Jen Bruursema is Senior Director of Marketing and PR at DELFI Diagnostics, where she leads marketing strategy for FirstLook Lung, a blood-based test for early lung cancer detection.
With more than 20 years in healthcare diagnostics, Jen has built her career at the intersection of complex science and human behavior. She got her start at Digene, where she commercialized the first FDA-approved HPV DNA test for cervical cancer screening, and has since held marketing leadership roles at QIAGEN, Ariosa Diagnostics (acquired by Roche), Karius, IDbyDNA (acquired by Illumina), Metabiota (acquired by Ginkgo Bioworks), and Clear Labs. Across genomics, infectious disease, prenatal screening, and oncology, her focus has remained consistent: translating breakthrough diagnostics into tools that actually reach the patients and providers who need them.
Jen is certified in AI and data-driven marketing and actively applies generative AI to scale marketing operations. She's based in San Francisco.
Josh Dougherty:
Welcome to A Brave New podcast. This is a show about branding and marketing in the healthcare space. But more than that, it's an exploration of what it takes to create brands that will be remembered and how marketing can be a catalyst for those brands' success. I'm Josh Dougherty, your host. Let's dive in.
Welcome to another episode of A Brave New podcast. Today I have with me, Jen Bruursema from DELFI Diagnostics. She is the senior director of marketing and PR. And I'm excited to talk to her because DELFI is doing important work in early lung cancer detection. They're working on what they hope to be the first FDA-approved blood test to detect lung cancer. And I think this conversation is going to be really fascinating because the diagnostic space is a tightly regulated space. You have to be careful about how you market, how you build a brand, and Jen brings a really thoughtful and down-to-earth perspective to how to do that work. I really enjoy her focus on simplicity, on sharing things that are true and clear.
And I also appreciate the conversation around how DELFI themselves, are using machine learning and AI in their tool, in their diagnostic that they're developing. And Jen's perspective on how to ensure that you can build trust around how artificial intelligence is being used and ensure that there is equity in how the model is operating as well. So this is going to be a really cool conversation to dig into. And without further ado, I'd like to welcome Jen in.
Well, welcome to the show, Jen. It's great to have you on.
Jen Bruursema:
Thank you so much. It's a privilege to be here.
Josh Dougherty:
Awesome. Well, before we dive in, I know we have a lot to talk about today, but I wanted to give you a chance to share a little bit about your story. Tell our listeners a little bit about your career path and where it's taking you.
Jen Bruursema:
Yeah, thanks for the start. So I began my career with Digene, where I helped commercialize the first FDA-approved test for HPV and cervical cancer screening. And I think that experience really helped to shape everything that would come after. I started out marketing to thousands of healthcare professionals across the country and later, across the world. And that experience of talking about a test, not only to providers but to millions of women, really helped inform my understanding around what healthcare marketing is. And it's more than just promoting or selling a product, it's really about changing how people think about their health and the relationship that they will have to what a diagnosis is, what a treatment pathway is. And that shifting of clinical practice becomes really key and the storytelling you do to help inform that becomes paramount in the work we do as healthcare marketers.
From the days of Digene, I moved on to companies like QIAGEN, and Ariosa Diagnostics, and Karius, IDbyDNA, Metabiota, Clear Labs, a lot of these growth stage-startup environments. And the thread that kind of laced through all of those experiences, whether they were publicly traded companies or Series A, is that all of them took some combination of communications, some kind of audience engagement channel strategy. But it all had to be built on the backbone of real science, data, risk modeling, early detection. And that was true whether I was doing it for infectious diseases, or prenatal screening, or cancer—which is where I've spent a lot of my career. And now I'm at DELFI Diagnostics, and in many ways I've come full circle. I think I continue to be obsessed with answering that question around how do you get people to act on information that could improve or save their lives? And so-
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Jen Bruursema:
That's how I spend all my days.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah. I mean, I love how you talked about the idea that it's like you have to get in the mind of how someone thinks about their health, because healthcare doesn't matter if you're not connecting with them where they're at. So I think that's a really astute observation. Tell me about DELFI and what you're focused on right now. What is the key push that you're working on there right now?
