As a marketing leader and passionate advocate for earlier cancer detection, Jaime LaMontagne has spent her career helping bring breakthrough medical innovations from idea to impact. She is currently leading the launch of Certitude™, the first blood-based test designed to detect breast cancer—work driven by a simple but powerful belief: detecting cancer earlier can change everything. Jaime has helped introduce some of the most transformative technologies in modern healthcare, including the Micra® leadless pacemaker at Medtronic—a device so small it fits inside the heart—and cancer diagnostics like Cologuard® and Oncotype DX® at Exact Sciences, which reshaped how cancer is screened and treated. Known for building high-performing teams and turning complex science into trusted brands, Jaime thrives at the intersection of innovation and human impact. Nothing motivates her more than helping ensure life-saving technologies reach the people who need them most.
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 back to A Brave New Podcast. Today we're going to talk about a first of its kind test, and it's a screening test for breast cancer, a blood test that is called Certitude and is produced by Astrin Biosciences. I'm joined by Jaime LaMontagne from Astrin Biosciences, their chief marketing officer, to talk about the test, its potential, and more importantly, how do you build brand awareness and trust for a new diagnostic? We're going to talk about how do you do that for patients? How do you do that with providers? And how do you tell a story that builds trust and buy-in and adoption for a new way to screen for cancer?
I think this conversation is both relevant and interesting from a brand-building perspective, but also so important and relevant from a cancer detection and screening perspective. Because we all know that if you can catch cancer early, treatment is so much more effective. So, thrilled to be having this conversation and to be talking to Jaime, so let's bring her in.
Well, Jaime, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining me.
Jaime LaMontagne:
Thank you for having me.
Josh Dougherty:
Awesome. Well, I know we have a lot to talk about today, but before we get started, I'd love to give you a chance to share a little bit with our audience about your story and where your career path has taken you so far.
Jaime LaMontagne:
Sure. It's so fun to think back. So, I kind of fell into medical marketing by accident a little bit. So, I was finishing up my master's, and I got an internship at Medtronic in market research, which is what I had done out of undergrad. And so I kind of fell into it. And then from there, I spent my first 11 years at Medtronic after that internship, and really just fell in love with medical marketing, helping physicians— help them treat patients, help solve clinical problems—and really just got the bug to be in medical marketing. So, did urology, did cardiology, did cardiac surgery, did neuro, had variety of different roles at Medtronic from upstream, downstream market development, really just cut my teeth there.
Did a small stint at a company called Smith's Medical, and then I boomeranged back to Medtronic and did another seven years where I led marketing for pacemakers and defibrillators. And, had a great experience actually revolutionizing and completely changing the paradigm for pacemakers with a transcatheter pacemaker, which was super fun to take a 60-plus year product and completely change it and bring it to a whole ‘nother level. So, that was super fun.
And then from there I joined Exact Sciences, which is better known for Cologuard, the colon cancer detection test, as well as Oncotype DX, which is a breast cancer test. And from there, I was just thrown into the world of cancer diagnostics from both precision oncology to screening. And, led marketing across that organization. And I learned a ton. That was my first real screening diagnostic role, and I just had a blast learning about it and taking that forward.
And so now, I'm at Astrin Biosciences where I'm the chief marketing officer for them, where we are about to launch a new breast cancer blood test called Certitude.
Josh Dougherty:
Awesome. We're going to talk all about that. I'm super excited about this. One of the reasons we wanted to bring you on was the exciting developments that are happening in this field and the ability to catch cancer so much earlier and be able to change lives by early detection. So, thank you for the work that you're doing, and I’m excited to see it go live.
Jaime LaMontagne:
Thank you.
Josh Dougherty:
Well, as we dive in, we're going to talk a lot about how do you build in the diagnostic space, because you have really deep experience here, and how do you build a brand in that space. And how do you build trust, primarily, because you're dealing with maybe low-trust audiences all the time. From patients who maybe don't take their health as seriously at the front end as they should, to providers who, I don't think they lack trust, but they want to see evidence and see evidence over time before they're going to move forward with a new diagnostic.
But before we do that, I'd love to step back and just talk a little bit about brand. And, everyone has their own definitions of brand and branding, and I'd love to hear yours. How you think about branding as someone who's ... You've had experience across a huge span of areas inside of healthcare marketing.
So, what's your definition of branding?
