and steps and movement. And these kinds of things are now a couple of hundred bucks out on the street. So it's really interesting time.
Lauren Vaccarello: And it is just the beginning and it is this idea you're collecting your own data. You're learning all of this about yourself. And what I'd love to see is then how we take this and we have the power of our own data. And then we have maybe one day when the scanner is. Something that is more accessible and we're all doing. Or even when you just go to a regular doctor's visit and they do blood work. This idea of pulling this all together, to get this complete picture of you, of your health to know 98.2 seems like a good temperature because you're supposed to be 98.6, but you really run. Okay. At 97. So 98.2 is an early sign of a fever for you. And maybe you should check out other things like that's where this idea of pulling in different data sources becomes super, super interesting for me.
Evan Kirstel: Totally. And I'd love that I would happily give access to my iPhone, to my doctor and this data, give it up. If it would help him helped me. But right now the doctors, these hospitals, they wouldn't know what to do with it. They don't know what to do with your health data or your iPhone. Tracking or they say, okay, nice dude, go get your blood work done. That's their response. So we really need to wake up and leverage this data exhaust that, that's coming off, our bodies and wearables and devices. Oh,
Lauren Vaccarello: One day, one day. I think one day soon, I think the, this is again, they trying to find a silver lining in the challenging 15 months. I do believe COVID has forced changed and forced digital transformation and has sped this up out of necessity. We had to do it. And I think it's going to accelerate a lot of this. My personal belief is this is going to accelerate a lot of innovation in so many industries, especially in the healthcare space.
Evan Kirstel: Yeah, it's been great to see all the investment being made. One of my clients is upheld. They're doing a huge stack raising tens of billions of dollars. And we put billions into silly apps on our phone. It's great to see. Money being put into things like health tech and ad tech and data science and things that are going to make us live better lives and not just play games. So it's, that's been a positive outcome of this kind of strange economy and situation we're in too.
Lauren Vaccarello: Definitely. I would love to dream up our dystopian teacher and the world is going to go, but I want to switch to rapid-fire part of our interview. So I have a several questions that are quick decisions. Don't overthink it. Are you ready?
Evan Kirstel: I am ready.
Lauren Vaccarello: So what is one talent or skill that is not on your resume?
Evan Kirstel: I'm a big reef tank hobbyist. So I have 120 gallon saltwater aquarium and Karl and fish. And that's been great during the pandemic, just to the relaxation and the vibe of the tank. And, it's at home obviously, so great hobby to do at home. So that's been a lifesaver during the pandemic.
Lauren Vaccarello: Really cool.
Evan Kirstel: Yeah, no, it's really fun. And they have a good time with the fish.
Lauren Vaccarello: Where do you put 120-gallon fish tank?
Evan Kirstel: It’s in the bedroom. So it's a pretty big feature of my bedroom. Yeah.
Lauren Vaccarello: Nice. I feel like in my head, it's an entire wall.
Evan Kirstel: No, it's not quite Larry Ellison style, but it's I don't need a humidifier. Let's put it that way.
Lauren Vaccarello: Nice. So if you weren't in tech or in business, what would you be doing?
Evan Kirstel: I think I'd be a marine biologist. I love just the ocean. I love traveling. I love nature and animals and yeah. Things like going whale-watching and Massachusetts, or I just a couple of years ago saw a great white shark out on the Cape. I volunteered in my youth at the, an aquarium. So yeah, I love just the connection with the ocean and the sea and sailing and boating and that kind of thing.
Lauren Vaccarello: Oh, I love that. Sowhat is the book or TV show or podcasts that you've been bingeing?
Evan Kirstel: So many, I almost have to look because there are so many. I love history, world war II history. So I've been just bingeing everything about World War 2 and the blitz. And you talk about resilience and survival. Look at what the Brits had to do in London during the raids and the attacks in World War 2, talk about, Keep Calm and Carry on commune that one sacrifice that was survival. That was resilience. And I wish more of us had that mentality for the past year. It would have probably made a big difference to what happened. But yeah, I love history around that era in particular.
Lauren Vaccarello: Yeah, last question. What piece of advice would you give the younger version of yourself?
Evan Kirstel: I would say buy Bitcoin, I would say an Apple and Tesla and , yeah, but in all seriousness, I think , I think I would have invested more Save not save in the sense of putting in the bank account, but just really thought more about investing like really earlyIf you look at any of the big tech stocks you don't have much money in your twenties, but gosh, even a hundred bucks then, or the 500 bucks I didn't start saving to a little later, but that would have been a big win.
Lauren Vaccarello: I could not agree with you more it's I also did not do that. And I would be in a much better place. Had I put money in a Roth IRA when I was 22, who didn't know.
Evan Kirstel: No, no one does that. No, actually there's some fintech apps. Now that I've turned my daughter on to, she's 22 that actually take that approach through an app. It gamifies it, it makes it easy. It just rounds up spare change. And acorn is the one I turned her on to and yeah, but they didn't have apps like that. We didn't have phones, we didn't have the internet. We had nothing. So yeah. I would have had to walk into a Morgan Stanley broker and go, I want to open a Roth IRA. No one was doing that when I was 20. This generation maybe has a better shot. I thought the stock market was wall street with Bud Fox and Gordon Gekko. I thought that was a stock. I want to do that. That's evil. That's like what these evil guys are doing. So yeah, it was the Hollywood for you.
Lauren Vaccarello: Versus I really liked this Apple computer. Maybe if I take my money that I got for my birthday, I think thinking in a box under my bed, I put that into Apple. And if I did that, I would be rich. This has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on the show with us. Oh, did you have any parting words of wisdom or advice?
Evan Kirstel: It's never too late to dive in on social media. We met on social media. Whether it's Twitter or LinkedIn or clubhouse, just connect and don't read the headlines about how terrible it is. And it really, it can be a great community to connect, to share, to get educated, to build your brand, to find a job, whatever you need to do. Just find your tribe out there.
Lauren Vaccarello: It removes borders and makes the world a lot smaller.
Evan Kirstel: Yeah. And there's so many great people to connect with when you disregard all the garbage and trolling and politics. So just get on with it.
Lauren Vaccarello: Awesome. Thank you again so much. And thank you everybody for listening.