Jen Bruursema:
DELFI's mission is to make cancer detection simpler, through affordable and accessible blood tests. And how we do that, is we weave together genomics, machine learning, and AI to analyze how DNA fragments in the blood can help produce these signals of detection. And what we want to do, as quickly as possible, is inform and get that early detection, because that is when treatment is most effective. Our first commercialized test is called FirstLook Lung, and it's a blood test for lung cancer screening. And the problem we're trying to solve for there, is that lung cancer tragically kills more people than breast, colon, and prostate cancer combined, but only one in five eligible patients get screened. And that's due to a number of complicated and simple factors. Some can be complicated because of these years of stigma associated with smoking, or some of it can be as simple as, I live across a mountain range and the nearest imaging center is two hours away.
And part of the issue is that the current pathway starts with a CT scan and many people just don't show up for it. So what we're doing is we're offering a simple blood test as that first step for those who are overdue for screening or new to it, and it gives us a chance to reduce that friction and get more people into the screening pathway. My particular focus at DELFI right now is on our clinical collaborations and supporting them. We're working with health systems like Allegheny Health Network and OSF HealthCare to integrate FirstLook into their screening programs. And to do that, we need to understand their current workflows and their patient populations and build the right digital pathways and tools that can help them actually improve their screening rates and get more adherence out of this really important population of people who have just been not able to comply with the current screening standards.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah. How are initial results looking? We talked a little bit in the pre-show about how this. You're doing the initial blood test in hopes of getting them to move forward to do a CT scan if something is showing that they need to have a deeper look.
Jen Bruursema:
Yeah.
Josh Dougherty:
So how are initial results looking from that, if you can share?
Jen Bruursema:
It's really exciting. Last fall, at a couple big conferences within the pulmonology and primary care space, one being a big conference called CHEST, we presented our first real world evidence, and that was at Allegheny Health Network, where they integrated the FirstLook blood test into their screening program for primary care. Which includes hundreds of doctors and tens of thousands of patients, as well as into their pulmonology and oncology units. And what we're seeing is that, from that evidence, we had a huge increase in the patient population—who had never been screened before—to comply with screening. And then for those that had elevated FirstLook results, to actually go on to fulfill their CT scan and to get that detection. And we are seeing some clinically actionable results from that as well, that were very meaningful to the providers in order to get these patients engaged and to follow up with the really important treatment program if something was more serious.
So that's really exciting. And that first ability to clinch the real world evidence is the starting point and the basis for all of the big trial readouts that we anticipate having this year at conferences like the American Thoracic Society, as well as ESMO and some of these other big events, where we're going to have these huge trials that we've been working on for three, four, or five years— and tofinally be able to show up and be presented in these forums with these scientists, to understand how this could then impact, potentially, the guidelines that could come for this patient population. And if we could then go on to get discussions with payers in order to get this reimbursed and more widely accessible to all patients who need it.
Josh Dougherty:
It's so exciting, because I've done a good amount of work in my career with cancer research hospitals and they all talk about if we could get detection sooner. There's been such an advance in treatment.
Jen Bruursema:
Yeah.
Josh Dougherty:
But it all depends on getting people in the door fast enough to be able to have that treatment early enough in the progression of the disease, so it's exciting work.
Jen Bruursema:
Spot on. Spot on. The survivability of lung cancer when caught early, stage one, stage two, is in the 70% range, but when you take that away and you're now detecting at stage four, it dramatically reduces down to 10 to 20% survivability. So it's crucial that we pull these people in sooner. And then through that kind of early screening, we might find a little bit more serious at the beginning, because most of these people have never been screened before. But over time, if they're doing annual testing, we're going to be pulling those stage one, stage two, what we call a stage shift, pulling them in sooner so that we can get them treated faster and increase that ability to be with family and friends and grandkids much longer than if we're finding it at the later stages.
Josh Dougherty:
Absolutely. Well, I could talk about this all day, but I do want to shift to talking about branding. We're talking about how do we kind of build a brand around this. And I think-
Jen Bruursema:
Yeah.