Jaime LaMontagne:
That's a great question. It's such a big question. I was thinking about this and just all the different angles that come into play, especially in the medical space. I mean, obviously, a brand is bigger than a logo. It's bigger than a jingle or something like that, but those are important. To me, in the medical space, brand is the expectation that people have when they experience your product or your service. What's that experience going to be when they're working with you? And the fun part, as well as the challenging part, of medical brand is there's not just one audience. It's not just a consumer buying a pair of shoes.
It's, you have the physicians and how the physicians interact with your brand. It's the patients, how they know your brand and feel that they know what this product is that's going to be used on them. It's the health system. You have a larger relationship with the health system that can be across multiple brands. You even have insurers in there, as well, that have a unique experience with your brand.
So I think the challenge and the opportunity across medical is how do you show up in a consistent way across those different audiences that are going to experience your brand in really unique ways? And then from a diagnostic perspective, it is something that they're going to use as a moment in time. It's not a product that is used every day like a medicine or drug. It's not a procedure that may or may not ever be needed.
Diagnostics are: how do you meet that person in the moment in time that they need that product? And I think building that trust over time where when they have those moments, they think about your brand. That's the critical part.
So, I would say the biggest thing for me is that experience and how do you have that consistency across those experiences to build trust across all those different stakeholders that have a role in bringing your product ultimately to market?
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah, I think that's totally true. And I'm fascinated by the diagnostic space because many of these things you might use once in your life, the diagnostics. So, you have to build this memory and this experience far before someone ever uses it. And maybe you're relying a little bit more on physicians having brand exposure to the product or to the diagnostic first. So one of the essentials obviously is building that memory ahead of time and building maybe years before someone needs your breast cancer screening test. But what are some of the other essentials that you think of? Maybe you look back at ... You're about to bring something to market now, you have the experience with Cologuard. What were some of the essentials to make sure that you could build that trust ahead of time?
Jaime LaMontagne:
Yes, that is so key. And I think that the first essential is trust which, I mean, that seems like every brand needs to build that whether you're Coca-Cola or what. But in the world of diagnostics where you are telling somebody if there's something going on in their body or not at that moment in time, there is a mutual trust that needs to be built and that it's built on credibility.
Are we delivering what we say we're going to deliver? Are we providing the science and the effectiveness that they're expecting when this test comes?
So, it's kind of reproducible, credible, consistent message over time that builds that trust, those experiences with the brand. I would also say that within that trust, it's providing a clear benefit. Why is someone taking this test? Making sure that that's super clear and delivering on that benefit each and every time, which then of course builds that trust over time. I would also say clarity. There are so many messages happening in the medical space.
And so, being really clear about what you were trying to do, what is that benefit, both to the physician as well as to the patient, because people are super busy and ... Simplification isn't the right word because you don't want to dumb it down, but at the same time, you really have to be clear about what is the product, why should you use it, why will it benefit you, so that that message gets across. Which again, I think builds trust over time as well.
And then this sounds like any other brand, but it's really humanity, because these are medical tests and they are something that we need to take really seriously, but also meet people where they are in those human moments. So, not forgetting that there's someone on the other side of that test who is worried about what this result's going to say. Or, is looking for certainty and clarity about what's going on in their body. So I think that building that trust over time, meeting them in that moment in time with humanity and clarity is really clear. It's really important for the brand.
I would also say too that, what's nice right now in diagnostics is there's so much momentum with Function Health and MIDI and a lot of consumers taking ownership of their healthcare and having access to a lot of different diagnostic tests, whether it's hormone tests or iron or all sorts of different things. And, it's helping because more and more people are engaging with their health directly, but it's also ...
This is a cancer diagnostic test. This is not just is your iron high or not? So making sure that we are within that same realm of this is something that you can do on your time when you want to take advantage of this test, but also being really clear that this is cancer diagnostics, this is something that you need a physician to walk you through and help you through and be ready when you get that result.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah. It's not just a consumer healthcare product that you can go to a website and order all of a sudden.
Jaime LaMontagne:
Yes, exactly.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
I do think it's fascinating to think about how the market is shifting, because I think you see a little bit of that even with GLP-1s and how people are thinking about GLP-1s. And also with an emphasis on many people on emphasizing primary care more than it has been emphasized in the past with new models. That you're beginning to see the shift of people trying to get ahead of things versus just waiting for that blood test to come back to show them that, "Oh, my cholesterol's high, and I need to deal with it."
