- Ejenta means agent in Bengali
and our mission is to apply AI
and intelligent agent technology
to make healthcare accessible for all.
(light music)
I'm Rachna Dhamija, I'm the founder and CEO of Ejenta.
- My name is Maarten Sierhuis
and I'm the CTO and co-founder of Egenta.
(light music)
- We are using intelligent agent technology
that my co-founder developed at NASA
for remotely monitoring astronauts.
An intelligent agent essentially
it's an autonomous software program
and it's able to sense data from its environment,
it's able to reason, it's able to learn,
and then it can take action autonomously
on behalf of its users.
So, let's say a patient has a weight scale
and a blood pressure monitor, maybe in an activity tracker.
That agent is always monitoring that data.
And then trying to predict the patient's health based
on the data that we collect in the home
and then based on data that we also collect
from the patient's medical record.
Then the intelligent agents can reach out
to a healthcare provider.
For example, to give the health provider an alert
that a patient might need help
or their health is deteriorating.
And we give of every patient on our platform
their own intelligent agent
that's continuously monitoring data about them,
that learns about them, that predicts their health,
and that can help their health providers to intervene
before a negative event happens.
(light music)
Maarten and I were both going through were similar things
with our families.
My dad was pretty ill and far away
and it was hard to take care of him
and his mother had the same issue.
She had a chronic condition and was in the Netherlands.
So, we ended up talking about that problem a lot.
So, Maarten had told me a joke.
- It would be easy if our parents could wear space suits
because then I could monitor them at a distance
just like our astronauts.
- And then we realized actually we have
all of the technology
that is in a space suit that we could bring
in our parents' homes and make it a reality.
So, we're kind of turning the healthcare system on its head
by making care continuous
and predictive and preventative, rather than episodic.
- Brahms is actually a multi-agent programming
and modeling human behavior modeling language.
You can both simulate things in Brahms,
so simulate human behavior,
and then also implement those simulations as real systems.
Brahms is named after the composer
and I always say work is like a symphony,
well rehearsed, but always different.
It had its origins
in actually studying workflow systems in organizations.
In the early 2000s is when we started actually modeling
and researching the astronauts
from the Apollo missions on the moon.
And then I really started to understand
how this relationship between people in mission control
on Earth were collaborating and coordinating the work
on the moon with the astronauts.
When knowledge becomes important is when things go wrong.
And then it was the key moment was then
how do you build systems
that can actually incorporate that type of knowledge
and can react to things
that are not something that happens every day?
It's not about all the things that go right.
That is the simple part.
It's about what does the system do when it goes wrong?
Then we got a request from JPL, Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
to help them with the design of mission operations
for the MER mission, for spirit and opportunity on Mars.
We started with moving the simulation
to a real Mars-like environment
and we used the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah
to create an environment where we lived
like we would live on Mars
with robots, communication back to mission control.
Mission control wanted to monitor the health
of the astronauts in the space suit
while we were in the desert.
So, we built this agent that would
with sensors in the space suit for our astronauts,
monitor that and sent that information
to the doctor in mission control.
That research actually led to mission control
for the International Space Station asking us
to use this technology to help them create automation
in mission control and it's still running 24/7
for the International Space Station.
I have moved on to bring this technology to Earth
and to the real world
and for me that is healthcare.
I wanna solve problems that have an impact
for humankind here on Earth.
(light music)
- So we approached NASA
for a license agreement and then developed
our proof of concept, I think that took
about six months to a year.
Introducing new technology to healthcare takes a long time
because you have to prove,
you have to validate that it works and that it's safe.
So, we've gone through a number
of clinical trials and we're now
at the stage where we're deploying and scaling.
- I always had this feeling from
if I can create a computer system running
and mission control for NASA,
I could get it running in somebody's home, right?
But that still, that was a long journey to get that working.
There was this distinct moment
when our first patient got online
with a real clinical trial with a healthcare organization.
And that was a pivotal moment because that proved
to me that we could actually do it and it actually worked.
It was actually in the hands of somebody
somewhere in the United States
and we were getting data and collecting data
and helping that patient stay home healthy.
- And now we're trying to really scale
and grow the company and make this a reality.
(light music)
We're working with Trish
which is the Translational Research Institute
for Space Health at Baylor College of Medicine
and working closely with NASA as well
to take what we've done,
which started off with Maarten's technology
for monitoring astronauts in space.
We brought it back to Earth and now we're bringing it back
to space for long duration space flight.
So, if you look at one of the problems we're solving
in long duration space flight, you have an astronaut who's
in a really contained environment.
He's in deep space, doesn't have a lot of contact
with his family, or if he does,
there's a 20-minute time delay.
And so there are a lot
of behavioral issues that arise from that.
There are a lot of potential impacts on health.
But if you think about the patient who's isolated at home,
the issues can be very similar.
Advances that we make in helping astronauts
for a long duration space flight do have implications
for developing technology at home.
(light music)
- I still feel that AI is at the early stage.
And one example I can give
is just how we communicate through voice
with AI agents at the moment.
Humans have conversations.
Humans have history and memory about a conversation.
It's not just, I ask a question and you give an answer.
It's just the way we interact as humans is so fluent
and is based on common ground.
And this common ground is what I think AI systems still,
they don't have this common ground
and so therefore, the interaction between me and my agent
is still very awkward.
And to make this into the holy grail that I have in my mind,
we need to develop a lot more capability.
- So, we're just in the early phases now
where we're deploying our technology
with patients with chronic conditions.
The end goal is to make this available to everybody.
So not just people who are chronically ill,
not just the sickest of us,
but to people who are healthy to prevent them
from getting ill in the first place.
(light music)