Josh Dougherty:
What you're talking about is very part and parcel to that, because how do we build trust with people so that they're going to want to use your product or your tests, and how does that work? So before we dive in, I'd love to ask a question that I ask everyone, and this is, really, how do you define branding? And tell me, maybe, what your simple definition is and then how do you think about branding in your space, like the tightly regulated diagnostic therapeutic space?
Jen Bruursema:
So at its simplest, I believe that branding is the promise we make and whether we keep it, that's it. It's so deeply personal. It's not a logo or a color palette, it's that gap between what you say you're going to do and what people actually experience. That's what our customers think, that's what our team members think, that's what our partners, our investors, the media who are reporting, it's that question of what's their gut feeling about you?
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Jen Bruursema:
And in diagnostics specifically, branding is very much about trust, as you pointed out. A company has to earn that trust, it has to prove value, and it has to deliver something meaningful to a provider and patient. When someone gets a test result that could change their life, they need to trust the science, they need to trust the company behind it, and they need to trust the health system who delivers it. And every touch point along that way either builds or erodes that trust. So for me, branding is really about the consistency, the integrity of every interaction, from the stories that I'm building to tell, to how we talk about our science, to how we train our health systems staff, and to how our client services handles a patient question over a phone or email. So that's how I think about branding but also how I feel branding.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah. I mean, I think that's how we all feel branding—as what you think about. I love that you talked about it being a promise, because I think, essentially, it is. And when I think about trust building, it takes all those little steps that you walk through step by step by step, and then one misstep can lead to a huge fall-off on that trust. So that consistency and authenticity through the process is so important-
Jen Bruursema:
Yes.
Josh Dougherty:
To make sure that you-
Jen Bruursema:
Also-
Josh Dougherty:
Don't accidentally make a misstep that takes away all the hard work that you've done, maybe in the previous six months, year. Or, if we think about in the process of a patient or a provider's engagement, they might only know about you for a very brief moment, but they've got to be able to come in and understand and trust and not have heard a story from someone else like, "Oh yeah, that didn't work for me," or, "I didn't feel like it was a good experience to go through the diagnostic process with you," so-
Jen Bruursema:
That's so perfectly said.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Jen Bruursema:
And that is what we want to be able to convey-
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Jen Bruursema:
To the patient, is this promise of an experience. If they never know my name, it's not so much a problem. If they had the feeling that they got the result, that they understood it-
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Jen Bruursema:
And they've moved on to have a healthy happy life until another year comes and they're due for the next screen-
Josh Dougherty:
Totally.
Jen Bruursema:
That would be success to me.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Jen Bruursema:
If they know my test name, beautiful, but it's that experience and trust and that willingness to believe in what their provider's recommendations are. That's, for me, where the importance really derives from.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah. And it's the sense that healthcare works, because I feel like-
Jen Bruursema:
Yeah.
Josh Dougherty:
A lot of times, in the United States particularly, people feel like it doesn't work how they want it to be, so like if-
Jen Bruursema:
Yeah.
Josh Dougherty:
How they want it to.
Jen Bruursema:
Yeah, that's right.
Josh Dougherty:
So you talked about, maybe remembering the name isn't as important. But a question here of like when you look forward a year from now with the DELFI brand, how do you want to be remembered by people? And maybe this is more about partners and health systems that you're working with, than patients. Because patients-
Jen Bruursema:
Right.
Josh Dougherty:
Are going to have more of a point interaction with you.
Jen Bruursema:
That's right. I want DELFI to be remembered as the smart, sincere, and earnest company that made lung cancer screening actually work. And not just the science, though the science matters, but the actual execution of the experience. Health systems should think of us as a partner who helped them solve a problem that they've been struggling with for years. Providers, they should remember that we gave them a tool that made hard conversations with patients easier.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Jen Bruursema:
And what I'd like for patients to take away, is that they remember someone met them where they were, rather than asking them to fit into a system that wasn't working. And for this patient population, in particular, these 50- to 80-year-olds who have decades of smoking history and have felt outside the system, because they did something that a lot of people might look at and go, "Well, you know, because smoking causes lung cancer." It's that they were treated the same way that they've been treated for their mammography, for their cervical cancer screening, for their prostate screening, that it doesn't matter, that there isn't a judgment here, it's a care and that they got seen for the care that they deserve. That's what I would want DELFI to be-
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Jen Bruursema:
Remembered for.