Jaime LaMontagne:
Yeah.
Josh Dougherty:
I'd love to hear a little bit about, obviously in your specific area with Certitude as you're looking forward to launching, you talked about all the different audiences. You have health systems, you have providers, you have patients, you have insurers and other payers. As you think about your mix, how are you targeting, who are you prioritizing to build that brand awareness?
I think we'll talk about patients and providers in depth, but what do you think about that audience mix? Where are your priorities as you're looking to move towards launching the diagnostic?
Jaime LaMontagne:
Yeah, so the good news and the bad news is that mammograms are prescribed, I feel like everywhere in the system. When we did some claims research on the types of physicians that are ordering mammograms and even supplemental tests, whether it's ultrasound or MRI, we were shocked. I mean, it was like 635,000 different providers in the United States had written the mammogram.
So to your point, where do we start? And obviously with Cologuard, we focused a lot on primary care. That took years and years, though, to develop that relationship and that channel. And so, we're trying to figure out how do we meet these patients wherever they are in the healthcare system because they're not just in one place. My gut, my theory, was it's all about the OB-GYNs because those physicians are the ones that are really dealing with women's health in all aspects. But I was actually really surprised to find out that they're very much focused on the belly button down.
That was actually, one of the physicians told me that, "We're really trained on belly button down. We're really not trained all that much on breast health," which kind of blew my mind as a woman in the midst of my own healthcare journey.
And so, ultimately for our focus, it's really using the patients to help push into the physician space, because the physician space is so diverse of where those mammograms are happening, where those women are seeking the next step within the healthcare system. It also really opened up my eyes though that women need help in this breast cancer screening journey because-
Josh Dougherty:
Just to navigate the process?
Jaime LaMontagne:
It is super confusing. And so, women get their mammograms every year, every other year, depending upon which guideline their physician follows. And if they have dense breasts, they get a notification on their mammogram report that says, "Mammograms don't work very well with women with dense breasts, talk to your provider." But then the provider is really not someone who's ... Some are, don't get me wrong, some are all in on all this.
But, ultimately they're now navigating a journey where there's no clear guidelines on what to do next. There's no insurance coverage for women with density alone. So it's a gauntlet of what to do next. If a woman is considered high risk, it's more clear about what to do next. But there are 50% of women in the United States that have dense breasts that are kind of lost in the shuffle. So yeah, from a channel perspective, from a provider perspective, it's really finding where those women are in the process and helping them navigate to that next step.
Josh Dougherty:
I mean, it becomes super important because not every community has a breast cancer expert or a cancer center that's going to be able to help. And even that might seem like not the first place someone would go to after they've talked to their primary care doctor who said, "You need to have additional screening help."
Jaime LaMontagne:
Yes, exactly. There may or may not be someone who ... A lot of times it's an ultrasound that's next, but that only finds one or two more breast cancers. So it's slightly better than a mammogram, a 3D mammogram, but not dramatically. And then to your point, access to a breast MRI would be the better step. It's more sensitive, but it also has a lot of false positives, which then send women down biopsies and more imaging. So yeah, there's not really a clear best path forward, and so women are really left to figure it out on their own or advocate for themselves with what they want with their physician.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah. And how much do you deal with ... I know diagnostics can be challenging, I think, because people often don't want to, there's this fear of finding out as well. And so, obviously, women are used to the mammogram guidance that they receive, but for the rest, how much do you have to overcome this fear of getting a definitive answer versus getting a screening?
Jaime LaMontagne:
Yeah, that was so interesting to learn when I was working with the Cologuard product for colon cancer screening. When we did market research, it was about 20% of the patient population is super active in their healthcare. They do everything on time, they're all over it. And then it was another 20% of the population who just didn't want to know. They avoided the healthcare system at all costs. They were the ones that waited till they were super, super sick to then finally see a doctor. So these are not your typical screening population audiences. So we were trying to figure out-
Josh Dougherty:
It's a completely different population, essentially, those ...
Jaime LaMontagne:
Yes. Yeah, everybody over the age of 45 needs to be screened for colon cancer, women over the age of 40 need to be screened for breast cancer. So knowing that there's just this population that just is super scared of even doing really simple tests is really important to know. So how do you make them feel like their fear ... It's okay to have that fear, that fear of finding out is normal.
