Expert Spotlight: Sebastian Frohm- Isolating Problems For AI To Solve

Sebastian Frohm, a technologist who has dedicated the last 15 years of his life to the art form of scalability, talks about AI becoming a frontrunner in medicine, trust and bravery for fostering innovation in HealthTech and creating value as a CTO. Connect with Sebastian on LinkedIn here.

1. How do you see the role of technology evolving in patient care over the next decade?

Technology, in the past hundred years, has, effectively, added 20 years to each person’s life. With the dawn of organ transplantation, deep understanding of complex chemical processes within cells, modernization and advancement of medicine, et al, technology has given humans a leg up against nature and our own mortality. COVID-19 was a perfect example of how human ingenuity, mixed with global cooperation, can effectively, and safely, help us defend against the unpredictable will of nature.

Technologically speaking, we have truly entered into a renaissance of how innovation and discovery will help humans live for 100, 150, or even 200 years. As computers become stronger and more efficient, the processes they power will be able to become swifter and more reliable.

Look at the Human Genome Project, for example. It used to take months and years to sequence a single strand of DNA; nowadays, we have companies that will take your DNA, analyze it, and give you a complete genetic understanding of yourself. The limits of what we can do with technology will become only limited by our own imagination and ingenuity.

2. Which emerging technologies do you believe will have the greatest impact on healthcare in the near future?

As computational power has evolved, the ability for AI to parse immense sets of data has exponentially grown as well. AIs can pour over data in seconds, minutes, or hours, in what would’ve take a human days, weeks, months, or years to do.

This advent of speed allows us to glean how AI is going to become the front-runner for how we approach medicine. Already, there are several companies working on goal-specific AI models that help predict cancers before they start; others are working on how to leverage a person’s DNA to create personalized treatments, while limiting side effects. 

3. What role does/will artificial intelligence play in your current and future projects?

AI is, presently, the most misunderstood tool in an engineer’s tool belt. AI is frequently viewed as a one-size-fits-all solution for something, however, the issue is “the something” is very rarely properly defined. There are two paths I’ve seen companies take (provided situations are fictional but parallel to past experiences):

1. “We’ve seen a drop in sales, but our app’s usage is still high. Where is that disparity coming from?”
2. “Where are we coming up short in our platform’s usability? How do we integrate AI into our systems?”

The two problem statements above show examples of when leadership understands the capabilities of AI and when leadership doesn’t. The first problem statement shows that a company has identified a relatively specific situation where a company sees a drop in profitability, while maintaining traffic levels. From here, we can begin surmising that there is either an influx of trivial requests (perhaps from bad actors), a potential bug in our systems, or perhaps unknown usability issues that may exist. You can now leverage pre-existing AIs (or teach your own) to look at a specific set of data, and predict insights from it.

Personally, third-party AI systems that power apps, like Cloudflare, have been the most helpful. They can effectively understand the traffic coming into their networks, providing a very effective and concise shield to help ensure safety of my applications. As traffic patterns change, the AI can grow its own “intelligence” and quickly adapt to more complex and systematic attack vectors.

As challenges grow, and the applications I work with evolve, the need for AI will change. Perhaps I will need to find a way to deliver projects in a more timely fashion, while minimizing bugs and coding gaffs; perhaps I will need to do deep insights into when a product is most profitable (e.g.: When are people buying pants? When do people write the most posts? When do people mark as complete things off their task lists?). As questions become more evident, the usage of AI will become more directed and meaningful.

4. Can you share an example of a major project or initiative in healthcare technology that inspired you?

The importance of AI has become abundantly obvious to anyone paying attention. While people believe AI will solve every problem ever, it’s important to grow the expectation that AI will not solve every problem, until we know what the problems are. If you isolate a problem, focus the question, and train the AI properly, however, you will receive unbelievable results.

Take for example the case of NYU and the University of Scotland’s efforts to train an AI to detect lung cancer before doctors can. This use of AI will help aid doctors more confidently and accurately predict and diagnose cancers, as AI becomes more and more available and reliant. It will also help instill confidence of integrating more and more AI solutions to aid doctors in, not only identifying cancers and diseases before they truly take hold, but also delivering custom, tailor-made solutions to help people before it’s too late.

5. How do you foster a culture of innovation in your technology teams?

Broadly put; trust and bravery. To begin, building trust is tantamount to having a functional, effective team. The trust built is, not only with your team, but with the rest of leadership as well. There are always two streams of work: growing the product and growing the tech. The two, sometimes, overlap, but it can be very hard to justify a whole new tech piece when you’re racing against the clock. This is where trust grows. Trust with other leadership means they may hear some bad news in terms of time-to-delivery, but they trust you enough to know that you are making the right long-term decision. Trust with your direct team means they hear some good news in terms of let’s-use-new-tech, but they know they need to be fast, nimble, and accurate. This is where the trust trade-off becomes invaluable.

As trust in leadership grows, the opportunities for bravery become more prevalent. When a person believes that they will be helped up when they fall, they are more likely to take calculated risks that can lead to immense victories. As these opportunities present themselves, individuals across your organization will feel more confident to innovate solutions to problems, instead of shrinking away because of potential reprisals when things don’t work out. These attempts at innovation, when they work, end up bolstering a team more each time there is success, while trust helps ease the sting of failure when it inevitably comes.

6. What are the key skills and qualities you believe are essential for a successful CTO in the healthcare tech sector?

The most important trait that a CTO must have is humility. Humility is a key component of  traits that I prize in any leader. Humility is bred in empathy, and strength and resolve are bred in humility. Humility ensures that a team’s innovation efforts are not stifled, but, instead, met in a meaningful, welcoming way.

That said, a leader still has to lead – a team’s decisions may be too costly or too time consuming. Through humility, a leader, generally, gains a lot more leeway with a team, where the approach is all about providing immediate value where it is easy for the leader to do what they do best: getting more money and time for their team.

Sebastian Frohm has spent the last 15 years of his life, dedicated to the art form of scalability. Having, both, been a part of several start-ups and large, e-commerce enterprise solutions, his perspective and approach have changed greatly over the years, learning that the best way to solve a problem is to understand how to leverage others’ knowledge and talents to supplement his talents.

As the CTO of SmallScale, Sebastian understands the importance of being hands on, while knowing that growth will come only when you open yourself to new information. His several last positions as the lead of the engineering departments have given him an opportunity to grow because of the people around him. Leading teams of 20 or more people enforce the idea that a leader must be flexible. That flexibility has afforded him room to grow, time and time again.