Josh Dougherty:
I love that, and I love how simple it is, right.
Jen Bruursema:
Yeah.
Josh Dougherty:
Lung cancer screening that actually works. Was it a journey to get to like very simple messaging on something that is-
Jen Bruursema:
Yes.
Josh Dougherty:
Based in complex science, based in AI, all these things?
Jen Bruursema:
Yes. To create accessible, affordable, early cancer detection, it sounds like it's something that's just there that you can grab, the magic is right in front of you. But it actually does take incredible science and engineering and bioinformatics and incredibly simple, but effective, wet lab procedures. And all of these things need to come together to create an accessible and affordable test, because it is complicated at our level, but it shouldn't-
Josh Dougherty:
Totally.
Jen Bruursema:
Be that to providers and patients.
Josh Dougherty:
Totally.
Jen Bruursema:
Right. Getting lung cancer screening shouldn't require multiple appointments, an inconvenient imaging, and all these things. What it should do is remove barriers to a patient population that already has enough barriers in front of them.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Jen Bruursema:
And so that's what we're striving to do. And I think that informs the work of every single member of our team, every single partner that's signed up to be an early access site and experiment and validate and learn how to scale this at some point. These are all people that are thinking about how to uncomplicate a process so that we can deliver a very simple solution.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah. So you have this core story, you have a solution that feels simple at the end, right?
Jen Bruursema:
Yes.
Josh Dougherty:
But it's built on a bunch of complex science and bioinformatics, all the things that you've mentioned. I'd love to hear about how you overlay that—in your marketing and branding efforts—into the diagnostic space that has tight regulations about how you can talk about things and how you approach things. So how does working in that space influence the way that you're telling this story?
Jen Bruursema:
Yeah, thanks for that question. It's an important one, because marketing in healthcare is very different than marketing a pair of eyeglasses, or a pair of shoes, or food that you might eat. This is a space that requires a lot of discipline, and I think that's obviously what we all want, is if we're going to be buying or being prescribed healthcare products, we want that kind of regulation. It forces discipline in so far as I can't make claims that I can't support.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Jen Bruursema:
Every piece of content goes through medical and legal and regulatory review. And while that might sound limiting to some of my fellow marketers in other industries, it actually makes the marketing better, because it forces me to be very precise and very accountable. And the constraint I think about most, is that line between education and promotion. I can't market, technically, directly to patients until I have an FDA-approved test, which we're pursuing right now. And a lot of consumer brands can do that. So my job has to be about educating providers in health systems and giving them the information they need to be able to have the conversations with patient populations. And it shifts that approach from, "Buy our product," to, "Here's how this is going to fit in your clinical practice, and here's how you might educate your patients about it."
So I think that is the way I'm forced to think about the communications I develop. And regulation slows you down. This is a very fast-moving space in healthcare, and that can be frustrating when you have to be slowed down and consider every single word and the nuances and how somebody might interpret it. But I've learned, through a lot of give and take and shove and reflection, that the MLR process is about quality control, and it's not an obstacle. If we can't clearly explain why something is true, then maybe we shouldn't say it.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Jen Bruursema:
So that's how I'm thinking about marketing or branding in a regulated space like healthcare.
Josh Dougherty:
It also might be something that other marketers should take to heart as well, right?
Jen Bruursema:
Yes, yes.
Josh Dougherty:
I mean, if we're really thinking about it.
Jen Bruursema:
Yeah.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah, I'd be interested to hear, like it's such a fascinating step when you're saying, I don't get to talk to the end user of this test or the patient. How are you making it simple for providers to be able to tell that story in a way that you want? Because in a way, you're saying, here's the memory we want people to have of the experience with our diagnostic, here's how we want you to tell the story. It's like a two-step process.
Jen Bruursema:
Yeah. I think for us, it's something that you have to balance the needs of this conversation with how somebody is going to experience it ultimately. So if I am marketing to health systems about a new way to innovate their existing lung cancer screening program. I'm going to be talking about workflows and digital pathways and ordering and kit stocking and all of these things to show them that I can be validated within their clinical space. I can scale with them for certain populations and needs that might be particular to them, but that's all extremely operational. And when I get to the patient side, that single test report that we've carefully worded and vetted and researched and edited to be perfect for the provider and the patient—what that patient hears is only: Do I have cancer or not?