One of the things that was super interesting from a tactic perspective is, a lot of the patients that reached out to us, whether it was Cologuard or for my new breast cancer test, are people who have either had cancer or are going through cancer, and they're the most passionate. They want to tell their story, they want to tell others the importance of screening and finding it early so that you can have more options on the table for treatment.
But really interestingly is—for those people that have that fear mindset—that can almost be the worst thing to do, is to highlight those stories. And not because it's a bad thing, but there's a subconscious connection of, "If I only hear of people who have had cancer when it comes to this test," it's just this kind of, "Well, if I take the test, that means I'll have cancer too." They make this subconscious association that, "If I do the test, I'll have it."
So what I've been talking a lot with advocacy partners and with my marketing strategy is for every one of those cancer stories where we find that cancer early, and we help that patient, we need to have nine stories of people who took the test, who had a negative, who could move on with their life and be like, "I'm so glad I had that information. Now I can just take that stress away and move on to the next thing on my to-do list."
And that's a really interesting dynamic of diagnostics where you want everybody to take it just like going to the dentist. It's just something you’ve got to do and then you move on and feel like you've accomplished something, but not letting that weigh on you so much where you just don't do it.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah, because the brand promise is equally about early detection and about peace of mind at the end of the day because you have a definitive answer. And most people are going to come back, I don't know about most people, a large percentage are going to come back with a negative test and be able to just file that away and say, "Okay, I'm good to go."
Jaime LaMontagne:
Yeah, "I feel really good."
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Jaime LaMontagne:
Especially for those women who have a mammogram where they really can't tell what's going on, just that peace of mind to say, "All right, they checked my blood, they don't see any cancer, there's no cancer lurking in my breast. I can just take that worry and go to the next one," which is typical for us women.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah, I think colon cancer has become something that we talk about a lot in society, and the different ... Cologuard, et cetera. You obviously have, your team worked very hard to make that a regular part of the conversation, but do you still face people being, I don't know, resistant to the fact that a blood test can get the right result?
Jaime LaMontagne:
Yeah. I mean, so Certitude will be the first non-imaging option to detect breast cancer. So the options today are mammogram being the gold standard, then it's a breast ultrasound or breast MRI, and contrast enhanced mammography. There are some iterations on that, but ultimately they're all imaging based and so it's all sitting with the radiologist.
So that's going to be my biggest challenge moving forward is they get the idea of a blood test and they actually are really excited about what that can bring to the clinical pathway, but it's completely out of their normal workflow. Which, when you're in the medical space, when you're doing that, launching a product, is kind of the easy part. The actual, how do you actually put it into the clinical flow? How do you figure out where it fits? How are the physicians using it? How does it provide the best insights at the right moment? That's going to be the most interesting, hard part for this test is having a blood test is so completely out of the realm of what they do today.
So how do we help them figure that out? But, I think the excitement is there. We have so many physicians who are interested in what's going on with this product, very curious about how it works compared to other blood tests on the market. But yeah, the excitement's there, but then their next question is, "Okay, wait, when do I order this? Who orders this? Who tells the patient the result?" They start to go through the operational side of it and they have a lot of questions.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah, and how does it fit into the rest of the treatment guidelines, because it's so novel as an approach.
Jaime LaMontagne:
Yes.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah. So obviously you have people excited, you're working to get patients excited, but then also physicians, as you talked about, some are interested, but you have a huge amount of people who are ordering breast imaging, and doing that type of treatment.
What's the plan for building awareness with them? I mean, obviously you can't ignore them, but you've got to figure out how to span a large ... Specialties, primary care providers, all these different areas.
Jaime LaMontagne:
Yes. I think it's, again, that push and pull between patient marketing and physician marketing. I think that, because these women are everywhere in the healthcare system, I need to lean a bit on the patient side of things, which is really different than my whole career where it's always been physician led. You start with the physician, you make sure that they know what your product is. There's so much of that, and that's still very, very important.
But in this situation, we're leaning heavily on that patient marketing, because these women are the ones that are getting this FDA mandated message on their mammograms and asking for more information, "What can I do next?" And even going and just doing the test on their own, whether it's an ultrasound or an MRI. So leveraging that patient marketing, and that's awareness, social, digital, all your typical channels. Then pairing that with physician marketing that will, I know, take a little bit longer, take more time. And that's really our evidence, education events, peer-to-peer moments where we can get physicians talking about the test and how they're using it, just doing your traditional physician marketing in the beginning.
