“Better patient outcome”
SentiAR was in the news in the third week of April 2021 for closing its oversubscribed $ 5.1 million Series A financing round for their CommandEP System with TechWald Holding as a strategic shareholder. "We were not expecting an oversubscribed round and we are grateful for the vote of confidence from the investment community! Certainly, raising capital during the pandemic was a unique experience and very difficult to do. Having these long-standing relationships with our investment team and potential investors was really critical to closing our Series,” Jennifer responded to queries from Parsiana.
Following the 510k clearance (proving that their medical device to be marketed is safe and effective) received last September and public funding seven months thereafter "we are excited to be moving towards commercialization and further developing and deepening our strategic partnerships with medical device companies,” the co-founder wrote. They already have "some novel tools in development that we look forward to discussing later in the year.”
Their trademark CommandEP System is the "first mixed reality guidance system to receive FDA (Food and Drugs Administration) clearance for use during invasive cardiac procedures,” noted a press release issued in April 2021 by the World Zarathushti Chamber of Commerce that had conferred Jennifer the Outstanding Entrepreneur of the Year Award in Orlando in 2019.
Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Washington University and director of Pediatric Cardiac Electrophysiology at St Louis Children’s Hospital, Jennifer is responsible for the clinical application of the SentiAR technology for patient use. Jonathan who is Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Washington University created the SentiAR visualization platform. His research laboratory specializes in applying computational approaches to address problems in cardiac electrophysiology.
"Our early clinical data is very promising in showing that physicians can be more accurate using the CommandEP system as compared to the current standard of care,” Jennifer clarified in her email responses. "Interventional electrophysiologists intuitively know that any tools that increase our accuracy will yield a better patient outcome over time. We believe that this increase in accuracy is due to both the ability to see and understand three dimensional relationships coupled with the physician’s ability to control the data they are using to make decisions,” she further elaborated.
The lockdown though compelled the couple to change their style of operations. "As with all start-ups, we did have to make changes on our team. We were able to keep our core team together and developed new workflows to keep the team productive despite working from home. We are excited to get people back in the office and get back to the creative back-and-forth that many start-ups thrive on,” she stated.
Giving due credit to her husband as the chief technology officer for the success of SentiAR, Jennifer acknowledged, "I couldn’t do this without him. Jonathan is my husband and my best friend. Asha is my 10-year-old daughter and inspires me to do my best so I can give her a positive role model and show her that she can achieve anything she sets her mind to. Marcus, my seven-year-old son, teaches me the importance of the question ‘why?’ and the importance of being clear and specific with my asks. We are fortunate to have my mother-in-law, Cathy, living with us as well, and she is our ground — she is always here to chip in, help each of us to be the best version of ourselves, and to find the joy in little things. My parents, Dinci and Nausheer Avari, live many states away, but still find time weekly to Facetime with their grandchildren and play an important role in their lives. Regretting that with the lockdowns "we have been more introverted,” at the community meet in Orlando, Jennifer had given a commitment to attend the 12th World Zoroastrian Congress in New York in 2022 with her "two little Zarathushtis.”
Data for delivery
"I am truly humbled that something that I created and built is instrumental to the betterment of mankind,” remarked Pashang Patel (pictured), senior manager at Pfizer, whose project Pfizer COVID Dashboard has been chosen as one of the Top 50 Analytical Projects across the USA. "This project captures and presents in almost a real time view, the traversing of a sales order through all of the various checks and holds, through the process of delivery creation, the picking, the packing, the shipping; and then captures the carrier shipping details, and finally the delivery receipt and confirmation,” he explained. The worthiness of the projects from across the nation were evaluated by Drexel University, LeBow College of Business and the website of their magazine CIO.com. The top 50 recipients will be honored at a dinner in September.
Through Patel’s interactive dashboard system "anyone on the Covid team in Pfizer can see what orders have been placed, the delivery status, and also drill down to the minutiae level of a package being delivered to a local CVS (consumer value store), or a pharmacy in Mongolia or a health center in Bolivia,” clarified Patel. Leader of the group that was entrusted this project, in response to queries from Parsiana, Patel stated, "The inspiration was simple, present near real time data to the decision makers in order to save lives.” Planned as a response to the Covid-19 global distribution and logistics problem, the interactive dashboard could assist the US Order Management and Global Supply Chain leadership teams and particularly the C-Suite (the topmost rung of the hierarchy) at Pfizer.
Patel’s group started work on the internal project on September 25 and it was delivered on November 1, 2020. Since then they have been adding or subtracting items from the dashboard in incremental steps.
Having joined Wyeth in 2006, from the time the company was acquired by Pfizer in 2009, Patel has continued his ties with the pharmaceutical giant. Referring to his 50 years of residency in the USA ever since he migrated from India, Patel mentions that he spent his childhood growing up in the boroughs of New York (NY) City, did his undergraduate studies at State University of NY at Buffalo, his masters in international affairs from the University of Pittsburgh and postgraduate studies from Columbia University. He initially worked with small regional banks and entities like JP Morgan Chase, later gained experience with the United Nations Development Program and Mellon Bank as an international country analyst. Switching from finance to information technology, he studied at Columbia University, further trained in SAP (Systems, Applications and Products in data processing), before being hired by Accenture Consulting and being posted in USA, Canada and Mexico. Thereafter he moved to Wyeth and eventually Pfizer, helping the company achieve "breakthroughs that change people’s lives.”
His family includes mother Armaity (née Taraporevala) and father Framroze Patel who was the third president of the Federation of Zoroastrian Associations of North America, younger sister Arnavaz, wife Khushnuman (née Muncherji) and two sons Rayomand and Cyrus. He says that he "literally grew up with the Zoroastrian Association of Greater New York, from the first meetings at people’s homes to the first formal function at the Low Library at Columbia University to the wonderful edifice at Pomona, NY.”