Josh Dougherty:
Totally.
Jen Bruursema:
So I have to ensure that that system has the tools, the messaging, the education to support providers in those moments, so that there's no confusion. And our result helps to inform if somebody should go on to get a scan. It's not a replacement for CT scanning, so even something that simple, making sure that the right language comes out of the provider and that the patient hears it at any grade level, 6th grade, 10th grade, in English, in Spanish, like all of these nuances that are going to impact how somebody hears something when they get a result. And we're all the same way, we all get blood work done, we all get cancer screening done, and all we want to hear is, "Negative," not, "Elevated."
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Jen Bruursema:
"All clear," right.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Jen Bruursema:
And so if there's anything that's not that, that's where the hard part begins, and that's where we stay incredibly focused on the work we do in lung, to get that so right.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Jen Bruursema:
Because that will inform any other test we make in the future and the experiences that are going to be had there. This is really the baseline for how we want-
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Jen Bruursema:
The clarity of our tests to come through, the empowerment that it's going to give to providers and patients to continue living their lives and become adherent to doing something they haven't done before. These are all the things I'm thinking about when it comes to how the end user experiences marketing that I'm doing way up front of that, in order to-
Josh Dougherty:
Totally.
Jen Bruursema:
Ensure that they have a good, positive experience.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah. I mean, it's such a good frame because it is so emotional. So just saying you have probably that instance to have them hear you before all the emotions flood through or have them hear the provider, I guess, when they're speaking with their provider about the test result.
Jen Bruursema:
Yeah.
Josh Dougherty:
I'd love to zoom out and talk a little bit about, like early cancer detection is something that a lot of people are working on now, importantly, right.
Jen Bruursema:
Yes.
Josh Dougherty:
The reason there are a lot of people working on it is because the impact that we know it can have on cancer treatment. Can you speak to some specific ways that you are trying to differentiate your positioning from other companies that are working on maybe similar solutions or other labs working in the diagnostic space on this?
Jen Bruursema:
Yeah, it's a great question. And all boats are going to rise with the tide of more testing-
Josh Dougherty:
Totally.
Jen Bruursema:
And more detection, and this is a huge problem, so we welcome every innovation, every company that wants to tackle this. When you have millions of people dying worldwide every year from just one cancer, let alone all the cancers, this is something that every scientist, engineer, clinician, idealist-
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Jen Bruursema:
Medical futurists should put their work on. For us specifically at DELFI and how we differentiate from other companies and labs working in diagnostics, I think there's a few key things that set us apart. That first one, and I alluded to it in the last question, is that we're focused on delivering the first FDA-approved blood test for lung cancer, full stop. While there might be other liquid biopsy companies that are chasing multi-cancer early detection across dozens of other cancer types, we intentionally started with lung cancer specifically because it is the biggest killer and has the worst screening rates. So it's that decision you make, do you go with breath, like multi-cancer, or do you go with depth?
Josh Dougherty:
Focus, yeah.
Jen Bruursema:
And we've chosen depth.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Jen Bruursema:
Secondly, our technology is fundamentally different. We are focused on analyzing these fragmentation patterns, how that DNA is breaking apart and that different biological signal, it allows us to detect cancer at earlier stages with a simpler and more affordable assay, versus other liquid biopsy companies that might look for genetic mutations or methylation patterns.
And I think the third thing, and this is more along the positioning. We're not positioning FirstLook as a replacement for current standard of care, like CT scans. We're positioning it as a first step to get more people into the screening pathway.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Jen Bruursema:
And that's a different value proposition than, skip the CT. It's about increasing access and adherence and not replacing existing clinical tools that work.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Jen Bruursema:
So I think that helps to ensure that people understand that we're complementary to a lot of things that get done, but just aren't getting done at the scale and the incredible need in order for us to tackle this huge cancer killer.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Jen Bruursema:
So those are the big reasons. And there's our whole go-to-market effort-
Josh Dougherty:
Of course.