But it's definitely this push and pull between the two, because we need both of them to move it forward, but also probably a little bit more on the patient side just to drive that awareness forward since, again, like I said, the women are everywhere.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah. And there's typical tactics on the patient side—social, digital, all those things that you talked about—but what tactics specifically do you think you're going to emphasize to get the maximum reach as you're getting going and as you're moving towards approval? I guess, I don't know how far you are into that marketing journey because you can't yet ...
Jaime LaMontagne:
Yes. Well, so I said that earlier where I was like, we're launching, but it's actually we're in the midst of launching. So we are actually actively compiling a wait list for the product. So we have a lot of women who have already signed up to know when it's available in their market, and we're hoping in the next couple of weeks we're turning that on and letting them know that it's now available to them. So we're right on that cusp of flipping from a wait list to actually be able to access the product with a telehealth provider and a lab network and all the things that come into play from an operations perspective.
So, social is super key to us right now—that sharing of what's going on with the product, that they can join the wait list, that it's coming soon to a city near them and building that momentum.
Part of that is really tapping into where I think a lot of women are right now. Perimenopause, menopause is a very hot topic. It's kind of all over social. We're a part of that conversation and how do we talk about how women need to advocate for their health—which is really a core part of the perimenopause, menopause conversation online right now—is having to advocate for what you need, how to advocate for tests about your hormones, all those things.
So really wanting to be a part of that larger conversation when it comes to breast health and dense breasts. So doing a lot of education but also driving awareness of our test through social is our primary, of course, media and other things will be coming along with that as we shift.
It's World Dense Breast Day at the end of September, so we're looking to have a big splash around that, as well as Breast Cancer Awareness Month is in October. So we're kind of using August to build the momentum from awareness, digital activities. Whereas in September we start to actually send the test to patients, have them do it. And then setting ourselves up for having a big October-
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah, working the calendar how it naturally ... I mean, it's built into our thought process even as, me as a male adult, I know breast cancer awareness is October, right? It's the time we're going to be thinking about it.
Jaime LaMontagne:
Exactly, all the pink.
Josh Dougherty:
Yep, exactly. How much are you leveraging right now? You talked about advocacy groups briefly, or you mentioned them, so how much are you leveraging them in the launch? And communities of influences or influencers in the launch of the marketing?
Jaime LaMontagne:
It's super key, especially where that's one thing about breast cancer that is really different than other spaces. There is such a community around survivorship and helping women that are going through the process as well as just pure awareness. There's My Density Matters, there's densebreastinfo.org. There are all these amazing advocacy groups that are focusing their attention on bringing awareness to dense breast tissue, helping women navigate just the screening process.
Then you have big institutions like Komen, that are all about breast cancer research. So the brands are really well known in the breast cancer space and they're very powerful and they're such amazing partners.
The other aspect of advocacy right now is there are actually a couple of bills that are going through Congress that can help women actually have insurance coverage for supplemental screening. One is called the Find It Early Act. So partnering with these advocacy groups to help shepherd those bills through Congress is so amazing.
We're a tiny company. We don't have government affairs yet. We don't have those people yet within our organization. So being able to partner with these advocacy groups to try to drive legislation that will benefit women is super, super helpful.
So they're doing amazing things, so it's very much like, how can we help?
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah, absolutely. And then you talked about being a smaller company, you're getting stuff off the ground here. Obviously, hopefully that'll grow over time. But how are you measuring looking at results of your marketing, especially through this launch phase, to make sure you're focused in the right way and you're pivoting as needed to have the most successful initial launch period? Because this is key obviously to building momentum for the long-term success of the test.
Jaime LaMontagne:
I mean, it really is marketing 101 with funnel. How do I look at the high level awareness metrics all the way down to actually ordering the product? Whether for a physician, taking them through that journey for patients, again, similar top of funnel all the way through to requesting the test.
One thing that's a little bit easier than my Cologuard days is we don't have a sales force yet. So marketing attribution versus sales attribution, which was a big, that was really challenging to figure out ROI, how much was this commercial impacting that physician actually prescribing that product or that patient coming in and asking for that product? It was a big model to try to figure out that overall attribution of marketing activities versus sales activities. But in this situation, it's just me. So it's one of those, but I'm also thinking about-
Josh Dougherty:
Attribution is the nice and easiest it ever has been, right?
Jaime LaMontagne:
Yeah, exactly. It is. It really is. As much as there's so much to do and so much to measure, but I'm really taking that view. I know what I want that ROI mix to look like. I know what I need to be measuring as we become more complex with our strategy. So taking a moment right now to make sure I'm setting up my analytics, setting up all of my analysis so that as we do more and more and more, we'll be able to see those metrics.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah, smart. Because I think if you have that firm foundation as you scale, you're going to be able to just have the measurement scale. And as you bring on a sales force as well, you'll be able to have those conversations to understand here's our baseline and here's where the lift is coming from, from a sales and commercial side of things.
Jaime LaMontagne:
We still have the challenge a little bit, like every product. We have two kinds of channels. There's the patient channel where they are going to request the test on our website. We'll connect them to a telehealth provider. And like with GLP-1s and others, they do that online telehealth experience. We have that. And we can actually then see how does a patient actually go through that full tunnel journey of obviously following all the patient compliance and HIPAA and all those things that we have to do with marketing to a patient.
But on the physician side, the physician channel, it's more complicated because you really don't know, did my marketing to this patient make that patient go in and talk to that physician to ultimately have that physician prescribe the product? So, there's still that leap of faith of that top of funnel to the physician channel. But again, without a sales force, it's still ultimately attributed to marketing at this point, but eventually it'll get more complicated.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah. And how much are you measuring? What is the frequency that you all are recommending with this test? Obviously, cancer screening continues annual, or every two years for mammography. So a little bit is about retention, I would imagine at the end of the day to get people to come back on the right frequency. Do you have a similar frequency you're recommending with the test or is it different?
Jaime LaMontagne:
Yeah. Well, I mean that will be kind of an ongoing conversation with guidelines and FDA and the clinicians.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah, don't answer anything that's going to get you in trouble with what the FDA is going to recommend.
Jaime LaMontagne:
But our intention is for the test to be used in conjunction with a mammogram, so annually or biannually. And that's because we're not measuring ... There's some confusion around there's a BRCA test which women can get, which is a blood test that tells them-
Josh Dougherty:
I'm familiar with it, yeah.
Jaime LaMontagne:
... if they have the genetic predisposition for breast cancer, that's a one-time test. Your genetics don't change. This test is proteins. So proteins, in a very simple explanation, are every cell in your body and your body is constantly sending messages and those messages are actually protein, these little proteins that are floating in your body, floating in your bloodstream. So what we are detecting is a cancer cell that is communicating to others saying, "I'm over here, or don't look at me." They're sending these messages to their surrounding area. So the proteins that we're measuring is a moment in time, what is actually happening in your biology at that moment?
So, it may be negative this year, but it could be positive the following year because your body has changed biologically, there's something growing in your body. So yes, our test is meant to be done at a frequency. It's not a one and done type of a test, but we'll see how we're used in the clinical pathway as ... If it's a high-risk patient, maybe they do it more often. If it's a regular average-risk woman, maybe they do it every year if she has dense breasts. We'll find out.
Josh Dougherty:
So it's a little bit of TBD to figure out how you need to measure. So it's all about that initial acquisition now and see what happens.
Jaime LaMontagne:
Yes. And we did a lot of that with Cologuard. So we have a similar portal experience where the patient can go in and look at their results, and then after a year, we can use that to contact them again to say, "Hey, are you interested in doing the test again?" So, very similar to the Cologuard experience, that was every three years, which was a little bit harder because three years is a pretty big span.
Josh Dougherty:
That's a long time.
Jaime LaMontagne:
But, yeah, I learned a lot from that, how do we bring people back for that follow-up test?
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, this has been a really good conversation. I think as we close out, I'd love to just ask, and this maybe is kind of related to what we've been talking about, but I talk with marketers every day about how AI is supporting and accelerating their work. And I'd love to hear if you had any tidbits where you've seen success with you and your team to be able to leverage AI to make your work smarter and faster.
Jaime LaMontagne:
Yes, 100%. And I think first, before I jump into how we use it for marketing, I would say our company is very much ... Our mission is to use cancer intelligence to impact early detection and cancer treatment. And a huge proponent of that is AI and machine learning. So for us, our test is actually seeing ... You have at least 10,000 proteins in your body at one time, and the most abundant are albumin or fibrinogen. So seeing those really low abundant protein signatures is how our test works. And that takes a ton of machine learning, because every patient that we see is around 7,000 proteins that we see per sample. So, having to actually look through 7,000 proteins simultaneously and look for complex patterns to say, "Does this patient look more like they have more cancer-associated proteins or not?" Is a huge AI, machine learning.