Jen Bruursema:
Which is built around health system partnerships rather than direct-to-consumer, which you've seen in other liquid biopsy companies. We want to solve those workflow problems, not just sell tests.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Jen Bruursema:
And I think that's another key differentiator about us.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah, I love the focus, 'cause I think it just clarifies the message so much. When you're saying, we're doing this one thing, when you're saying we're trying to fit into a system that's already working, how do we enhance the system so that it works even better? It's a-
Jen Bruursema:
Yeah.
Josh Dougherty:
It's a very interesting positioning. You referred a little bit to this before, but I'd love to have you share a little bit about how your fragmentation platform leverages AI. Because, obviously, artificial intelligence has accelerated our ability to do a lot of this work, because it can process-
Jen Bruursema:
Yeah.
Josh Dougherty:
Data so much quicker than, or maybe you could process data that we couldn't process before, at the same scale. So tell me a little bit about that.
Jen Bruursema:
Yeah, thank you for this question. I think this is one of the exciting aspects of DELFI, specifically, that I most enjoy. And that is, our approach uses machine learning to analyze these genome-wide fragmentation patterns and cell-free DNA. And how that translates into layman terms, is that when cells die and release DNA into the bloodstream, that DNA breaks apart in pretty predictable ways. Cancer cells produce different fragmentation patterns than healthy cells. You can see it graphically, it is really compelling when you look at this, but RAAI is trained to recognize those patterns across billions of data points, far more than any human could analyze. And what makes our approach powerful is that we're not looking for a single biomarker or mutation, we're looking at the entire genome and letting the machine learning find the signal. That means that we can then ultimately detect cancer earlier before there's enough tumor DNA that would show up in traditional liquid biopsy approaches.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah. I mean, it's so fascinating to think about the application and the ability to look at such a large data set. I love this. It's the promise of AI in a really good application. I'd love to hear if there's been trust issues you've have to overcome with this. Because whenever we, I mean, a lot of what we're talking about in healthcare today is around artificial intelligence and what are good applications and bad applications, etc. So have you had to overcome any trust issues in how you're leveraging AI? And if so, how have you done that?
Jen Bruursema:
Yes, is the answer. And I think skepticism is healthy. We're talking about healthcare-
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah, no doubt.
Jen Bruursema:
Good health, good skepticism is important.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Jen Bruursema:
When you're talking about cancer detection, AI absolutely can sound like a black box making life or death decisions for you. We know that AI now is being sourced for more healthcare information than ever before. And providers want to understand how the AI works and why they should trust it. So for DELFI, when we come and say, we do machine learning and AI, they want to understand exactly what that means. And what we're trying to do is show them that through our clinical evidence, show them that through our workflows and how we incorporate that into our data science. We don't ask anyone to trust the AI on its own, we ask them to look at the data from our clinical studies, that's what we want them focused on. Machine learning in our instances here, is a tool that enables the science, but the proof is actually in the outcomes.
Josh Dougherty:
Totally.
Jen Bruursema:
Can we detect cancer early? What's our sensitivity? What's our specificity? Those are the questions that matter, and we answer them with the data, not a marketing claim about how great our AI is.
Josh Dougherty:
No, no.
Jen Bruursema:
So I think that's important. I think, obviously, when it comes to trust issues in leveraging AI, you have to include transparency. We're not hiding how our technology works, our founders have published extensively on fragmentomics, and our work speaks for itself. And the more people that understand the biological basis for what we're detecting, the more comfortable they are understanding how the AI is applied and analyzes it.
Josh Dougherty:
No doubt. And I think that talking about the outcomes is smart, because that can be black and white, the outcomes-
Jen Bruursema:
Right, yeah.
Josh Dougherty:
Of the ability to detect-
Jen Bruursema:
Right.
Josh Dougherty:
Faster. I'm not an expert in self-fragmentation, so I'm asking this question, like is there any work that needs to be done to filter out bias in the way AI and machine learning models provide equitable results at this level?
Jen Bruursema:
Yeah.
Josh Dougherty:
This may be a question that isn't even applicable because I'm not so much in that space or knowing if there's-
Jen Bruursema:
It's an astute question.