Josh Dougherty:
I mean, it's a problem built exactly for machine learning, right?
Jaime LaMontagne:
A hundred percent. I mean, people ask, "Well, proteomics has been around forever. Why now?" And it's because of that, that we can actually do that in a fast turnaround that doesn't take a ton of effort to be able to do this. It's really a moment, it's right now in this moment that we actually have the technology and the capability to do that.
So we are a big proponent of AI. I think we probably are talking about how we can use it throughout every part of our company. But on the marketing side, holy moly. I mean, for me, again, like I said, we're a small company. It's a force multiplier for me right now because there's so much to do. It helps with messaging, it helps with content, it helps with research, it helps with just testing things, iteration, analysis. I'm using it every day, pretty much, to help move everything forward at the speed at which it needs to be done.
But of course, like everything, we have to be really careful. It's the human element of it all. There is the chance that it hallucinates. So how do you make sure that it's real? And part of that is the prompting. Being, again, part of an AI company, we talk a lot about the prompts and how do we actually think really critically about what we want it to do for us, rather than just throwing something in there and seeing what happens.
So like I said, it's a force multiplier for me as a small company to be able to leverage it effectively and carefully to accelerate everything.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah, I think it's so interesting that as capabilities have increased, as even in the last six months, I think we've seen models get so much smarter as you're training them, that to always be asking the question when you identify a bottleneck, "Okay, how could I leverage a model to help me think through this, or to resolve this bottleneck and move quicker?"
Jaime LaMontagne:
Well, even my CEO, we were actually ... It was a funny story. We were actually doing an analytic review, looking at our campaigns and looking at our click-throughs and all this stuff. And again, we're an AI first company to align in a lot of ways. He was like, "Well, let's make sure we're writing clear descriptions of what is the campaign, what are we trying to do? What is the language we're using? What's the audience? Who's actually clicking on it more? Is it the 45s to 50s?"
And he wants to put all of that in our classifier to be like, "Okay, is this message resonating more with this audience and for what reason?" And he's taking my marketing analytics to a whole ‘nother level of capability. So it's fun to have a boss like that who is thinking that, "How do I help?" Because he's such a scientist, and marketing is an art and a science.
He definitely is thinking about how to make us move quicker by leveraging AI to see those marketing insights faster.
Josh Dougherty:
It's awesome. It's awesome to have a leader who's willing to dive in and not just look at the results but help problem solve.
Jaime LaMontagne:
Very much so.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Jaime LaMontagne:
He's really curious about what's working with who, and it's fun times.
Josh Dougherty:
Nice.
Well, as we close out here, I want to give you a chance to share how people can connect with you. We have lots of women that listen to our podcast, and so I'd love to also have you share where they can go to, if they're interested in Certitude and want to get on the waiting list to know when tests are available, where they can go to sign up for that list.
Jaime LaMontagne:
Yeah, perfect. Yes. Well, the best way to find me is through LinkedIn, so please reach out, connect with me, send me a message. Would love to hear from you there. And then for Astrin and Certitude, the best way is to go to certitudetest.com where you can join the wait list right there on the website. You can learn all about it. If you have any questions, you can send me a question on the website. I would be happy to answer it. The other best ways are to follow us on Facebook or Instagram. We're putting out posts every day around the test and around the breast cancer screening space. Both the handles there are CertitudeTests, so very easy to find.
And like I said, we're at a very interesting point in the journey of the company. We're just starting this journey. And so please, I recommend sharing about us with all of the women in your life.
I'm shocked how many people when I talk to them say, "I have dense breasts. I have dense breasts. I'm lost. I don't know what to do. I got that message." You start down a journey with so many people and they have such similar stories. So my last ask would be, please share this with the women in your life and have them follow us and share, and sign up for the wait list if they're interested.
Josh Dougherty:
Awesome. Thanks so much, Jaime, for the time. We'll make sure we add those links to the show notes too, so people can click through easily and find them if they're listening. And yeah, thank you for sharing all your expertise and the thought process you've put into this, and for a great conversation.
Jaime LaMontagne:
Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. It's been fun.
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.