Josh Dougherty:
Work that needs to be done. Yeah.
Jen Bruursema:
No, no, it's a great question. It's something we take very seriously from the beginning of our study design, it's not an afterthought. Our clinical studies are designed to include very diverse patient populations, so our models are trained on representative data. And that's true because if your training data doesn't reflect the real-world populations you're serving, your model is going to have blind spots.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Jen Bruursema:
One big patient population, as an example of this, is the veterans population, this is a higher intensity population to look at when it comes for screening, because they have a long smoking history, typically. There's really interesting data that was presented at the GO2 Centers of Excellence Summit last fall, on just how quickly our active duty are introduced to the world of smoking, particularly the people that are aged into our population now, the 50 to 80, who were young recruits and active military decades ago. There was this almost symbiotic relationship between the tobacco industry and military, and you could get cigarettes for free.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Jen Bruursema:
So a lot of them have these intense histories of smoking. And people ask, Do you have veterans in your clinical trials? And yeah, well over a thousand are part of our Cascade trial, because we want to ensure that we're reflecting that in the group that we want to help bring answers to, but also into the models that we want to inform so that we can do that on a much bigger scale-
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Jen Bruursema:
With our veterans here and abroad, in the future because they deserve that care-
Josh Dougherty:
Totally.
Jen Bruursema:
After serving their nations.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah, it's an excellent example. And I think about my grandfather and other people his age, even a little bit older than that, that smoking was part and parcel, and they all quit later in life, but it was too late to have that-
Jen Bruursema:
Yeah.
Josh Dougherty:
Impact, right.
Jen Bruursema:
Yeah. Yeah, I think there's all sorts of populations like that, and we are continuously monitoring our performance across different demographic groups to identify any disparities. The goal is a test that works well for everyone, that-
Josh Dougherty:
Totally.
Jen Bruursema:
Accessible testing mantra that we say, it has to work regardless of race and ethnicity and age or socioeconomic background. That's not just an ethical imperative, it's actually a scientific one, because any model that's biased is a flawed model.
Josh Dougherty:
Totally.
Jen Bruursema:
And we're doing everything within our R&D teams, our clinical development teams, our data science teams, to ensure that we get this right.
Josh Dougherty:
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for that and for diving deep a little bit into the artificial intelligence side, 'cause I know that's something people are interested in. I'd love, as we close out this conversation here, it's been a really rich convo, but I'd love to have you look forward a little bit for me and play futurist in the marketing space. You've obviously been doing this for a long time, and there's lots of trends of people saying like, "Oh, this is going to be the next thing that pops in marketing, et cetera." But for brand and marketing experts, as you look forward, what do you think is something that's speculative right now that in a year, 12 months, 18 months, we're going to be saying, "Oh, we're doing this all the time?" And if you look at the trends out there, what's going to be a reality for us in the next year, year and a half?
Jen Bruursema:
Yeah, it's such a great question. This is one that will continue to fill podcast fodder for years to come, right?
Josh Dougherty:
Exactly.
Jen Bruursema:
One: What did we say? Two: Did it work? And three: Why did it work?
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Jen Bruursema:
Or: How did it work so well?
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Jen Bruursema:
But I think one of the big aspects that any marketer right now is looking at, from all of the software and tools that are out there to determine how you would apply them in your environment, to your tech stack, to your storytelling, to your own creative license, it's AI assisted content creation. And moving that from validation and experimentation, to infrastructure, I think is really key. A lot of marketers right now are dabbling with AI tools, including myself.
Josh Dougherty:
Totally.
Jen Bruursema:
But in 12 months, I think the marketers who figured out how to systematically integrate AI into their workflows and use it for context engineering to help inform the content creation, will have a massive productivity advantage. And I think it's important to clarify, I'm not talking about having ChatGPT write your blog posts here.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Jen Bruursema:
I'm talking about building systems where AI understands my or your particular brand voice, your regulatory constraints, if you have them, if you're in regulatory regulated industries like myself, and then your customer personas, are they deep enough? And how all of that's going to create a tool like AI that can be a genuine collaborator, not just something that spits out words.
Josh Dougherty:
No, no.
Jen Bruursema:
Small teams will be able to produce output that is equivalent to large teams. It's already happening, I know that it's almost become table stakes. But this is so key, is understanding that integration in being able to operate at scale and having quality control checks for if it goes off-piste, how do you get that back in? You can't A/B test the world out of this stuff to inform, so you have to have other ways to gate check these experiences, and then have the models iterate again and keep building and keep scaling and keep getting wider. But at any given moment, you've got to be able to understand the direction of the content, and how the models are interpreting that to the-
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Jen Bruursema:
... The end user. So I don't want generic AI-generated content to become even more obvious or even less effective.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Jen Bruursema:
I want quality, authenticity to go up, not down, but to do that, we now need to operationalize this in such a way that it's not just, "Oh, I got four more posts for next week, woo-hoo, check."
Josh Dougherty:
Totally.
Jen Bruursema:
Exactly.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah, I think it's a really astute observation because in some ways, it goes back to talking about how your team has approached the platform. There has to be a consistent dedication to building a model, like in your case for DELFI content, training the model, providing the right inputs, providing the depth of experience so that you're able to produce something that is beyond like what happened when GenAI first came out, when it was like-
Jen Bruursema:
Yeah.
Josh Dougherty:
"Oh, yeah, I can do a blog post every day."
Jen Bruursema:
Yeah.
Josh Dougherty:
And yeah, all those blog posts are quite bad. But I think also-
Jen Bruursema:
Yes.
Josh Dougherty:
Even for the human-produced stuff, I'm interested to, as we build smarter models that are more informed and have more data sets that they're looking at that can give a writer, even when they're doing human-produced content, superpowers of the things that they can pull from to write, because of-
Jen Bruursema:
Yes.
Josh Dougherty:
All of the inputs that they receive from an AI partner that's working alongside them to help them-
Jen Bruursema:
Yes.
Josh Dougherty:
Sift through data better.
Jen Bruursema:
That's right.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Jen Bruursema:
That AI system that you're creating as a tool for some problem you have or some opportunity-
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Jen Bruursema:
You want to harness, you have to look at how every one of those is being taken and distributed, reconstituted, and then delivered, and then, where's the feedback loop for if that's working or not.
Josh Dougherty:
Totally.
Jen Bruursema:
And a good example of this, for me, will be in a post-FDA approval, I have a demographic of 50- to 80-year-olds, wildly different population-
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Jen Bruursema:
From an age demographic alone, complicated by all the things we talked about, race, ethnicity, location, socioeconomic. And if my models haven't been trained appropriately in how to speak to each of those sub-sub cohorts and how they have an experience and a relationship to healthcare and cancer and all these things, it will be really difficult to understand if all these great tools and infrastructure I've made are working. So that's what-
Josh Dougherty:
Totally.
Jen Bruursema:
That's what you're thinking through now or you should be thinking through now as a marketer.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah. Yeah, I love that. Well, let's leave the conversation there. I think it sounds like we're thinking about this on similar wavelengths, and I'm interested to talk to you in a year and see what you've done on that work.
Jen Bruursema:
That would be awesome.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah. As we close out the conversation, Jen, how can people connect with you or follow along with the work that you're doing and the work that DELFI is doing?
Jen Bruursema:
LinkedIn is the best place to find me, I'm active there. I'm always happy to connect with people working in diagnostics, healthcare marketing, marketing in general. I learned so much from other industries and the marketing work they're doing, cancer screening, any of those topics I'd be happy to have a good conversation on. And you can always check out DELFI Diagnostics as well, our website or our LinkedIn channel, to learn more about what we're building and doing.
Josh Dougherty:
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for the time today, I very much appreciate it.
Jen Bruursema:
Same to you. Thank you.
Josh Dougherty:
Thanks for listening to this episode of A Brave New podcast. Go to abravenew.com for more resources and advice on all things brand. If you enjoyed this episode, show us some love by subscribing, rating, and reviewing A Brave New podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts. A Brave New podcast is created by A Brave New, a branding agency in Seattle, Washington, that crafts bold and memorable healthcare brands. Our producer is Rob Gregerson.